Quote:
Originally Posted by evolutionmovement
Large cars have always been preferable to the majority—they innately appeal to the fear and or lack of control people feel over their lives.
|
Since I've always owned small cars (and I mean really small, like the Austin-Healey Sprite), it's very tempting to believe that, but I don't quite. It's part of the story, but not all of it. There's been a lot of creative marketing, selling not just the size but false suggestions of safety and adventure, like your nine-to-five sitting in the cubicle cowboys.
Quote:
|
The Beetle, while popular was bought only by individualists...
|
But there were a lot of individualists back in the '60s and early '70s :-) There were other small cars being imported, plus the whole set of British/Italian sports cars that got killed off by the big bumper laws. Toyota had been selling its Stout pickups on the west coast (years later, I had a '68 that I revived from an employer's junkyard) and had introduced its "Sport Truck" before the oil embargo hit. So it wasn't just that the Japanese &c jumped into a market created by the embargo: they were here before, and poised to take advantage of the opportunity...