Was 1980 the worst automotive year ever? [View all]
Quick, what’s the worst year in American automotive history?
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No, it's 1980. With the arrival of the second OPEC Oil Embargo the year before, a recession took hold of the country. Sales of US-made cars came in at 6.58 million units, down 20 percent from 1979, as import automakers claimed a 26.1 percent market share, up from 21.2 percent in 1979. Ford lost a record $1.5 billion as domestic sales plunged 33 percent and worldwide sales declined 29 percent. Chrysler, having lost $2 billion in the past year and a half, was in such bad shape that banks wouldn’t lend it money. Instead, Congress did, providing a $1.5 billion loan guaranteed by the federal government. Even General Motors was hit by a $763 million loss, the company’s first since 1921.
But bad numbers alone don’t earn 1980 the title of 'Worst Automotive Year Ever.' Having to engineer cars with new technology for the first time in decades, the Big Three struggled to meet the unprecedented demand for small fuel-efficient cars. And in the face of profits and market share declining, Detroit responded by, frankly, fielding some of the worst cars it has ever produced.
Why did it come to this? In short, the bean counters triumphed—though, of course, the full picture is a touch more complicated than that. To truly grasp the rock bottom that US automakers hit in 1980, you need to rewind a few years earlier and understand the global trends these titans of industry were simply unequipped to handle.
First, though, you can see the proof by looking at the pudding: consider the legendarily woeful cars of 1980 themselves.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/11/was-1980-the-worst-automotive-year-ever/
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