General Motors announces that it will spend a billion simoleons in an aggressive expansion program. A billion spondulics in 1954 would be exactly eleventy-six gazillion smackeroos today. So you know the carmaker’s executives were serious, even though they used silly slang words for money. But behind the confidence borne out of GM’s impressive market share (more than 45% at the time) lay the seeds of its later downfall.
A Time magazine story from January 1954 includes some hints of why GM is today a basket case. For one thing, the company introduced its new models in a New York show called the “Motorama.” While the –rama suffix may have been popular among Eisenhower-era American businesses, most consumers quickly started to feel foolish using the dumb locution. That left an opening for Toyota Motor Corp. to introduce its new models at a show called “The Electric Kool-Aid Cool Car Show and Poetry Slam.” Most worrisome, though, were the cars themselves. The Time article describes a new Cadillac’s “larger tail fins and jutting, jetlike exhaust pipes.” So far, so good—GM was anticipating the popularity of “Baywatch.” But the car also included new air vents designed to prevent the vehicl General Motors announces that it will spend a billion simoleons in an aggressive expansion program.
A billion spondulics in 1954 would be exactly eleventy-six gazillion smackeroos today. So you know the carmaker’s executives were serious, even though they used silly slang words for money. But behind the confidence borne out of GM’s impressive market share (more than 45% at the time) lay the seeds of its later downfall.
A Time magazine story from January 1954 includes some hints of why GM is today a basket case. For one thing, the company introduced its new models in a New York show called the “Motorama.” While the –rama suffix may have been popular among Eisenhower-era American businesses, most consumers quickly started to feel foolish using the dumb locution. That left an opening for Toyota Motor Corp. to introduce its new models at a show called “The Electric Kool-Aid Cool Car Show and Poetry Slam.” Most worrisome, though, were the cars themselves. The Time article describes a new Cadillac’s “larger tail fins and jutting, jetlike exhaust pipes.” So far, so good — GM was anticipating the popularity of “Baywatch.” But the car also included new air vents designed to prevent the vehicle from pulling in exhaust fumes from traffic ahead. There’s the problem right there. The cars sucked. — Jeffrey Kanige
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