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In consumer news, the American automotive industry, continuing its tradition of meeting basic consumer needs, came up with two major technological advances in 1959: 1. The Edsel. 2. Even bigger tailfins. Despite these accomplishments, increasing numbers of ungrateful Americans were purchasing the cheap and reliable Volkswagen Beetle, even though it had hardly any chrome and no fins whatsoever. At first the U.S. auto industry laughed at the VW, but finally realized that, faced with this new low-end competition, it had to start making smaller, cheaper cars. But these would not just be any small cars; no, by God, these were going to be really crappy small cars, the theory being that consumers would be unhappy with them, and thus resume buying traditional American models that were designed more along the lines of freight locomotives. (en) |
