Brief Review of Ben Hamper's Rivethead -- Proabably the best book I have ever assigned students

By the end of the twentieth century, the power of the unions was severely diminished. Several reasons exist for the union’s contemporary impotence. The 1979 Oil Shock prompted a consumer shift from gas guzzling autos to smaller, more efficient vehicles. Global competition ended both management and worker’s era of the “American Dream,” and foreign competition encroached on the industry’s profits and worker’s jobs. Global events, combined with advances in robotics and the advent of the “team concept” also eliminated positions. “By 1985, the auto industry had eliminated half its jobs.” In addition, a conservative political atmosphere – evinced by Ronald Reagan’s immediate firing of striking air traffickers – abolished the dwindling clout of the labor bloc. Most importantly, both labor and capital enjoyed the gluttony of postwar American prosperity. The days of conflict had passed, and unions began to tacitly accept the dictates of management. Steven Jeffreys noted, “The UAW was now a junior partner with Chrysler management. It shared the same goal as Iacocca – the economic survival of the company – and was committed to cooperation to attain it.”⁷ Perhaps more poignant was the prescience of a worker interviewed in Michael Moore’s documentary Roger and Me, who stated, “the union is getting weaker, we are losing power. Too many union guys are friends with management.”⁸ He chided the auto industry and stated, “some people know what time it is, some don’t.”⁹ By the 1980s the union had lost its clout, and the impotence continues as it enters the twenty-first century. When the Flint, Michigan, Fisher Body plant, famous for sit-down strike of 1937, was shut down in 1983, the UAW promised to stage a major demonstration. Rather, it was a pathetic gathering – only four workers showed up, and they were relegated by security to the sidewalk. Dodge Main also quietly closed in 1980. As Emma Rothschild suggested a decade before all this happened, the auto industry auto industry was now Paradise Lost.

The Rivethead and the Quality Cat

Certainly paradise was hard to find for those working the line. In 1991, Ben Hamper’s Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line was published, a memoir of his time toiling at the General Motors Flint Truck and Bus factory. Hamper was a factory worker with a remarkable ability to write with humor and sensitivity. His partnership with muckraker Michael Moore earned him a national reputation as a cutting edge blue-collar writer.¹⁰ Hamper was a third-generation “shop rat.” His grandfather had moved from Springfield, Illinois to Detroit in 1925 and worked at Chevrolet. During World War II, his grandmother built machine guns at the AC Spark Plug factory, and then worked in an aircraft factory. His uncle worked for 45 years at the Buick Engine Plant. Hamper’s father, a womanizer and drunk, floated in and out of the factories. An early memory recounts the day that the Hamper family visited the father while he was working on the line. Ben watched his father install car windshields over and over. That night he observed, “Car, windshield. Car, windshield,” and thought, “Do something else!”¹¹

Yet Hamper sees his life as largely predetermined, and for him, that unfortunately meant the same assembly line work that his father had detested. Hamper grew up in a broken home and a sense of inevitability hung over his future. After a drug-ridden high school experience, and an unplanned pregnancy, Hamper painted apartments. When the recession of the 1970s began to lift, his sister-in-law scored him an application to work at General Motors. Claiming his “birthright,” Hamper was ushered to the Cab Shop, known by workers as “the Jungle,” and “began to install splash shields with a noisy air gun in the rear ends of Chevy Blazers and Suburbans.”¹² Within a shift and a half, Hamper had conquered his assignment.

For leftist intellectuals, the degradation of labor is lamentable; for Hamper, the degradation of labor is something to revel in. To Hamper, labor in the automobile industry was enjoyable because it was mindless, and at $12.82 an hour, lucrative. After he mastered his initial job, Bud, a linemate, convinced Hamper to ‘double-up.’ This setup required that one worker do two jobs at the same time, while the other worker rested. Hamper read novels, newspapers, drank at local watering hole, and occasionally wandered through the factory. When Bud left, Hamper convinced Dale, a new worker, to double-up. Hamper’s pen revealed the insanity created by the line as many workers drank and took hard drugs. A worker named Roy took acid and vomited all over the line. A few nights later, Roy incinerated a pet mouse with a brazing torch, of which Hamper wrote, “The money was right, even if we weren’t.”

Even with the layoffs of 1979, Hamper continued to receive money – a comfortable $268 a week. When his grandfather commented that he was getting a free ride, Hamper thought, “indeed I owed a tremendous debt to my grandfathers and uncles and to all those who bravely took part in the historic sit down strikes of 1937 . . . but hold on, we worked damn hard also,” Hamper continued, “some things never did change . . . the factory was still a shithole, comparisons be damned.” Hamper concluded that the generations of shoprats could not relate to each other’s era.

When Hamper came back from his layoff, he was in the cab shop, this time with a scheme to produce tailgates faster than they came off the feeder line. For his efficiency, he earned 45 minutes of free time. This glory quickly ended with another set of layoffs. After a few weeks of debauchery, Hamper was back at GM, this time on the rivet line.¹³ Hamper began working the ‘pin-up’ job. This position riveted a cross bar, a four-wheel drive spring casting, a muffler hanger, and another cross bar to the vehicle’s underbelly. The worker aligned the holes and then drove the rivet in with a gun. Compared to his earlier placement in the cab shop, the rivet line was in constant motion and Hamper was in relative solitude. He used a myriad of strategies to conquer the monotony of the assembly line:

Desperation led me to all the usual dreary tactics used to fight back the clock. Boring excursions like racing to the water fountain and back, chain-smoking, feeding Chee-tos to mice, skeet shooting Milk Duds with rubber bands, punting washers into the rafters high above the train depot, spitting contests . . . [and ] pretend that my job was an Olympic event.¹⁴

After a few weeks, Hamper was laid off and then called back. Both Hamper and General Motors indulged in the gluttony of the postwar automobile industry. Both the machines and the workers were interchangeable. Hamper recalled an incident where a woman was knocked unconscious by a rivet gun, and a fellow line member shut down the line. Hamper wrote, “within thirty seconds, every tie within a 300-yard radius was on the scene,” and they wanted to know who turned the line off. The line was immediately turned back on and Hamper thought, “It was all so typical of General Motors. . . . It was perfectly fine for a foreman to the line and chew on your ass about some minor detail, but it was practically an act of treason for a worker to top the line in order to extricate an unconscious old lady out of harm’s way.”¹⁵ Hamper lamented about the relationship between production and safety. In the 1980s, Japanese competition began to take bites out of American automobile manufacturing hegemony. General Motor’s answer, as exposed by Ben Hamper, was a mascot named Howie Makem. Howie was a life-sized cat who encouraged workers to build quality automobiles. Hamper wrote, “Howie was to become the messianic embodiment of the Company’s new Quality drive. A livin’ breathin’ propaganda vessel assigned to spur on the troops.”¹⁶ The mascot became a company-wide joke. A few weeks later, Hamper was again laid off.¹⁷

Hamper was unemployed for nearly a year until GM landed a contract with the U.S. Army to build trucks, which Hamper referred to as “Ronnie’s death wagons.” Hamper managed to politic his way back to a position on the rivet line. Hamper then met a worker he called the ‘steering gear man,’ who worked a job at the end of the line. The steering gear man worked so hard that sweat poured from his chin. Hamper wondered how “the apportionment of duty in the plant so inconsistent that you would have half of the work force breaking their backs and chugging the work load while the other half were off playing cards.”¹⁸ Hamper observed his surroundings and found free time to write articles.¹⁹ Meanwhile, the steering gear man found the bottle. He began to drink so much that he talked to himself, and other workers on the line had to compensate for his negligence. The macabre episode reached a climax when the steering gear man, Hamper’s words, “turded in his skivvies,” and was sent home. A few days later the steering gear man was back on the line, working next to Hamper. Hamper worked with a crew that invented games like Rivet Hockey and Dumpster Ball to pass time. The cadre included a Black man named Eddie who could match Hamper drink-for-drink. Also in the crew was Janice, a woman who conquered the rivet gun. Finally, there was Jerry, who Ben nicknamed “the Polish Sex God” for his ability to court women. Alcohol played a central role in the lives of the workers. Hamper and his coworkers would drink before work, during breaks, at lunch, and after work. Hamper’s account exposed the naïveté of General Motors. Management had placed a massive electronic message board directly across from Hamper and used it to transmit messages like QUALITY IS THE BACKBONE OF GOOD WORKMANSHIP, A WINNER NEVER QUITS & A QUITTER NEVER WINS, SAFETY IS SAFE, and SQUEEZING RIVETS IS FUN!²⁰ To the last of which Hamper replied:

I had several definitions of fun. Riveting was nowhere on the list. Taking in a Tiger’s game from the right field overhand was fun. Listening to Angry Samoans records while getting’ sloshed was fun. The episode of Bewitched where Endora hexed Dick York with elephant ears was fun. Dozing past noon with the phone off the hook was fun. Having sex in a Subaru was difficult – however, that was fun too. Squeezing rivets was not fun.²¹

Ben Hamper did not consider squeezing rivets fun, but he did consider it his specialty. When General Motors eliminated 30,000 jobs from factories in Flint, Hamper’s job at the Truck and Bus Plant was moved to a new facility in Pontiac, Michigan. Hamper had two years to make the move, during which time he continued work on the assembly line. Then on July 12, 1986, Hamper thought he was having a stroke, but in actuality it was an intense episode of panic attack syndrome.²² He ended up at a mental hospital.²³ He attempted to work at the new plant in Pontiac, but the attacks returned. The plant at Pontiac went beyond what Hamper had experienced in Flint. Hamper wrote, “Everything in this plant reeked of science gone too far.”²⁴ After his second day at Pontiac East, Hamper had another panic attack on the way home. Finally, after one more try, the hospital nurse sent him home. He never returned to General Motors. Hamper described the work:

The jobs were timed out to make sure workers wouldn’t be allowed a moment’s intermission. Anyone caught reading a newspaper or a paperback would be penalized. The union was nothing more than a powerless puppet show groveling in the muck.²⁵

The only song I know of about a Japanese car -- making love in a Subaru, 1977

Making Love in a Subaru

That's what I wanna do with you

We can always feel around the steering wheel

There seems to be so much that we can do

An alibi that I will not allow

is when you tell me that you don't know how

'Cause it's just like being in bedall your clothing you must shed

You can stick 'em in the glove box for now

Don't try to tell me it's a sin

Just lie back, I'll put a hickey on your chin

When you act this indiscreet, creating so much body heat

the tachometer will nearly start to spin

And now let us lie between the sheets

and thank heaven for reclining bucket seats

Don't touch that, for goodness sake

you'll release the parking brake

We'll both start to roll down the street (yipes)

Now I'm gonna try to lock your door

Wait a minute, now I'm feeling soreI

t's not that I'm not able, something's sticking in my navel

My gosh, it's the four-on-the-floor (ouch)P

igeons overhead flying high

Circling above us in the sky

Now I'm feeling ill-at-ease, my darling would you please

close the sunroof; something just fell in my eye (yuck)

You say that something's pinching at your feet

Hey look what you just found, hey ain't that neat

It's my roach-clip and my bong

They've been missing for so long

All this time they must have been beneath the seat

Now you're suffocating and I'm water-logged

All the windows are beginning to get fogged

So my dear with your consent

I'll open up the flow-thru vent

I only hope it also isn't clogged

There are other things that we can do

but only if you're tired of getting scratched

Honk the horn real good

and you'll wake the neighborhood

and they'll have a marvelous view

Making Love in a Subaru, my friend

Making Love in a Subaru

James Bond, Steve McQueen, Automobiles, and the Action Thriller

James Bond, Steve McQueen, and the Action Thriller
While Japanese cars were successful in penetrating the American market, they were far less successful in becoming a part of contemporary American culture. In film, high horsepower and elegant body lines, not unlike the actresses in the cast, were featured. The 1960s introduced a completely new film genre, the action thriller.48 These were mostly big-budget films that starred some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Steve McQueen, James Garner, and Sean Connery. These films employed a fast-paced sequence of action scenes, impossible stunts, and fiery explosions. It was also during this period that the automobile moved to center stage as a major part of film and the film industry. Cars, often unusual and expensive, became a requirement for any action film, as it was necessary for a “real” action film to contain at least one major chase scene that culminated in a major crash or explosion. The true pioneers of this sort of film were Harry Saltzman and Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, the creators of the James Bond film series.
The James Bond films set the stage for all the films of the action genre that would follow. Bond is perhaps the most enduring character in the history of the screen, with a resumé spanning forty years and nineteen films. No less than five actors have assumed the role of the secret agent. James Bond films are famous for their exotic locations, beautiful and often-willing women, and stunning scenes. Over the forty-year film career of Bond, his films have contained some of the most memorable car chases and stunts that have ever been brought to the screen, as well as some unforgettable “modified” cars that have almost become icons of car culture. The impact of the James Bond series on the industry is unquestionable.
Perhaps the most memorable of all Bond films was the third installment in the series, Goldfinger. In the film, Bond (Sean Connery) is equipped with an Aston-Martin DB5 with modifications that included revolving license plates, a bulletproof front and rear windscreen, a homing device on the dashboard, left and right front fender machine guns, two battering rams, and a device under that tail lights that sprayed oil, nails and a smokescreen. A passenger ejector seat was the most unforgettable of the DB5’s accessories, and a feature that actually worked. As the plot unfolds, Bond trails Goldfinger to Switzerland, where he uses nearly all of these gadgets while trying to escape Goldfinger's henchmen. The silver Aston-Martin again made a brief appearance in the next Bond film, Thunderball, and Pierce Brosnan can be seen driving it briefly thirty years later in GoldenEye. This car is certainly the most memorable of any Bond car, and perhaps the most memorable car in any film.
Though among Bond fans Goldfinger is most revered, many of the other films in the series provided memorable chase scenes, stunts, and unforgettable cars. Featured cars included a Lotus Esprit that turned into a submarine after Bond (Roger Moore) dives into the sea to avoid an attacking helicopter in The Spy Who Loved Me, and a BMW 750iL that Bond (Pierce Brosnan) drives via a remote control (Tomorrow Never Dies). These cars were occasionally overshadowed by death-defying automobile stunts. One such stunt was performed by Bumps Willard in The Man with the Golden Gun, and has since become one of the most celebrated scenes in film history. While Bond (Moore) is chasing Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), the film's antagonist, from the opposite side of a river, he spots a fallen bridge with only the two ends remaining intact. Bond then does the unthinkable by jumping the river across the fallen bridge, while doing a 360-degree spiral jump in midair. Willard had previously performed this spectacular jump at a stunt show in the Houston Astrodome. It is the classic cars and stunts such as these that have made the James Bond series endure over the years.
Though Bond films are considered to be the true pioneers of the action film and chase scene, the film that truly set the stage for all future Hollywood chase sequences was the much celebrated scene from the film Bullitt. This chase featured all of the essential components that would become a necessity for all future chases: high speeds, fast turns, and of course, plenty of destruction. The cars involved in this classic were McQueen's 1967 Ford Mustang GT390 fastback (the Mustang was among the most popular of cars to be featured in films of this era, and this has probably contributed to the “icon” status that these original Mustangs carry) and a 1968 Dodge Charger 440. McQueen, playing the character of a San Francisco detective in a plot that is far from clear at times, senses that the Charger, carrying two bad guys, is following him. He quickly turns left while the Charger is caught in traffic, doubles back, and he closes in on the Charger from behind. Realizing this, the driver of the Charger tries to outrun Bullitt. What followed were two cars flying through the streets of San Francisco at speeds upwards of 110 mph, leaving hubcaps, wrecked cars, and an injured motorcyclist in their wake (the stuntman who drove the motorcycle in the scene was actually the same person who performed most of the driving of the Charger). The Mustang eventually caught the Charger, shotgun blasts follow, and finally McQueen rams the Charger off of the road, where it explodes spectacularly. McQueen, who had earlier received accolades for his motorcycle driving in The Great Escape, did his own driving in the chase, set the standard for all similar scenes that followed.
The cinematography in Bullitt was unique, since it was the first film to use a new Arriflex camera design exclusively during production.49 Specific camera placement resulted in unprecedented realism. A Chevrolet camera car, named the “Bullittmobile,” took close-up shots of the actors and stunt men at high speeds. Additionally, a camera mounted on the Mustang resulted in the perception of high speeds without having to break away to a speedometer shot. Cameras were also placed on the sides of the cars, as well on the street.
McQueen’s love affair with automobiles went back to his childhood.50 At age 13, along with a friend, he built a dragster using a Ford flathead V-8 and a Model A frame. Once he became established as a leading actor, his interest in automobiles turned to sports car racing, and between 1959 and 1970 he participated in at least twenty races in all classes and on all types of tracks, including Sebring. Invited by Sports Illustrated in 1966 to test eight exotic sports cars, McQueen said of himself that “I’m not sure whether I’m an actor who races or a racer who acts.”51 His car collection included a 1961 Austin Mini Cooper S, a 1963 Ferrari Lusso Berlina and a 512, a Jaguar D-Type XKSS, and three Porsches – a 356 Speedster, a 917, and a 908.
McQueen followed Bullitt with the Lemans in 1971, a remarkable film in its own right, but only popular with a small group of racing and Porsche devotees who appreciated the attention to detail that was taken in the film. Cast as Michael Delaney, an American driver who was severely injured in an accident at Lemans the year before, McQueen is drawn to Lisa Belgetti (played by Elga Andersen), widow of a Ferrari driver, who was killed in the same accident. Delaney’s chief racing rival is Erich Stahler (Siegfried Rauch), who is driving a Ferrari. With spectacular cinematography and a sensitive portrayal of the French countryside and fans, Lemans was undoubtedly the best film depiction of European racing of that era. For McQueen, it proved to be an obsession that never paid off, a docudrama that failed to resonate with American audiences since it had no dialogue during the first forty minutes of the film. In addition, character development was poor and the dialogue deadening. But for McQueen, it was the ultimate racing film that he always wanted to make.
John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix (1966) was another European racing spectacular of this period, but was far more slow-moving than Lemans. What Frankenheimer contributed to the genre, however, was technical; his use of NASA-developed cameras and microwave systems, monster camera cars that were capable of 150 mph, and helicopters, were imitated in other films, and set a benchmark in terms of realism.52

Oil Shock I and the American Automobile Industry

Oil Shock I
In October 1973, OPEC (Oil Producing and Exporting Countries) placed an embargo on oil shipped to the U.S. as a result of American support to Israel during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War.40 Gasoline, already in short supply since the United States had reached its peak of oil production in 1970, suddenly became very scarce and more costly. Lines formed at virtually every gas station that had gas. At a number of stations, color-coded signs or flags indicated availability. Eventually, even-odd license plate rationing took place, as did a federally-mandated reduction in the interstate highway speed limit to 55 miles per hour. Gas station customers, once accustomed to service that included the washing of windshields and oil checks, now waited three hours or more. The situation led to shortened tempers and fist fights, even in laid-back southern California.
OPEC thus used oil as a weapon, and it was a weapon used well. The embargo not only brought the United States to its knees in terms of unemployment and inflation, but also increased the profits of OPEC members nearly seven-fold between 1972 and 1977. Gas prices, responding to a nervous spot market, climbed 70 percent. Along with the embargo and further price increases, OPEC announced a cut in oil production. Leonardo Maugeri recounted that, “Total Arab oil production in September 1973 had reached 19.4 million barrels per day; in November, 15.4 million.”41
Conspiracy theories abounded as the price of gas ran up. Were the Arabs or the oil companies at the heart of the problem? As studies subsequently demonstrated, it was neither. Rather, the decrease in supply wasn’t the chief cause of Oil Shock I and its impact. Looking back to that time of fear and confusion, Maugeri claimed that “considering as well additional output from other parts of the world, there was never a shortfall in supply. It was not loss of supply, but fear of possible loss that drove up the price.”42
Federal government action in response to the oil embargo of 1973 and 1974 was largely ineffectual, and indeed even made things worse. In response to the inflation that followed, the Federal Reserve Board attempted to contract the economy by raising interest rates, and in so doing only deepened the recession. President Nixon, already facing a crisis in confidence over Watergate, called for a $410 billion “Project Independence,” based on American efforts to develop synthetic rubber during WWII. Nixon’s proposal sought to make America energy independent by 1985, a worthy goal that none of the energy experts in Washington thought possible. Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, emphasized supply rather than a curtailment of demand on the part of Americans, and thus encouraged the development of nuclear power plants, an initiative that that hit a brick wall after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Politicians were adverse to placing blame for the energy crisis on those who were most responsible, namely the American consumer, who used a disproportionate percentage of the world’s petroleum supplies and owned more automobiles per family compared to other developed nations.
What Oil Shock I meant to the auto industry, however, is our focus. Its consequences were far-reaching, for Detroit responded by making what were undoubtedly the worst cars in its history, while at the same time Japanese manufacturers made high quality and very reasonably priced products that consumers grew to love.
Prior to the first oil crisis and following a whimsical cycle of trying to meet consumer needs, Ford introduced a new “world” economy car, the Pinto, and GM the Vega. The Pinto was particularly interesting in terms of manufacturing processes, as it was perhaps the first modern “world car,” the result of a global assembly line that included engines and transmissions from Great Britain and Germany. It had only 1,600 major parts, as compared to anywhere between 3,500 and 9,000 in a full-sized car. These cars could be fixed by a novice mechanic with a handful of tools, making it a do-it -yourself car. Light and fuel efficient, the Pinto, however, was subsequently deemed dangerous as its gas tanks were prone to rupture, its occupants trapped by doors that had jammed shut upon rear impact.43
The Vega was also a light, four-cylinder economy design. From the beginning, however, it was built at a new state-of-the-art GM facility in Lordstown, Ohio, where worker dissatisfaction soon boiled over, leading to deliberate worker sabotage of cars coming off the line – one one such example being Coke bottles being placed in doors prior to final assembly. Also, Vega engines were based on a new aluminum block design and quickly proved to wear and burn oil far before they should have.
The American automobiles made between 1974 and 1979 were generally of poor design and poor quality. For example, my father’s 1979 Chevrolet Malibu mated a V-8 engine to a small metric THM-200 automatic transmission, an arrangement that led to repeated transmission failures. One of my coworkers during this period, an African-American proud of his ability to purchase a new Oldsmobile, soon discovered that it had a Chevrolet engine. Emissions controls that included smog pumps, decel and exhaust recirculation valves, and a maze of vacuum lines under the hood, resulted in day to day driveability problems that included dieseling and hard starting.
It was no surprise, then, that within this void a new global competitor emerged: Japan.

The Automobile and American Life: Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Ray and Pat Brown Award, St. Louis, April 2

OK, far from the greatest photo! Last Friday I received the Ray and Pat Brown Award for the best book reference/primary source. What I heard in St. Louis was most encouraging in terms of doing future work in the field of automobile history. The chair of the awards committee came up to me after the ceremony concluded and told me how the committee had uniformly ranked my book as #1, and that they were blown away by the material and the flawless writing (take that, freshman English teacher!). I later signed a number of books, and must say Good Friday was a very good day for me personally.
What I take away from all of this is the following. First, never give up. Even though life can be very discouraging, and in a field like history, the setbacks take place all the time, you must believe in your self and keep going forward, despite the rejections, adversities, disappointments, and people who are constantly trying to spoil your party. Secondly, you must find your passion and follow it despite the critics and those around you, including family, who do not see the gift and the purpose inside of you. But then you must take that passion and share it with the world, in a way that others enjoy and can learn from it as much as you have. It took me to age 50 to find my passion, so if you don't recognize it right away, keep plowing the field until it comes and looks you right in the face.
More on auto history will surely be found on these pages!

Some of the Powerpoint images used in my SAH presentation on the automobile and recession of 1957-8, March 27, 2010

The Edsel Graveyard -- a pointed REminder of 1958 and the American Auto Industry's Failures
Kit Foster and the Foster family at the beach, 1958. Beginning in 1958, The Foster family never again bought an American car.
Unemployment reached 20% in Detroit during the spring of 1958

A spring sales blitz at a De Soto dealer
American society was called into question after the October, 1957 launch of Sputnik I
Foreign car sales were up dramatically in the spring of 1958 -- and there was a fear tin Detroit that the American clove affair with the car was giving way to other attractions
Two popular sellers for 1957 -- the Studebaker Lark and Rambler American

Final Version of my SAH Paper, The American Automobile Industry and the 'Eisenhower Recession' of 1958"

The American Automobile Industry and the “Eisenhower Recession” of 1957-8, SAH Biennial Automotive History Conference, Tupelo, MS, March 24-27, 2010

John A. Heitmann

Department of History

University of Dayton

300 College Park

Dayton, OH 45469-1540

Copyright 2010. Do not quote or cite without permission of author.

Crises, economic or otherwise, rarely have simple origins, recoveries, and only short-term consequences. The 1957-1958 Recession was global phenomenon, but it hit manufacturing communities in the American northeast and Midwest particularly hard, albeit for a relatively short time. It was the third post –WWII downturn, but also the most severe, and one that resulted in many anxious moments among individuals who still had fresh memories of the Great Depression. Largely originating from a rapid retrenchment of the consumer in response to higher levels of household indebtedness, a dramatic drop followed in the real estate markets – and soon it affected other sectors. Subsequently, auto sales declined 31% and unemployment in Detroit reached 20%. Yet, unlike the current recession, no government stimulus was forthcoming. Eisenhower and his advisors chose to rely on “built-in” economic stabilizers, including interest rate adjustments, and unemployment insurance. And in retrospect, that strategy proved to be effective. By late 1959, unemployment settled in at 5.5 percent, and Detroit automobile manufacturers were poised for a second post-WWII wave of prosperity.[1]

In sum, economic conditions dramatically improved without a stimulus package. The question of causes, government intervention, and recovery aside, however, how did this episode, largely neglected by historians, reshape the American automobile industry in the years that followed? In part it is the purpose of this paper to address the long–term consequences of a severe, but short downturn that automobile historians usually associate with the failure of the Edsel, the rise of the European imports, and the introduction of the first generation of American compacts.

Consequently, I shall put under a microscope short and long term responses of the American automobile industry to the challenges of consumer dissatisfaction, excess capacity, contracted credit, and high unemployment. Drawing primarily on evidence gathered from printed source materials, including popular literature, trade magazines, and government publications, the story traces significant long-term shifts in management strategies (the rise of finance, at the expense of production engineering); new production techniques (widespread use of transfer machines); and finally materials used in the making of cars (aluminum and plastics). In the short term, and only for a few seasons, product lines were also altered. But with few exceptions, the full-sized V-8 engine powered car, albeit composed of a different raw material mix and slightly more austere, remained at the center of America’s automobile love affair until Oil Shock I (1973).

Despite being a child at the time, my own memories of this event remain vivid, and I would be interested in your memories as well. I remember the concerns of my father, given the fact that the layoffs had hit our community hard. Indeed, my friend next door, Bobby, had a father working at Du Pont at the time who was laid off; he occupied his newly found free time by sanding down his red 1954 Chevy in the driveway, preparing it for a repaint. It was that mental image that caused me to include this event in my book, The Automobile and American Life, although little was said of substance in my two paragraphs on the topic.[2] Yet it was more than other survey histories have given to the topic.

Ironically, perhaps, given its slant towards business and economic history, James Flink’s, The Automobile Age even says less about the 1958 recession. Flink gave it only a passing mention, explaining it away in terms of the “dinosaur in the driveway,” and changing consumer preferences. John Keats’ Insolent Chariots is at the heart of Flink’s narrative.[3] It seems that the successes of the Rambler, Studebaker Lark, and the new Big Three import fighters (Corvair, Valiant, and Falcon), at the expense of the Edsel, were a foregone conclusion.[4] Similarly, John B. Rae relegates the episode to a mere seven words.[5] And in both cases, the long term effects of this episode were never considered.

Lawrence White, the author of the most detailed economic study of the post-war American automobile industry, also failed to contextualize the recession in a longer continuum. He asserted that

By the time the car reached the market in the fall of 1957, however, consumer preferences had changed, smaller cars were in demand, and the Edsel was a flop.

Small imported cars were suddenly reaching American shores in tidal wave proportions…. The increased physical size and price of U.S. domestic makes left a wide gap on both accounts at the bottom of the scale. A recession psychology on the part of consumers looking for smaller, cheaper packages and an increased willingness and ability by Europe to export its production contributed to the tide.[6]

So what do the sources say that take us beyond these superficial accounts? The recession first attracted the attention of journalists during the fall of 1957. In September, the editor of The New Republic wrote of a creeping recession, one that began in the spring of that year with an economy that was moving sideways. It was noticed that prices were rising, overall economic activities in decline, the cost of living going up, and people were waiting for new car models that had lower prices. It was conjectured that the administration in Washington was desirous of higher unemployment rates, so that “labor would be put in its place.”[7] David Lawrence, writing in U.S. News & World Report, dismissed tight money as the cause of the downturn, instead pinned the primary cause on organized labor, acquiescing management, and yearly wage escalator clauses. Lawrence closed by remarking that “When will the monopoly of organized labor be tackled by Congress? As has been said many times, there is enough in America for everybody’s need – but not enough for everybody’s greed.”[8] Yet in fairness to labor there were other reasons why the economy was becoming sick. Corporate giants also had a hand in this situation, as oil and steel were continuing to raise prices despite that fact that demand for these commodities was falling.

As 1957 closed, the economy was more a source of worry than in crisis. Detroit still projected sales of 6.2 million units in 1958, the same as the year before. More cars were scheduled for production for the first week of December, 1957 than any month since December, 1956. The first ten days of sales in November were 10 percent better than for the same time the previous year. True, the new Edsel was an initial disappointment, but General Motors President Harlow Curtice stated that “the initial response to the 1958 line is the best we’ve ever experienced.”[9]

However, by the end of 1957 this optimism was beginning to be tempered. Chrysler President Tex Colbert ominously remarked that “the consumer has lost the desire to buy.” And an Atlanta Plymouth dealer cautioned that “There is simply no business. We aren’t even able to attract window shoppers.” The loss of consumer appetite appeared uneven, however, for despite a huge dealer backlog of unsold 1957 models pushed on to dealer’s lots, at the same time a White Plains, New York, Oldsmobile-Cadillac dealer reported “Sales are very excellent this year – at least 15% to 20% better than a year ago.”[10]

Despite the mixed reports, by February of 1958 it was clear that this was no mere, mild inventory adjustment with regional variations. Between August of 1957 and February of 1958 the Federal Reserve Index of Industrial Production declined some 10 percent from 145 to 130, and unemployment increased by 2 million. A comparable week in the spring of 1957 resulted in a production volume of 161,865; a year later the numbers were 101,266.[11] In fact, the span between the fall of 1957 and the spring of 1958 marked the worst six month decline in economic activity since 1947. At 3.7%, it surpassed the declines experienced between the third quarter 2008-1^st quarter, 2009 (3.2%) and 3^rd quarter, 1981-1^st quarter 1982 (2.9%).[12] This was no ordinary downturn, and since it happened at a time immediately after the launch of Sputnik, Jeremiads proclaimed that everything was wrong with America—its economy, its educational system, its society. The automobile industry was now the subject of considerable criticisms from journalists, pundits, and politicians, including President Eisenhower and the curmudgeonly Senator Estes Kefaufer.

And among its chief critics was industry insider George Romney, President of American Motors. Testifying before the Senate Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee investigating auto prices, Romney argued that

The trouble with the auto industry is too much concentration of power by Big Business and Big Labor, [and] too little competition. To increase competition, said Romney, both General Motors and Ford should be forced to split up into smaller companies….”[13]

Romney also argued that “union monopolies” should also be broken up and that unions should be organized around single employers. He went on to state that “A big company becomes muscle-bound and resistant to change.” Burdened with heavy fixed investment and long lead times to retool, carmakers were unable to shift production to meet changing consumer preferences. Indeed, by the middle of March, 1958, dealer stocks stood at 900,000 unsold cars. Consequently, Buick executive Edward T. Ragsdale embarked on a nationwide tour of 26 cities on “a crusade for confidence in the nation’s economy.” The burden was now placed on dealers’ sales staffs to work aggressively, as it was concluded that “the trouble is that auto salesman have had it easy for so long that a lot have forgotten how to work.”[14]

Despite the mounting bad news, the federal government was ever so slow to react. In April of 1958, Arthur F. Burns, president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, spoke of tax cuts, highway construction, and in particular procurement contracts that would be offered to the Big Three. In the meantime, he cautioned that “It is the duty of private citizens, no less than government officials, to try to do this. It is also our duty to avoid speculations or exaggerations which can bring comfort and advantage only to Communist rulers and their henchmen.”[15]

Indeed, consumers, some undoubtedly reacting to the excessive tailfins and chrome, had demonstrated their dissatisfaction by purchasing imports in an unprecedented fashion. By mid-summer, a Life magazine article exhorted for “Volkswagen, go Home!” [16] By mid-year, five month 1958 import totals were:

VW – 33,866

Renault – 14, 231

English Ford – 10,866

Hilman – 6,335

Fiat – 5,987

MG – 5,834

Simca – 5,127

Triumph – 5,402

Vauxall – 4,838

Opel – 4,710

It was said at the time that the small car buyer was seldom poor. Their reasons for buying imports included “snob appeal and evidence of perceptive taste.” But whatever were the reasons, Detroit insiders recognized that cars would have to be more fully tailored to individual tastes; there now existed a not-so-secret fear that America’s love affair with the automobile was being supplanted by other attractions.

Complicating matters for market researchers, however, was that the American consumer response -- or lack of response -- was far from simple. Surprisingly, 1958’s best seller among higher-priced cars was what the trade called “ the jewelry-box special” – an Oldsmobile, with more chrome (44 lbs.) than any other car in history! In fact, Oldsmobile pushed Plymouth for third place. Among the low priced three, the fancy Chevrolet Impala and Ford Fairlane 500 outsold less chromy models by three to one. On Ford’s custom line, there was a decorative gold-anodized –aluminum strip (along with armrest and cigarette lighter) that cost $20 extra; 76% of Ford’s customers demanded it on their cars. Ford stylist George Walker remarked: “I fought so hard against chrome I nearly lost my job. But I was wrong, and the others were right. People can buy austerity any time they want to. They don’t want to”[17]

The turmoil and fears of 1958 were countered by a renewed optimism from Detroit as the 1959 model year approached. Defense Department contracts to the auto manufacturers were quietly made during the summer of 1958 and that kept things going. New economy cars were in the pipeline, and that proved to counter the import wave coming from Europe. Prices tended to drop. Yet, most of the cars made in American factories in 1959 were still the massive, large finned boats that the critics had assailed during the previous year. With a 17 month retooling time, Detroit had to go with what was in the pipeline. Chrysler’s models were finnier than ever, and the 1959 Cadillac remains the iconic style reflecting the era of tailfins and chrome. Market researchers claimed that the Big Three was making what 93% of American wanted, and GM’s Red Curtice, slow to prophesize, predicted in May 1958 that “it is my belief that we will see an upswing in automobile sales with the introduction of the 1959 models in the fourth quarter

And by early November, 1958, U.S. car production reached 69,599 units v. 45,387 the week before, and prospects were for a production of 75,000 by mid month.[18] Cars were selling. Buick announced that it has received more than 100,000 new orders from dealers, almost two-thirds of which have already been sold. Ford announced that its dealers sold almost 27,000 new Fords on introduction day alone, and Pontiac reported sales and confirmed order of more than 20,500 during the car’s first three days on the market. Buyers came back. And indeed Red Curtice was proven right, although as a result of this experience the American auto industry would never be the same.

The long-term consequences of this downturn were both complex and manifold. First, it was the success of the imports in 1958 that led management at Toyota to begin to bring cars to the U.S. Secondly, in an effort to drop manufacturing costs while dealing with the demands of organized labor, substantial increases in the amounts of aluminum and plastics were incorporated in the America automobile. For example, in 1958, the average car contained 50 lbs. Of aluminum; a year later the amount rose to 57 lbs. And in a major effort to reduce costs, Aluminum suppliers like Reynolds and Alcoa were constructing smelting facilities right next to engine foundries, as in the case of GM in Massena, New York, and Ford in Sheffield, Alabama.[19] Plastic knobs, grills, and interior components were gradually introduced. Additionally, the term automation, first coined in 1948, became the new catchword in automobile manufacturing as transfer machines increasingly became commonplace in engine and other larger parts facilities. Automation in the newer plants ($100 billion invested between 1955-57) meant less material handling, less direct machine operations, more attention to lights and gauges, yet no real increase in job skills.[20] And, with this increase in productivity, GM would proclaim that in 1959 it would make 25% more cars with only a 5% increase in workforce. Thus, a number of the jobs lost during the 1958 recession were gone forever.[21]

Finally, the recession of 1958 led to important shifts in to management, as operations and product men gave way to accountants and finance specialists. At Ford, former Packard executive James Nance had been brought in to head the Edsel campaign, only to see it falter miserably. Nance, who had jumped over a number of the Whiz Kids, had incurred the wrath of Robert McNamara, who saw the former as a real threat to his career.[22] Consequently, McNamara and his group threatened Henry Ford II with a mass defection to Chrysler if Nance were not let go, and by late August Nance was no longer a Ford employee. Concurrently, Ernie Breech was kicked upstairs as the “honorary Chairman” at Ford. Quantitative analysis ruled.

At GM, a different drama, but similar transition took place. With Red Curtice retiring and Alfred Sloan slipping ever more into the background, Frederick Donner now emerged as chairman of the board and chief executive officer. As noted in a 1958 Fortune article, Donner “ has never built an automobile, but he is the company-wide expert on cost controls and product pricing…[and] one can begin to perhaps discern the makings of a momentous change in the whole character of the corporation…[is] bound to come in their time.”[23] With the rise of Donner, the primary source of power at GM was now in the hands of its financial managers, not its product and engineering managers as in the past. Despite the warnings of the old-line Fishers, the hard driving “Detroit Crowd” was now supplanted by the sophistication and finesse that had rubbed off from the executives at du Pont.

In sum, what can be said about the 1958 recession from the perspective of automobile history? Certainly, the story is far more than one simply centered on the failure of the Edsel and the end of Packard. Indeed, it marked the beginning of a new era in the history of the American automobile industry and the Big Three, one that still had considerable momentum derived from past glories, but also contained the seed for future difficulties. The ascendancy of the Big Three in the domestic marketplace was now challenged, and the following two decades would be a tale of response to changing consumer attitudes in an environment of increasing government scrutiny and regulation. 1958, then, is an episode that demands further investigation, particularly from the vantage point of primary sources.

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[1] On this era, see Harold G. Vatter, The U.S. Economy in the 1950s: an Economic History (Westport, CT, 1985); Michael D. Bordo and John Landon-Lane, Exits from Recessions (Cambridge, MA, 2010); Christina D. Romer, Changes in Business Cycles (Cambridge, MA, 1999); Gary Donaldson, ed., Modern America: a Documentary History of the Nation Since 1945 (Armonk, NY, 2007); Judith Stein, Running Steel, Running America: Race, Economic Policy, and the Decline of Liberalism (Chapel Hill, 1998).

[2] John Heitmann, The Automobile and American Life (Jefferson, N.C., 2009), pp. 153-4.

[3] John Keats, Insolent Chariots ().

[4] James Flink, The Automobile Age (Cambridge, MA, 1988), p.281-88.

[5] John B. Rae, The American Automobile Industry (Boston: Twayne, 1984), p.110.

[6]Lawrence J. White, The Automobile Industry since 1945 (Cambridge, MA, 1971), pp. 15-6.

[7] “Creeping Recession,” The New Republic, 137 (September 2, 1957), 2.

[8] David Lawrence, “The Unnecessary ‘Recession,’” U.S. News and World Report, 42 (November 29, 1957), 116.

[9] “The 1957 Recession: Facts & Figures for the Debate,” Time, December 2, 1957,

[10] “Autos: Lower Targets,” Time, December 23, 1957,

[11] T.N. Vance, “The Eisenhower Recession,” New International (Winter, 1958), 3.

[12] David Leonhardt, “Shrinking Like It’s 1958,” New York Times Economix, April 29, 2009, http:economic.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/shrinking-like-its-1958/?pagemodeprint, accessed 1/29/2010.

[13] “Autos: Break ‘Em Up,” Time, 71(February 17, 1958), 88.

[14] “Slowdown in Detroit,” Time, 71 (March 10, 1958), 82..

[15] Arthur F. Burns, “The Current Business Recession,” The Journal of Business, 31 (April, 1958), 145.

[16] Herbert Brean, “Volkswagen, Go Home!” Life, 45 (July 28, 1958), 82-4.

[17] “Autos: On the Slow Road” Time, 71 (May 12, 1958), 84-89.

[18] “Autos: More and Cheaper Cars,” Time, 72(November 3, 1958), 88.

[19] “Selling Aluminum by the Bucket, Business Week, November 29, 1958, 125-6. On the use of plastics, see Andrew W. Shearer, “Plastics…Drive Ahead in Automotive Field,” part 1, Automotive Industries, 119 (July 1, 1958), 58-63, 77 and part 2, 119 (August 1, 1958), 42—7, 76.

[20] William A. Faunce, Automation and the Automobile Worker,” Social Problems, 6 (Summer, 1958), 68-78.

[21] “The Jobs are Gone Forever,” Business Week, December 29, 1958, 39-40.

[22] James Ward, The Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), p. 250; Thomas Bonsall, Disaster in Dearborn: The Story of the Edsel (Stanford, CA: Standford University Press, 2002), p.154.

[23] Thomas Powers, unpublished paper, “General Motors’ 1958 Reorganization: Transition Away from the Market, “p.20. See also, “GM Lines Up its New Top Men,” Business Week, August 30, 1958, 18; “GM Board Heads for Big Shifts,” Business Week, April 18, 1959; J. Patrick Wright, On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors (Grosse Point, MI: Wright Enterprises, 1978), pp. 184-192.