Comments by "bighand69" (@bighands69) on "Ep. 20 The Malaise Era Part II: The Darkest Hour of the American Automotive Industry" video.

I think people are confused. The 1970s cars were also very good it really started to decline in the 1990s when designs really start to go super cheap and were all about meeting regulations. A 1978 Buick was still a beautiful car.
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@cruiser6260 1970s Japanese cars were not more reliable than an American car. A 1975 Ford Maverick was far nicer than anything coming out of Japan and do not even try and pretend that was not the case. You can pretend that the 1970s for American cars was not good but the reality tells a different story.
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@soundpainter2590 The vast majority of cars of that era were not lightweight sports cars. A 1963 Buick Riviera was a similar weight to that of a 1973 version. Horsepower in those cars was irrelevant. It is pretty much the same story with a Mustang in terms of weight. The regulations really started to develop in the 1970s but they really did not have an impact until the 1980s and it was the 1990s before all of that came to a head. A 1985 Buick Riviera weighed less than a 1965 version and still looked good but not as good as the 1965 version. The 1985 version was really nowhere near as nice as any of the previous versions
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@soundpainter2590 It was torture trying to read that comment of yours. You are not a bot by any chance?
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@cruiser6260 A Ford Maverick was not considered a large vehicle but that is really irrelevant considering we are talking about the quality of the vehicles at the time. It is like comparing a Porsche 911 to a Corvette and complaining about interior space. Japanese cars were able to undercut the US auto industry over a series of decades when it came to market integration. But that is now all come to an end with the new trade deals and Japan will now have to complete on an equal foot and we will need to see how that plays out.
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The Malaise Era cars were still far nicer looking than anything you would get today. I think it is the 1990s when all those regulations really started to hurt the look of cars and the way they drove.
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It had nothing to do with insurance.
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The industries focus on horsepower and safety really made cars sterile and more dangerous. The sense of speed is not there in modern cars they are very numb and give no feedback.
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All the regulations on emissions and drag efficiency did was take away innovations from the auto industry so that they had to focus on things that politicians and activists wanted. It mean the natural engineering evolution that should have occurred was swapped for bureaucratic evolution. If technology was allowed to develop we may have got some really exotic designs such as 50 cylinder engines or something else. Who really knows because we will never find out.
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