Why was the quality of American-made cars so bad in the 70's and 80's?

[Rage for Order]

When I was growing up my parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents all had American-made cars, as did almost all of my friends' families. The brands ran the spectrum, too: Dodge, Ford, Cadillac, Chevy, Chrysler, Plymouth, so I'm not talking about only one manufacturer. We had a 1974 Dodge Coronet station wagon (the lead sled) that would stall every time we stopped when it was cold outside. My mom would pop the hood and my brother would have to use a screwdriver to hold the flaps of the carburetor open to get the car started again. Talk about embarrassing!

We also had a Plymouth station wagon, a K-car (remember those?), in the mid-80's. It was one of the worst pieces of crap I've ever driven. We had a 1976(?) Ford Mustang; the engine blew when it was 10 or 11 years old. Then there was the 1974 Ford Maverick, the 1981 Dodge Diplomat, the 1986 Caprice Classic...at any rate, the one thing all of these cars had in common was they were crap, whether they were old or new (well, near-new; we never had a brand new car).

That brings me back to my original question: why were American-made cars so bad? Was it the fault of incompetent engineers? Did the auto workers get fat, happy and complacent? Why was there seemingly so little attention paid to the quality of the product?

:shrug: