American cars once represented among the greatest the World had to offer. Marques like Packard, Auburn, Duesenberg, and Pierce Arrow were comparable to the best any other nation had to offer, while simpler cars like the Model T did nothing so much as put the country on wheels.
Then something happened. American cars got bigger… and bigger… and bigger, but they didn’t necessarily get better. Other nations’ fare took on the torch for technological improvement and capability, while America fell into a morass of vinyl roofs and ‘Road Hugging Weight’ as ways to make their cars seem competitive. It didn’t work.
Now, don’t get me wrong, today’s American cars are the best there ever have been, and in fact specific models like the Mustang, Corvette, and some Cadillacs try and go toe to toe with what comes out of Europe and Asia, but they don’t seem to quite make the grade. Maybe Ford’s new GT hypercar will be deemed worthy of being world class. But will even that be considered the best? What do you think, will America ever regain the best car crown?
Image: Hemmings
Hooniverse Asks: Will There Ever Again be an American Car to Rival the Best The World Has to Offer?
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F-150. It is the best light truck in tne world without qualification.
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Objection on the word “light”.
Regards,
Rest of the world-
Rest of World,
We work and play bigger than you.
– America-
Which gets us back to where we started. I’m positively surprised by the relative success of the Focus and even the Fiesta in the US. And I’m not in doubt at all that if American car companies decide to take on global car markets, they can do well. GM is represented just about everywhere and Ford might be the “globallest” player of them all, offering quite a lot of cars that are relatively similar across borders.
But an iconic American vehicle becoming the most desirable global car? Nah. And that’s a good thing, because having similar markets and conditions everywhere would just be plain boring.-
Despite the emergence of global platforms, automakers produce such diversity that I don’t think the notion of “standard of the world” is relevant in the way that it once may have been.
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Point taken, but the corollary to this is that it makes it difficult to obtain a truck in America that’s on a scale suitable for the tasks being demanded of it.
I have no problem with full-size pick-ups, but would like to have the option of something that is truly compact and capable. A modern F-150 is massive overkill for what we actually need in a vehicle of that sort.-
Depends entirely on the tasks. My “half-ton” Ram is just adequate for much of the towing and hauling I do. If I only have one truck, I don’t want to go smaller.
That said, I wouldn’t mind having the choice. In my case, a “minitruck” might be a viable second pickup. -
Totally understood re: the tasks at hand. For my needs, Subaru Brats have basically been the perfect truck for the sorts of things that I need them to do on a regular basis. For everything else, I either borrow or rent a full-size.
I’d just like to have the option available. If Jeep really does go ahead with the Renegade as it was shown at EJS, I may be in the market for one. If not, I’ll be looking for a 2001-ish-era 4×4 Dodge Ram diesel as the tow / heavy hauling vehicle and maybe tossing another Brat into the mix for the day-to-day light stuff like Home Depot / landfill runs.
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Light refers to the load rating…
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Whatever about it being light or not, I’m kinda envious about how they can have a 5.0 petrol V8 (or turbo V6) with an autobox to cart stuff around/tow cars or as a company vehicle like it’s no big deal.
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I don’t see what’s desirable in a petrol engine on a commercial platform. None of the benefits of a petrol over a diesel is useful for these applications.
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I don’t disagree from a pure technical standpoint, but I think you’re missing the spiriit of what I’m saying. It’s still nice to know that you can. They make diesel pickups over there too which have their own subculture, though they’re not as popular due to the relative high cost and low availability of diesel (Diesels actually artificially cheap relative to petrol in some Euro contries to having so much taxation headroom, you need more crude to make a litre than gasoline, but due to lower duty it’s often cheaper).
I could go for an F150 diesel even, but you don’t even have that sort of option. It’s different in every European country of course, but lets say I decided I wanted to get the nearest thing, like a Toyota Hilux. I’m working in an office, I’m not running a business, so I gotta pay private road tax on it. If I’m buying new, it’s sorta ok now that it’s CO2 based, but I don’t want spend €30k, I want a beater to tow the MX5 to the track and pick up parts or take stuff to the dump, so I pull up donedeal and find an old 2.7/3.0 hilux, but because it’s on the old tax sytem, I’m going to need to stump up half its value just to own it. Even when I’ve swallowed that, I’ll then try ring my insurance company, who will make that sucking through their teeth sound like I’ve just asked them to underwrite a plutonium rod transporter, because 3.0 LITRES, SHURE DATS HOOJ!! in a tone like I’ve suggested something that’s a combination of wreckless danger and shameless decadence not seen since Caligula, and if they even agree to provide cover, the quote will likely be a telephone number, so that’s kinda out.
Now on the other hand, if you’re in the trades, you’re usually just going to end up behind the wheel of a Ford Transit, fine, thoroghly useful vehicle as it is. But would you prefer to be driving one over an F150? really? If your the boss man you might be to work the commercial tax/insurance system to legitimately land yourself in a Lovely commercial Land Rover, but that’s rare.
Meanwhile, somewhere in Texas, some kid is probably horsing around in a lifted dually with firearms and live amunition in the back, just another weekday.
I’m probably overestimating things, and I know new trucks are not cheap these days, but here it feels for every automotive choice, the state, other commercial interests and even the general population is looking over your shoulder and wanting you to justify it in a sort of “why do you need that?” sort of way. I don’t, it’d just be nice the odd time y’know? Probably wouldn’t even buy one, but it’s nice to know you can. -
Thing is, while I agree with virtually everything you’ve said here, I’d still like to have the option of a legitimately compact truck (with a diesel, if at all possible) in the US market. The problem with everything being full-size or the equivalent of American full-size ten to fifteen years ago is that you can’t scale a vehicle down to the demands that are actually expected of it.
Note that I have no problem with full-size trucks; I’d just prefer to have options beyond that. One-size-fits-all rarely does… And for everything else, there’s importing a Peugeot 504 pick-up from Argentina 😉
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There’s one – in fleet vehicles, in diesel-averse North America, a petrol engine is much less of a liability, and much less likely to incur downtime and a big repair bill because someone filled up with the wrong stuff.
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Don’t fill it up with the wrong stuff maybe? How do people even maintain basic life functions and hold a job if they can’t even manage to put the right fuel into their work vehicles?
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It’s very easy to go your entire life here and never operate a diesel vehicle, so a lot of people just don’t comprehend that there’s a difference, because they’ve never had to. It’d be like suggesting people aren’t capable of basic life skills because they don’t know how to rig a sailing boat.
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I contracted with a power generating utility for a short time in the early 2000s. It seemed like every three to four weeks or so, we’d hear another story filter back to us about a driver who had filled his diesel work truck (company-owned and -issued) with gasoline then discovered what happens when you try to compress a liquid.
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You’d be amazed at how willfully ignorant people are with the vehicles they trust with their own lives and their children’s lives. Within
the last month at work, we had a GASOLINE engine Hyundai Sonata hybrid get towed in because the idiot filled it with diesel while passing through from 3 states away. He said he had to physically hold the nozzle and fill it very slowly so the fuel didn’t spray everywhere because the diesel nozzle doesn’t even fit in the gas fill neck, he said he thought he was at a really ghetto gas station and that’s why the nozzle was different,…
This was a grown man about 30 years old, traveling with his wife.
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A while ago, performance was part of it for the emergency services market. Until the mid-90s IIRC, British ambulances and police vans were often Leyland DAF/ LDV 400-series with the 3.5-litre Rover V8.
Dear Rest of the World,
Some new Toyota Tacomas (Hi-Lux) weigh more than some new F150s.
Regards,
USA
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We were in traffic next to a Ranger yesterday and I told my wife that it is too small for the US and therefore not being sold there. She looked up to the blond girl with a hard hat driving it and considered my words a joke. I’m not doubting that a Toyota made to compete in the US may weigh more than its competitors, I’m really just pointing out that “light truck” has different meanings across the world. Some may think about a kei delivery vehicle, I’m thinking not-a-van-so-it-must-be-a…
http://www.volvotrucks.no/content/dam/volvo/volvo-trucks/masters/euro-6/trucks/1000×1000-volvo-trucks-buying-FL.jpg/jcr:content/renditions/1000×1000-volvo-trucks-buying-FL-largegrid-mobile.jpg-
I understand. I agree that vehicles are very much designed for specific markets. That said, F150 may be less than useful on narrow European or East Asian roads, but it is VERY well suited for North American, Mid Eastern, African, South American, and Central American applications.
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Where Sjalabais and I live, the word “truck” denotes this, btw:
http://www.bombayharbor.com/productImage/0089011001239954336/Forklift.jpg
English is my favourite toy! -
‘Truck’ is the thing that holds a group of wheels beneath a railroad car.
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When I drove one back in the dark ages, we called them “bulls”.
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I don’t know what their weight is, but vehicles with max. total weight above 3,500kg require an additional driver’s license in Yurp. (And another license for vehicles above 7,500kg.) This kind of limits popularity of the Double Dual King Extended Cab trucks, but I guess those don’t run as “light”, even in Murca.
Dear Rest of the World,
Some Americans weigh more than a Toyota Tacoma.
Regards,
USA.
FTFY
I think Tesla is going there already.
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Agreed. I’m sure a fully electric Mondeo/Passat/Accord of comparable performance and price point will show up “soon”…
Best for what? My uncle used to buy Mercedeses & BMW’s, but got tired of the four-figure repair bills and drives an EcoBoost Mustang & low-mile GMT400 Suburban now.
Now there’s some memories right there! I shared a Chevette with my sister in high school. Learned how to drive a manual in it. Took my wife on our first date in it! She was impressed that I opened her door for her… right up until I told her I needed her to open my door becasue the outside door handle didn’t work.
Nostalgia aside, could you imagine if we produced a manual trans RWD small car now? We’d be heroes!
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Disregard, I have no reading comprehension right now.
How do you measure “best”? In sales, it’s about beating the Corolla? In desirability I think we’re in an age were everybody decides on their own what’s cool anyway. Ford GT or Ferrari Alphanumeric? I can admire their engineering prowess, but this stuff bears zero relevance to my real world life. Probably most of the glory of the 40’s and 50’s is the package of stability, wealth and progress the US displayed. WW2 took that from at least one generation, so dreaming of better places was only human.
I got the impression that the question is asking if there will ever be an American car that the rest of the world aspires to own as a perfect daily driver. We have world class performance cars (I think the Camaro SS is just fantastic, and the ATS-V is, aside from the interior, a world beater of a sedan). But we don’t have the sporty family hatchback a European, Australian, or say, Malaysian family would actually put down money to own. If you visit continental Europe or the UK, you see mainly front wheel drive hatchbacks. They buy them for the space and the fuel efficiency (in the UK, I believe, you pay an annual gas guzzler tax if you car is not a fuel sipper). But even in that mainly boring class, you have GTIs, and a fee French and German hatchbacks that represent some of the world’s best cars. Most American cars are too big for the rest of the world. So to make a great American global car, it first has to be small and road hugging. Something closer to the Focus RS than the Corvette or F-150, as great as they are.
So, America used to build the best cars in the world, because Dusenberg, but now we don’t, because our cars are too big?
A 700hp, sub $70K Hellcat Charger doesn’t make the grade against a foreign marque that costs even more for a mere 500hp?
Is there any car, anywhere on the planet, built within the last decade or so, that can hold a candle to the elegance of the Blastolene B702?
What does the foreign market offer as a direct competitor to the Ford Raptor?
http://theoldmotor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Duesenberg-Special-Mormon-Meteor.jpg
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What does the foreign market offer as direct competitor to the Raptor? Directly, nothin.
Indirectly:
http://images.cdn.autocar.co.uk/sites/autocar.co.uk/files/styles/gallery_slide/public/images/car-reviews/first-drives/legacy/nomad-2015-15a.jpg?itok=bed9mUoW -
Why would anyone even feel a need to compete with the Raptor? It’s not a good road truck, it gets beaten by custom offroad builds at the same price level. The only people that even have a use for it at all are southwestern Americans with endless straight dirt roads to blast down. Effectively it’s an expensive toy for a very limited audience.
Cars are conglomerations of parts designed and sourced from around the world nowadays
Captive imports have been commonplace in most markets for decades.
Multi-national/foreign corporate ownership is fairly typical.
…”American car” has ceased to mean much to me.
Me thinks that some people who like American Metal doth protest too much. I think that everyone could agree that in the 70’s a Mercedes could generally be called ‘the best the world’ has to offer. Practical, reliable, repairable, durable, comfortable, handsome.
The Packards and Cadillacs of yesteryear generally fit that pattern. Perhaps today one could argue for Lexus holding the crown….
So perhaps the question could be rephrased as “Will America ever produce the equivalent of a Lexus?
*AHEM*
http://icdn1.digitaltrends.com/image/2016-dodge-viper-acr-front-top-angle-970×647-c.jpg
I can’t hear you over the sound of lap records. And side pipes.
The Mustang was the best selling sports coupe, IN THE WORLD, last year.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/02/11/17/3118EFD400000578-3441885-image-a-1_1455213598206.jpg
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What’s the competition? Toyobaru?
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All those 2 and 4 series BMWs and xxC Mercedes
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It’s nice-car-season here, and those really pop up even here. Kind of helps that they usually come in red or orange. I’m aware of three parking in my home area, and those are expensive here (about a Tesla S).
The Chinese sure seem to like Buicks. Maybe we’re looking the wrong direction.
You know the saying that no-ones can be as good as you at being yourself? I think that’s sorta it really. As the worlds become more homogenized, there’s very few cars left that are traditionally “American” in character. What the US did great post war was big V8 saloons/muscle cars/trucks, especially in the peak of the 1950s to early 70s, I think the article is just running these cars down. Nothing european was comparable because if a European car had a V8, it was generally an out of reach luxury car (and that is still the case). Now of course it’s probably very rational that a land going battleship with wheels and the engine capacity of several Hondas is no longer commuter transport for a lot of people.
A 50s Cadillac isn’t comparable to a Bentley or Rolls, even though they started out on a similar footing, it’s a different thing, even if Bentley occasionally cribbed some styling ques but will never admit. There’s none of that snooty, had money in my family for generations, we’re above such vulgarities as power nonsense. The 50s Cadillac screamed “success”, the car you pulled up to your mothers house in after your rock and roll record went to number one to show you made it. US cars had a place in pop culture that others didn’t. That’s their strength, V8s for everyone, European sports cars at the time might have been beautiful things, but most Europeans didn’t even get to sit in one. We only sort of got democratised performance with a few go faster saloons, often made by Ford (Ironically), or the hot hatch boom.
Anyway, nowadays all the sensible stuff is pretty generic, FWD camry-esque saloons or BMW imitations. When you try to be someone else, it’s hard to be better, where the stuff the US has done of late that’s very American – Hellcat, Raptor, hell even Tesla in its own way, no-one else has an answer to.
At the same time of course, its not just the US, Europe and Japan has strayed from it’s core appeal too into the same middlly crossover mush.
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Speaking from another viewpoint your glorious story of democratising performance and luxury on an ideological mission is merely the result of a singular post-war economic boom. I fully believe that the US would’ve had a much larger focus on affordability and frugality if their country had been hit as hard as ours, and that European brands would’ve produced cars of similar characteritics as the American ones, albeit not as large, if our countries hadn’t been reduced to rubble. You build what you can afford, and Americans just happened to be able to afford a lot at the time. American cars of the 50’s were good, yes, but excessive engineering in a time of excess isn’t particularly impressive, especially when you have the cheekiness to compare it to countries rebuilding themselves from ruins.
Furthermore the democratising of performance and luxury tainted the terms’ pureness on a quest for mass market appeal. By the early ’70s American luxury cars had been reduced to monumental barges riding their weight through bumps on anaemic suspension with the same silly narrow track as 15 years earlier and with unsupportive vinyl living room sofas on the inside, and gaudy opera windows and vinyl roofs slapped on them for no reason, cost cut at every corner to keep them mass affordable. At that point they neither had the quality of a real luxury car anymore, nor did they appear like one. They looked like someone who has never seen an elephant drew an elephant after it’s been described to him. Ultimately what made American cars good also ruined them.-
I don’t entirely disagree with your analysis, but calling the US excessive period anything but impressive misses the target. The twchnological jumps, development of style and democratization of power in the 50s is unrivalled and will forever be a pretty unique period. I don’t think the Chinese will look back at a Brilliance BS6 with the same thoughts, as an example. Same with the Tata Nano in India.
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Technological jumps? Apart from brute forcing displacement to make power and eventually putting integrated fenders onto their bodies I can’t see any.
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Reliable mass production of electrical-everything (seats, tops etc), AC, push button transmissions etc are what I think of.
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I don’t know about technological jumps, but the Americans did bring a lot of modern tech in at a relatively affordable price in the 50s and 60s. Fuel injection (including EFI, which apparently AMC was first to offer) in the 50s (also, they had several engines good for 1hp per Cu In when that was a big deal), four wheel disk brakes on the Corvette, turbocharging in the 60s, airbags and ABS in the early 70s. They get it wrong a lot of the time, or are reluctant to take on other things, but innovation doesn’t just pass them by.
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I agree about the 1950s but later when GM gave up on advancing the breed versus going for size and frippery in the name of easy profits, things changed. Not that profits are bad, but when they weren’t used for proper responses to the emissions regulations, eg redesigning combustion chambers rather than bandaid garbage that consigned customers to a miserable experience of stalling, poorly running cars it is hard to give them much credit.
Of course many import cars, particularly the Europeans did just as badly, but that was for an export market and they didn’t have to do the same things at home. Was it about 15 years later that they were required to fit catalytic converters?
Then later many US cars were so penny-pinched that they became a joke too, or should I say uncompetitive.
However it seems to me that most current US cars are genuinely competitive albeit with a few disclaimers such as FCA reliability (on their good cars, I did say most!), ATS instruments etc. And whether you regard the good international GM and Ford cars as American or European is a pretty moot point IMO.
And I don’t think there are many if any cars in any segment that are clearly ahead in all aspects, they all have strengths and weaknesses in different areas. Eg the VW Golf is great in most areas but would you trust one as a long term proposition?
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That’s one take on it, but I thinking you’re reading more into my comment than what I was trying to say. I think sometimes there’s a tendency to put these cars down, and perhaps even for some in the US to feel apologetic about how things developed postwar, when a lot of them are joyous machines in their own right, with their own character and appeal that’s unique. Sure they’re not very efficient, but you’d want to be pretty humourless not to raise a smile.They have different appeal to european cars of the era, but that’s fine, they offered something different. When you think of the most desirable Post war US cars, they tend to be the ones that are “Post war American” in character, because that’s what they do best, just like no-one makes Italian cars like the Italians. Sure, some of them like he Buick Riviera or Lincoln Continental took some European influences, but were still distinctly American in flavour.
By contrast, a lot of the US attempts to build something to take the fight directly to specific US or Japanese models in the past or recal pre-war ere glories, with some exceptions are often less fondly remembered. Sure Cadillac can take the fight to BMW convincingly now, but that’s as already said a sign of the globalization of the car industry. Everybody loves a 59 Fleetwood, a Cimmaron? let’s just say its an acquired taste and leave it a that. Similarly when Europeans tried to “Americanize” a car, the results were sometimes a little tragic like the Austin Atlantic. Vauxhalls of the 50s/60s often looked like cut down Chevys and were more successful, but still kinda come off as a shadow of the real thing.
For best results – play to your own strengths is the gist of what I’m saying, well, unless you’re Japan and can make a better “British” sports car 😉
I think we all know that things were better in the US postwar than Europe, hell Ireland was flat out broke in the 80s when I was a kid, but “we build what we can afford” is an oversimplification. Sure Europe needed efficient cars, but various European governments did have “stay in your box peasants” policies that placed even further restrictions on what you could afford to own, even as a second owner and that did impact design direction. It’s why “tax specials” such as the Italian market 2.0 Ferrari 308 or the Portuguese market “baby M3” 320is exist. Not all European countries of course, but then the traditional character of Italian and French cars wasn’t the same as German ones either. Either way, a lack of cubes wasn’t always entirely in the interests of efficiency. I think even with the same economic conditions, had various fiscal policies been different, European cars might have taken a slightly different trajectory in some ways.
The idea that US engines were all brute force displacement isn’t entirely correct either, pre 1970s smog legislation, they weren’t entirely unfavorable really, especially given that you’re getting a V8 relatively cheap, Ferrrari 3.0 V12 might have made similar power, but was also a fair bit more expensive to produce and maintain. France might have invented the V8, but US engines were plenty good enough for Facel Vegas, Iso Griffos and Jensen Interceptors
No-one would deny things went a bit south in 70s thanks to the oil crisis, smog legislation, moral panic about escalating power, industrial relations, but the US manufactuers weren’t alone in this either, just look at what was happening in the British car industry round the same time and ropey their cars were getting, cracks were starting to show with the Italians. It’s the Germans and Japanese who were in the ascendant at this time, at slightly different ends of the market.
For what it’s worth, my preference actually does veer toward the small, simple RWD sports cars, often Japanese, because they’re affordable and robust with it, but it doesn’t mean stuff that takes an entirely different approach can’t be appreciated on its own terms.-
*Standing ovation*
You get it!
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Nothing Yankeeland produces can hold a candle to the greats of Europe . Never has or will
I can’t think of anything that matches the Volt for its intended mission as a usable commuter and only car. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d2bfb7547fe70d750ebcacb774ad52f7b4cecc2efe3474de67606351a833e027.jpg
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I never quite understood why the Opel Ampera didn’t sell so well in Yurp – probably their price point, five years ago people bought a Leaf.
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Price point is probably it,€40,000 locally when the 1st gen came out, around €10,000 more than a diesel Opel Insigina, which on paper gets similar econonomy, even if that doesn’t pan out in the real world. Also a fair whack more than a Prius. The BMW i3 hasn’t sold well either.
They haven’t bothered offered the second gen here as a result.-
And the mechanically cruder i3( in comparison to the Volt/Ampera) is cheaper.
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Not here, at least compared to the range extended version, they dropped the price of the Ampera when it came out, but it made no real difference, by then it had zero momentum marketingwise, dealers couldn’t be bothered.
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List prices on Volts are $9,000 cheaper in the U.S. than i3’s, $42,400 vs. $33,200.
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