More, or Fewer, Choices of Cars in the US?

When I was younger—and up until, I think, the late 1960s—there were no Japanese cars being sold in America (and no Korean cars, either; they came into the US even later).

On the other hand, there were many car makes that have since disappeared, both American and imported.

Besides recently-disappeared US car makes—nameplates from the "Big Three" such as Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Plymouth, and Mercury--there were many others. In the 1950s the Studebaker and Packard car brands sadly disappeared. At around the same time, Nash and Hudson merged to form American Motors, and their cars were around for a few years before disappearing also. Chrysler Corp. had DeSoto, and Ford Motor Company brought out the Edsel, to much fanfare. (It flopped, and has become a business-school textbook case of failed marketing.) And for a few years around 1950 there were cars made by Kaiser Motors, and also Willys (originally the maker of the Jeep).

(On a side note, at one time nearly all the taxicabs in America were purpose-built vehicles, Checker taxis made by Checker Motors. They had enormous room in the back seat. Checker has been gone for quite a while now.

Of course anybody who is a car buff knows that in what we might consider the "early days" of cars in the US, there were many makes that ceased production long ago.)

On the other hand, in the 1950s very many foreign-made cars were being brought into the US. There were the English sports cars, which were quite popular: MG, Triumph, Austin-Healy, and Jaguar. Of these, only Jaguar is still available in the US.

There were many other English makes being sold in the US at that time: Austin, Morris, Vauxhall, English Ford, Hillman, Sunbeam, Humber, Rover, and Mini (originally the Morris Mini Minor); and a few rather rare ones such as Daimler, Armstrong-Siddeley, Alvis, AC-Bristol, Jensen-Healy. Many of those were very nice cars. (Besides Jaguar, and Mini, there are three other British makes being sold in the US: Lotus, Rolls-Royce, and Bentley. Rolls, Bentley, Mini, and Jaguar are no longer British-owned but the manufacturing of their cars is still, I believe, done in England.)

And we had French cars: Renault, Peugeot, Citroën, Dyna-Panhard, Facel-Vega (a luxury car with a big Chrysler engine).

There were many German cars not seen in a long time: Goggomobil, Opel, Messerschmidt (a mini-car designed by the famous maker of World War II planes), NSU, Taunus (German Ford), Borgward, Wartburg, Goliath, Lloyd. Many of those makes ceased production. We've got five German makes still being sold here: Mercedes-Benz, BMW, VW, Porsche, and Audi (made by the company that sold cars here in the 1950s under the names Auto Union and DKW).

And Italian cars: Fiat (just recently returned to the US market; they made tiny cars, somewhat larger sedans, and a series of nice sports cars), Maserati—also recently returned to the US--Lancia, Alfa-Romeo. Ferrari and Lamborghini are still sold here. There were other, very nice and rare Italian makes such as Iso. I actually once drove a car called Moretti, which no one ever heard of.

We even had available here a Czech-made car, Skoda. Evidently with the fall of Communism the state-owned factory was privatized and sold to Volkswagen, and Skoda now is quite a popular car in Europe.

So many of these makes disappeared because they achieved a poor reputation for reliability. In some cases their tiny, high-revving engines simply wore out quickly, or they were not suited to American driving conditions (and perhaps not least, they required more routine maintenance than Americans typically give their cars).

The first Japanese cars in America were Datsun (later known here as Nissan) and Toyota. According to my recollection they came in at or near the end of the 1960s. Honda came in in the 70s, first with the Civic, which was at that time a very tiny car. In the 1970s we saw the first Honda Accord, which was a two-door car at first.

To some extent the appearance of Japanese and Korean models has offset the loss of a number of American makes; but the disappearance of so many European cars from the US market has surely resulted in a net loss of choice to American car buyers.

Bibliographical note: To refresh my memory about some of the long-gone foreign nameplates I have relied on a book called Cars of the World, in Color, by J.D. Scheel, publ. 1963.

Updated April 18 and April 19, 2013.

Copyright © 2013 by Richard Stein