VW Beetle Didn't Change Germany, LADA didn't change Russia...

[forddeliveryboy]

The Beetle changed the motoring world - crap engineering but with excellent (relative to the competition) customer service which also listened hard to consumers' demands. So now we're overloaded with style over substance which appears, on the surface, to be well-made. From the Bini to the Passat.

 

It also forced other nations to build smooth motorways, on account of its lack of stability on most other roads.

[mercrocker]

Nothing about a Datsun Sunny was fundamentally better than a Marina.   The only reason I can remember people going Japanese was that you could walk in a showroom and actually buy the bloody things.    How BL managed to stockpile cars in damp multi-storeys and still not be able to supply them on time is a mystery that would explain why the world turned into the pile of shit it eventually has.

[martc]

GM changed the world - no stick with me...

 

Firstly they bought up electric tram systems in the USA pre-war, and then shut them down, replacing the trams with GM built motorised buses - so far so capitalistic.

 

But it also allowed GM to monopolise suburban transportation which they slowly ran into the ground stopping many services to the suburbs. Thus forcing people into cars (hopefully theirs 1 full bus = 50 odd cars) to get to work/the shops. In a stroke GM invented commuting, out-of-town shopping, run down inner-city housing (poor people couldn't afford the cars & therefore had to live nearer work) and the inevitable collapse of city centres. And of course the rest of the world has followed.

 

In a nutshell GM invented our modern commuting and shopping hell. All GM social planning is crap.

[anonymous user]

Just think, if the Rootes Group had not turned down the rights to the Beetle, there may never have been the Arrow series and then the national car of Iran may have been a VW.

[DVee8]

The Nissan Bluebird..

 

No mini cab before or after has been the same.

[derskine]

As much as I don't like Beetles, they were a revolutionary car.

[RichardK]

If Ivan's offer of the Beetle to Rootes had been accepted, the resulting car would have been a joke on an epic scale. Even with the lesson of the Beetle, look at how very wrong they got the Imp in terms of build, rather than design.

[inconsistant]

I'll say Issigonis' Mini, because he broke the link between cars being cheap and cars being horrible to drive. The Mini democratised handling and therefore the enjoyment of driving, bringing it to the lower end of the market. The Cooper version then went on to democratise performance, and so the 60 yr old link between cost/size of car, performance/handling characteristics and sporting prowess of the driver was broken. This fundamentally challenged the assumption that bigger cars were better and that a powerful car was going to be quicker over a given distance, which therefore forced manufacturers to question and redefine the purpose of their large cars, small cars and sports cars.

And it spawned the MiniMetro.

[Felly Magic]

What about the original Mustang? It introduced to the world a whole new level of personalisation to the car, with options lists as long as both your arms. It was also the fastest selling car, and I think caught Ford by surprise at how well it originally sold

[RichardK]

The Corvair changed the world.

 

Prior to Nader's "Unsafe at any speed" publication, car manufacturers did have an eye on safety, but as part of an overall goal to improve the product for commercial reasons. Cars were to become more powerful, more aerodynamic, more efficient at almost any cost.

 

Then scrutiny was directed at the downsides. Emissions and safety. And that little germ of an idea took a while to spread, but spread it did - through America, Europe and then Japan, leading to an arms race where a crappy little Renault weighed enough and had so much reinforcement that it would drive through a Volvo 740 at speed. Even if the 740 would really have done plenty to protect the occupants in most situations.

 

With that arms race, people began to view small, light cars as unsafe. They began to feel justified in driving jacked up, reinforced battering rams with poor visibility and thirsty, toxic engines. The same people that scoffed at owners of Jeep XJs or Range Rovers then started buying things like Nissan Jukes or Ford Kugas.

 

And this fear of making a car that is a little more dangerous IF the worst happens, in exchange for light weight, practicality and excellent ability to see and prepare for or avoid the worst happening in the first place, means that this will never be undone. The BX showed where car design should have been going for the future. The DS5 shows how ridiculously far from that path we have gone.

[garethj]

Wasn't the book about the Pontiac Tempest, not the Corvair?

[plasticvandan]

The Honda Cub genuinely changed the world,i cant think of many cars that come close.

[jonny69]

Don't you think America was too big to be changed by Model-T?...

 

No, not at all! Mobilisation by car prompted the building of the first major inter-state roads in America, specifically Route 66, and the Model T was by far the most common car on the roads at that time. That was what normal people could afford to buy. R66 was built to enable people to get out of the terrible poverty and depression in the midwest and to be able to get to the prosperous west. Prior to R66 there was no continuous road link from the east to the west of the country, but once it was there it grew and grew and grew!

[Bobthebeard]

My first car, a Morris Marina, changed my world in 1978. I learned about rust and disappointment in two weeks.

[forddeliveryboy]

All cars have changed the world - but for better or worse?

[Bobthebeard]

All cars have changed the world - but for better or worse?

For the better I would say.

Without cars this place would be called ' Horseshite' . Plus where could you reliably put stickers on a horse?

[forddeliveryboy]

 

And this fear of making a car that is a little more dangerous IF the worst happens, in exchange for light weight, practicality and excellent ability to see and prepare for or avoid the worst happening in the first place, means that this will never be undone. The BX showed where car design should have been going for the future. The DS5 shows how ridiculously far from that path we have gone.

Exactly so. But the British have never really appreciated light cars, unless they've pretended to be heavy.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

The Ford Cortina and Capri changed Britain. By producing similar cars with distinct, comparable trim levels, the obsession with status and wealth exemplified in the spread from L to GXL.

Yes I think the visible and obvious display of a persons wealth and status was in part fuelled by the Cortina and it's perfect for company hierarchy, trim levels.

Before 1971 ,unless you went for a 1600E a Cortina was a Cortina- base,deluxe,Super or GT, even Lotus( apart from 1" wider wheels) looked identical to the casual passerby.

The publics reaction to the 1600 E is presumably what led to Ford creating the graduated trim levels for the Mark 3 rather than the complicated option packs of the Capri.

Whatever the reason it changed the way society viewed their, predominantly company, cars. The rest of the street couldn't see your colour telly or Spanish holiday , but one look at the 2000 GXL on the drive meant they all knew how quickly you were moving up the ranks at work.

Within a couple of years all the domestic makers had followed suit and for nearly 25 years,until Government policy made perk company cars less desirable and cheap manufacturing systems meant it was easy to tool up for mpvs, SUVs and whatever other niche models made most profit, car makers reaped the profit of The British populations increasing aspirations and desire to show off to the neighbours.

Eventually the plan backfired on Ford and the grasping,aspiring ,thrusting,exhibitionist masses outgrew them and moved onto German prestige* marques.

40 years ago that A4 S-lime Tdi would have been a 2000 GT Cortina, it's just the social commentators of the day were a bit classier than Top Gear calling all Audi drivers cocks, they had Sir John Betjeman's poem Executive.

So, the concept of bling and the nation becoming obsessed with displays of ( false) wealth are to be blamed on Ford.

[LC Torana]

ok, I'll bite on this.

 

The Austin 7 changed the world. When it was born in 1922, if you made more than a few hundred cars of one type that was a massive production run.

In the 17 years of production, about 290,000 7's were made.

 

They created a stable industry for car parts manufacturers such as Lucas so they those companies could specialise.

Copies of the 7 were made in Germany, France, Japan and other countries forming the nucleus of the world car industry at a time that meant that it's pedal and control layout became the world standard we know today. Mr Ford's car never did this.

 

Austin 7s were also the basis for the post war club racing in the UK from which much of our world beating racing industry was created.

 

Once the Austin 7 was created then the world knew that they could produce a car for the people and it wasn't a piece of shit Tin Lizzie.

 

Came into this thread to say basically this.

 

The Austin 7 was the real game-changer, it took the car from the realms of rich man's toy to something affordable by the people,

 

(I was watching a Jeep documentary that suggested the chassis of the original Willys Jeep prototype had distant Austin 7 ancestry)

[Taff]

The beetle only changed the world because the Brits revived it.

 

The factory was due to be levelled until the REME got to it and suggested dusting off the drawings and building a couple.

 

If we had annexed that bit of Deutschland in 1945 for the empire and kept it, UK plc would be explaining itself to the California Emmisions bods.

[RichardK]

Wasn't the book about the Pontiac Tempest, not the Corvair?

 

The Tempest might have featured, but it wasn't the trigger point - in fact the Tempest was one of the best handling cars produced in America, originally designed with a transaxle and excellent weight distribution.

 

The Corvair featured because the combination of rear engine and swing axles was exacerbated by the lack of an antiroll bar at the rear of the car. Already considered an inherently unsafe layout, attention was paid to the fact that for a relatively small investment per car, GM could make it considerably safer - in fact the swing axles would go at the first refresh, and the ARB kit was available as an option. But Nader's book set a different precedent - that of considering the design of the car with regards to safety a liability issue for which car makers were answerable. Lawsuits for the Corvair causing death and injury through the handling from that back end, combined with the "knowledge" that the ARB could have helped prevent them, changed the focus of automotive journalism and public opinion.

 

And then, then it got worse. Most lawsuits against the Corvair (which compared to number of cars sold were a fraction of a percentage) were settled or thrown out. The settlement established a path of compensation. Britain has had Ogden tables to work out financial compensation from injuries or death since the mid '90s - 1960s/70s America was just feeling the way, and some excessive awards certainly spooked the manufacturers.

 

What did more harm, then, was the Ford response to the Pinto, where the culture of comparing the cost of potential lawsuits to the cost of modifying, enhancing or recalling to correct a design was spelled out. This smoking gun (car?) as it were opened up the concept that it wasn't that the engineers were oblivious, or unaware, but that the design process had assigned a value to the lives of the car owners and deemed it lower than the cost of altering a cheap design.

 

What is really fucking scary, and one reason I utterly loathe General Motors now, is that despite all this history, they went and did it again in the 2000s with the ignition switches. Like, seriously, not only making cars with a design flaw to save 9c per switch that had been discovered by engineers and reported during the development of the car, but working out the chances of the fault causing accidents and comparing the cost of the 9c/car modification to the lawsuit potential.

[chaseracer]

Prior to R66 there was no continuous road link from the east to the west of the country, but once it was there it grew and grew and grew!

 

Errrm...

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Highway

 

[chaseracer]

Eventually the plan backfired on Ford and the grasping,aspiring ,thrusting,exhibitionist masses outgrew them and moved onto German prestige* marques.

40 years ago that A4 S-lime Tdi would have been a 2000 GT Cortina, it's just the social commentators of the day were a bit classier than Top Gear calling all Audi drivers cocks, they had Sir John Betjeman's poem Executive...

 

Indeed.  Brilliant stuff.

 

I am a young executive. No cuffs than mine are cleaner;

I have a Slimline brief-case and I use the firm's Cortina.

In every roadside hostelry from here to Burgess Hill

The maîtres d'hôtel all know me well, and let me sign the bill.

 

You ask me what it is I do. Well, actually, you know,

I'm partly a liaison man, and partly P.R.O.

Essentially, I integrate the current export drive

And basically I'm viable from ten o'clock till five.

 

For vital off-the-record work - that's talking transport-wise -

I've a scarlet Aston-Martin - and does she go? She flies!

Pedestrians and dogs and cats, we mark them down for slaughter.

I also own a speedboat which has never touched the water.

 

She's built of fibre-glass, of course. I call her 'Mandy Jane'

After a bird I used to know - No soda, please, just plain -

And how did I acquire her? Well, to tell you about that

And to put you in the picture, I must wear my other hat.

 

I do some mild developing. The sort of place I need

Is a quiet country market town that's rather run to seed

A luncheon and a drink or two, a little savoir faire -

I fix the Planning Officer, the Town Clerk and the Mayor.

 

And if some Preservationist attempts to interfere

A 'dangerous structure' notice from the Borough Engineer

Will settle any buildings that are standing in our way -

The modern style, sir, with respect, has really come to stay. 

[Squire_Dawson]

Austin was known the world over and was very popular in the USA. The 'A' Series engine was the most common in the world. The Japanese motor industry got where it is today in no small part thanks to Austin, who helped them set up again post-war. "One day we hope to make cars as good as yours, Mr. Austin".

 

The whole Austin Motor Co. under all its auspices brought genuine innovation and sound engineering to the motor industry. It also seems that they acted with honesty and integrity, i.e. made a car to last without built in obsolescence or doing things on the cheap.

[garethj]

I know it was the Corvair that copped it, I thought the book was about the Tempest with its swing axle rear end and the trigger (not our Trigger) was too low tyre pressures which they recommend to keep it understeering.

 

One more thing, an antiroll bar is absolutely the last thing you want on the back of a rear engined car. Having owned half a dozen air-cooled Vws and a couple of Tatras the antiroll bar goes on the front to encourage understeer. On the back you might fit a camber compensator or a Z Bar.

[RichardK]

Good point, front ARB. I can only do so much from memory But that element of the book was about the Corvair, tyre pressures and swing axle; the Tempest didn't have the same rear-engine weight bias. Even so it moved onto live axles before the Corvair's move to full IRS layout.

[anonymous user]

The Land Rover changed the world, anywhere in the world where a vehicle has been, at least one will have been a Land Rover, quite often the first vehicle to have been there. Even time travelling to Alexandria during World War Two before it had been invented.

 

 

[Andrew353w]

The R4

Yes, I'm with the Renault 4 on this. It was just that little bit more practical than the 2CV and was made in far bigger numbers. It could carry more & was water cooled but was still quinisentally "French" in so many ways! I think France as a whole benefitted from the "quatrelle" (But it probably benfitted from the DS21 too.... Well, De Gaulle did!) 

[mercrocker]

The Corvair changed the world.

 

 

Another important point about the Corvair was that it wasn't just the safety thing - it pivoted the consumer revolution.    All through the 1950s America did what it was told to do - buy more cars, support GM and keep the commies out.   Up jumps Mr Nader, right or wrong, and says No.   Not necessarily.

 

It was a game-changer.

[martc]

The rest of the street couldn't see your colour telly...

 

But now that everyone who counts has an Aldi or BMW they've had to take the curtains down to show off their 72" Plasmatron

 

Indeed.  Brilliant stuff.

 

I also own a speedboat which has never touched the water.

 

She's built of fibre-glass, of course. I call her 'Mandy Jane'

After a bird I used to know - No soda, please, just plain -

And how did I acquire her? Well, to tell you about that

And to put you in the picture, I must wear my other hat.

 

 

By getting 101 or more with 6 darts...