History is of course, just that. We can look back on it and see what happened with a different and sometimes more accurate perspective than the people who were living it at the time. When it comes to American automotive history the 1970s are not a good period to reference. Why? It was in that decade that the major manufactures in this country really lost sight of the fact that they were depending on people to buy their products and that they couldn’t just build junk and expect people to stand for it. It was the decade when foreign car sales exploded and buyers saw lower priced options that seemed to possess higher quality attributes than the domestic products at the time. In short, the wheels came off the wagon and this 1970s Chevrolet video shows that the companies saw it happening.
The common perception is that Detroit did not care about imported cars, quality, or the fundamental business flaws that they were being forced to realize but we’d argue that this 1970s Chevrolet employee video shows that they very clearly knew what kind of trouble that they were in. The video stresses stuff like showing up to work every day, caring about your job, and making sure to take pride in the product. It does so with an ominous undertone that basically tells the workers that if this keeps up, everyone’s going to be out of a job.
The fact is that the companies were lazy in may regards and failed to realize that the rest of the world was lining up for a chance to bust into the American market. Datsun and VW were the first to do so in real volume and once that slippery slope was opened, things changed forever.
There is some irony in the film, unintentionally. They talk constantly about dedicated to quality, customer satisfaction, and all that stuff but they keep showing those early Vegas with a fatally flawed engine which ended up further damaging the reputation of the car. Amazingly there was nothing the line employees could do about that!
