Why I Never Bought A New American Car

As a baby-boomer I was a logical recruit for General Motors. My Dad owned several 50s and 60s Pontiacs, 70s Buicks and an 1980s Oldsmobile . As a kid I loved Pontiacs, learned to drive on a '62, and would have bought a Pontiac when I came of age. But instead in 1977 I bought a year-old Volkswagen Rabbit. After driving Beaumonts and Falcons and Pintos and Vegas and Chevettes and full sized Pontiacs, Buicks and Oldsmobiles, the Rabbit was a revelation. It was small-scale, light-weight, agile, responsive, fuel-efficient and FAST. Suddenly I understood "throttle response" and what it meant to say "It goes where you point it". Needless to say, I crashed it. The Rabbit was repaired and I never considered an American car again. In 1990, my Dad, a GM man since 1950, finally got fed up with rounded off camshafts, crappy assembly and poor service and bought a Nissan Maxima. Where he stayed. Once he got used to the hard seats he had the same revelation as I. Why was the American auto industry not building such cars? We didn't know at the time, so we voted with our feet. The North American manufacturers never understood who we were and what we wanted. So we bought imports. And Detroit died.