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See more Product Details Publisher: Knightsbridge Pub Co Mass; 25th Anniversary edition (March 1991) Language: English Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces By Milton Bertin Jones on June 27, 2008 As a Traffic Safety Specialist, this book is a MUST, this old book needs to be mandatory reading for any person interested in Road Safety, Ralph documented the resistance of car companies to the introduction of safety features, like safety belts, that looks timely today, for example with the lobby that produce a delay in the mandatory fitting of air bags. Also you will learn how the primitive road safety components, still used in USA, called the three E's (Engineering, Enforcement, Education ) was born as a device to direct the efforts to the community away from the real problems of safety of the vehicles, some of the that was sell with tires that don't resist the weight of the fully loaded vehicle !. Finally you can understand the lacking level of road safety in US versus European countries that have in service safety policies that will reduce the absolute number of killed by 30% over 5 years.

This book is the necessary building stone to the effort to make car manufacturers accountable for the safety level of his products. I can't understand why some publisher is not doing a new edition of it. By Milton Bertin Jones on March 15, 2002 As a Traffic Safety Specialist, this book is a MUST, this old book needs to be mandatory reading for any person interested in Road Safety, Ralph documented the resistance of car companies to the introduction of safety features, like safety belts, that looks timely today, for example with the lobby that produce a delay in the mandatory fitting of air bags. Also you will learn how the primitive road safety components, still used in USA, called the three E's (Engineering, Enforcement, Education ) was born as a device to direct the efforts to the community away from the real problems of safety of the vehicles, some of the that was sell with tires that don't resist the weight of the fully loaded vehicle !. Finally you can understand the lacking level of road safety in US versus European countries that have in service safety policies that will reduce the absolute number of killed by 30% over 5 years.

This book is the necessary building stone to the effort to make car manufacturers accountable for the safety level of his products. I can't understand why some publisher is not doing a new edition of it. By Stephen F. Fixx on July 30, 2003 I have just a quick story that might amuse Nader fans. In the mid eighties I was working at Oberlin College in Ohio, where I believe Ralph Nader's son was going to school. At lunchtime when I arrived at my car (a '67 Corvair) 2 men in suits were standing in front of it and in a deep discussion concerning it. Mr. Nader introduced himself, which then took a minute to sink in, and we briefly discussed the demise of my car's production. He explained that the "fatal" flaws with the Corvair had been rectified for my updated model that was introduced in '65. The main faults, as the book clearly explains, were the one piece steering column which impaled the driver in head on collisions (today they are collapsable thanks to him), and the rear suspension swing arm arrangement which caused the rear wheel to tuck under the chassis in hard cornering which causes a catastrophic roll over.

He told me that he really liked the later Corvairs. Then he joked that he wishes he had bought eight of them back when you couldn't give one away because now he could sell them for a fortune. I didn't burst his bubble...Corvairs are still a bargain collectable. And the early ones are STILL unsafe at any speed. By Milton Bertin Jones on May 28, 2002 Format: Paperback As a Traffic Safety Specialist, this book is a MUST, this old book needs to be mandatory reading for any person interested in Road Safety, Ralph documented the resistance of car companies to the introduction of safety features, like safety belts, that looks timely today, for example with the lobby that produce a delay in the mandatory fitting of air bags. Also you will learn how the primitive road safety components, still used in USA, called the three E's (Engineering, Enforcement, Education ) was born as a device to direct the efforts to the community away from the real problems of safety of the vehicles, some of the that was sell with tires that don't resist the weight of the fully loaded vehicle !.

Finally you can understand the lacking level of road safety in US versus European countries that have in service safety policies that will reduce the absolute number of killed by 30% over 5 years. This book is the necessary building stone to the effort to make car manufacturers accountable for the safety level of his products. By Beantown Jim on June 29, 2015 Format: Hardcover Ralph Nader was a pioneer in some aspects of consumerism, i.e. championing the consumer versus the 'faceless' corporation. In this particular case, he confronted General Motors, at the height of its power, over the imperfections of the initial Chevrolet Corvairs. The book had a huge impact that eventually led to Congress taking action on everything from safety to corporate rights versus consumer rights, etc. One of the problems of the book and the actual history of the matter was that the Chevrolet Corvair had become a much(much) better car by the time that this argument was discussed. The flaws of the intial cars, in true GM tradition, were eventually rooted out.

The basic concept of the car(Corvair) was in fact brilliant and it is a great pity that this book went far in ending the entire car line(the Corvair included or was planned to include, a sedan, sports coupe, and more utilitarian forms). Like the much later film 'Roger and Me', this book shows us a smug GM that could not conceive of anything happening that could force it to bow to the wishes of the little guy. Sadly, GM did not 'awake' until later, perhaps too late. The book was a clarion call to action, but as aforementioned, it also had the consequence of taking the Corvair down as well. Unsafe at Any Speed | work by Nader | Britannica.com Unsafe at Any Speed American literature Unsafe at Any Speed, investigative report on U.S. automobile safety published in 1965 by consumer advocate Ralph Nader , who was then a 31-year-old attorney. Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile excoriated the American automotive industry , based in Detroit , for its prioritization of style and design over consumer safety.

Nader’s book eventually became a best seller and helped spur the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in 1966, the country’s first significant automobile safety legislation. Nader had been interested in issues of consumer safety since he was a law school student at Harvard University and the editor of the Harvard Law Record. While editor, he published an article titled “American Cars: Designed for Death,” the first of several articles Nader wrote on the subject. He subsequently published articles in The Nation and Personal Injury Annual that called attention to automakers’ deliberate choice of making style a priority over safety. At the time, the rising death toll from traffic accidents was also driving leaders in the U.S. Congress and elsewhere in government to look at the issue of automobile safety. For years, driver error had been the sole focus in the investigation of traffic accidents. Nader and others suggested, however, that the cars themselves might be to blame in many cases. Nader’s interest in the cause attracted the attention of Daniel Patrick Moynihan , then assistant secretary of labor, who hired Nader as staff consultant for highway safety. Nader’s assignment was to research and write a report on this issue for a Congressional audience.

Unsafe at Any Speed was the result of this assignment. In his book, Nader attacked the entire Detroit auto industry, but General Motors (GM) and its Chevrolet Corvair model came under particular fire. The Corvair had been a focus of controversy in the courts since 1961, when a woman who lost an arm after her Corvair flipped over sued GM for selling cars with unsafe steering designs. The case was settled out of court, but other similar cases followed. In fact, by 1967 about 150 lawsuits had been filed against GM in connection with claims regarding its Corvair. Many of these were also settled out of court, but GM won several judgments in cases that actually went to trial. Nader also noted problems with other automobiles such as the Buick Roadmaster and the Ford Mustang . He described features such as steering wheels whose design could easily impale a driver in a crash, poor exhaust systems, and the unnecessary pollution produced by badly engineered cars. Similar Topics Biographia Literaria Ironically, the driving public, whose outrage Nader had hoped to ignite with his detailed assault on Detroit, took little notice of the book until GM began to act to mitigate the potentially damaging consequences of the work.

Apparently worried about Nader’s influence in Washington, D.C., and on the public, the company hired private investigators to look into Nader’s financial and private life in hopes of smearing his thitherto spotless reputation. Nader discovered the investigation and publicly denounced GM’s tactics, alleging that the “investigators” had even hired several young women to lure him (unsuccessfully) into sexual liaisons . Nader sued GM for harassment, and GM settled the court case for $425,000. The first comprehensive automobile safety legislation in United States history was passed in 1966 with the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act and the Highway Safety Act. A range of standard safety features for automobiles followed, including padded steering wheels, shoulder belts, safety glass, rear “back-up” lights, and emergency flashers. The 1966 laws also established an agency to regulate the automobile industry and protect consumers that eventually became the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration . Who Wrote It? Nader went on to become the most recognizable and influential champion of the consumer advocacy movement.

In 1968 he founded the Center for Study of Responsive Law, and its staff quickly became known as “Nader’s Raiders” as they focused their investigations on issues relating to consumer safety and health. He used the settlement money from GM to fund his investigative work. Nader also founded other consumer rights groups, including the Public Interest Research Group, the Center for Auto Safety, the Clean Water Action Project, and many others. Although the influence of those consumer advocacy groups waned somewhat after the 1980s, the impact Nader and Unsafe at Any Speed had in establishing standards for consumer safety is undeniable. Unsafe at Any Speed hits bookstores - Nov 30, 1965 - HISTORY.com Unsafe at Any Speed hits bookstores Share this: Unsafe at Any Speed hits bookstores Author Unsafe at Any Speed hits bookstores URL Publisher A+E Networks On this day in 1965, 32-year-old lawyer Ralph Nader publishes the muckraking book Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile. The book became a best-seller right away.

It also prompted the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966, seat-belt laws in 49 states (all but New Hampshire) and a number of other road-safety initiatives. Today, Nader is perhaps best known for his role in national politics—and in particular for the controversial role he played in the 2000 presidential election—but Unsafe at Any Speed was the book that made him famous and lent credibility to his work as a consumer advocate. “For over half a century,” Nader’s book began, “the automobile has brought death, injury, and the most inestimable sorrow and deprivation to millions of people.” Technology existed that could make cars much safer, he argued, but automakers had little incentive to use them: On the contrary, “the gigantic costs of the highway carnage in this country support a service industry”—doctors, lawyers, police officers, morticians—and “there is little in the dynamics of the automobile accident industry that works for its reduction.” Nader’s book popularized some harsh truths about cars and car companies that auto-safety advocates had known for some time.

In 1956, at a series of Congressional hearings on traffic safety, doctors and other experts lamented the “wholesale slaughter” on American highways. (That year, nearly 40,000 people were killed in cars, and the number kept creeping upward.) Safety-conscious car buyers could seek out—and pay extra for—a Ford with seatbelts and a padded dashboard, but very few did: only 2 percent of Ford buyers took the $27 seatbelt option. In Unsafe at Any Speed, Nader railed in particular against the Chevy Corvair, a sporty car with a swing axle and rear–mounted engine that was introduced in 1959. Nader argued that the car epitomized the triumph of “stylistic pornography over engineering integrity.” (Its swing axle made the back end unstable, he said, causing it to “tuck under during turns and skid or roll over much more frequently than other cars did.) As it turned out, a 1972 government study vindicated the Corvair, finding that it was just as safe as any other car (Nader called that study “rigged”) but the damage was done.

The Corvair became an icon of dangerous, even deadly design, and the last one rolled off the assembly line in 1969. Whether or not its particular examples were sound, Unsafe at Any Speed mobilized a mass movement, in which ordinary consumers banded together to demand safer cars and better laws. Today, seat belts, air bags, anti-lock brakes and other innovations are standard features in almost every new car. Nader went on to advocate for a number of consumer causes and has run for president four times. Related Videos Scarey Chevy Car Commercial - YouTube Scarey Chevy Car Commercial Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Dec 24, 2012 This has to be one of the scariest car commercials of all time. It's a Chevy commercial from the 60's. This is the Chevy Corvair, the car that Ralph Nader didn't like and wrote a book about called, "Unsafe at Any Speed".

The book by Ralph Nadar was published in 1965, shortly after this commercial. Maybe it was the Easter Bunny that he didn't like. Category Unsafe at any Speed Ralph Nader's Unsafe At Any Speed From Ralph Nader’s Preface to Unsafe at Any Speed: For over half a century the automobile has brought death, injury, and the most inestimable sorrow and deprivation to millions of people. With Medea-like intensity, this mass trauma began rising sharply four years ago, reflecting new and unexpected ravages by the motor vehicle. A 1959 Department of Commerce report projected that 51,000 persons would be killed by automobiles in 1975. That figure will probably be reached in 1965, a decade ahead of schedule. A transportation specialist, Wilfred Owen, wrote in 1946, "There is little question that the public will not tolerate for long an annual traffic toll of forty to fifty thousand fatalities." Time has shown Owen to be wrong. Unlike aviation, marine, or rail transportation, the highway transport system can inflict tremendous casualties and property damage without in the least affecting the viability of the system.

Plane crashes, for example, jeopardize the attraction of flying for potential passengers and therefore strike at the heart of the air transport economy. They motivate preventative efforts. The situation is different on the roads. Highway accidents were estimated to have cost this country in 1964, $8.3 billion in property damage, medical expenses, lost wages, and insurance overhead expenses. Add an equivalent sum to comprise roughly the indirect costs and the total amounts to over two per cent of the gross national product. But these are not the kind of costs which fall on the builders of motor vehicles (excepting a few successful law suits for negligent construction of the vehicle) and thus do not pinch the proper foot. Instead, the costs fall to users of vehicles, who are in no position to dictate safer automobile designs. In fact, the gigantic costs of the highway carnage in this country support a service industry. A vast array of services -- medical, police, administrative, legal, insurance, automotive repair, and funeral -- stand equipped to handle the direct and indirect consequences of accident-injuries. Traffic accidents create economic demands for these services running into billions of dollars. It is in the post-accident response that lawyers and physicians and other specialists labor.

This is where the remuneration lies and this is where the talent and energies go. Working in the area of prevention of these casualties earns few fees. Consequently our society has an intricate organization to handle direct and indirect aftermaths of collisions. But the true mark of a humane society must be what it does about prevention of accident injuries, not the cleaning up of them afterward. Unfortunately, there is little in the dynamics of the automobile accident industry that works for its reduction. Doctors, lawyers, engineers and other specialists have failed in their primary professional ethic: to dedicate themselves to the prevention of accident-injuries. The roots of the unsafe vehicle problem are so entrenched that the situation can be improved only by the forging of new instruments of citizen action. When thirty practicing physicians picketed for safe auto design at the New York International Automobile Show on April 7, 1965, their unprecedented action was the measure of their desperation over the inaction of the men and institutions in government and industry who have failed to provide the public with the vehicle safety to which it is entitled. The picketing surgeons, orthopedists, pediatricians and general practitioners marched in protest because the existing medical, legal and engineering organizations have defaulted.

A great problem of contemporary life is how to control the power of economic interests which ignore the harmful effects of their applied science and technology. The automobile tragedy is one of the most serious of these man-made assaults on the human body. The history of that tragedy reveals many obstacles which must be overcome in the taming of any mechanical or biological hazard which is a by-product of industry or commerce. Our society's obligation to protect the "body rights" of its citizens with vigorous resolve and ample resources requires the precise, authoritative articulation and front-rank support which is being devoted to civil rights. This country has not been entirely laggard in defining values relevant to new contexts of a technology laden with risks. The post-war years have witnessed a historic broadening, at least in the courts, of the procedural and substantive rights of the injured and the duties of manufacturers to produce a safe product. Judicial decisions throughout the fifty states have given living meaning to Walt Whitman's dictum, "If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred." Mr.

Justice Jackson in 1953 defined the duty of the manufacturers by saying, "Where experiment or research is necessary to determine the presence or the degree of danger, the product must not be tried out on the public, nor must the public be expected to possess the facilities or the technical knowledge to learn for itself of inherent but latent dangers. The claim that a hazard was not foreseen is not available to one who did not use foresight appropriate to his enterprise." It is a lag of almost paralytic proportions that these values of safety concerning consumers and economic enterprises, reiterated many times by the judicial branch of government, have not found their way into legislative policy-making for safer automobiles. Decades ago legislation was passed, changing the pattern of private business investments to accommodate more fully the safety value on railroads, in factories, and more recently on ships and aircraft. In transport, apart from the motor vehicle, considerable progress has been made in recognizing the physical integrity of the individual.

There was the period when railroad workers were killed by the thousands and the editor of Harper's could say late in the last century: "So long as brakes cost more than trainmen, we may expect the present sacrificial method of car-coupling to be continued." But injured trainmen did cause the railroads some operating dislocations; highway victims cost the automobile companies next to nothing and the companies are not obliged to make use of developments in science technology that have demonstrably opened up opportunities for far greater safety than any existing safety features lying unused on the automobile companies' shelves. A principal reason why the automobile has remained the only transportation vehicle to escape being called to meaningful public account is that the public has never been supplied the information nor offered the quality of competition to enable it to make effective demands through the marketplace and through government for a safe, nonpolluting and efficient automobile that can be produced economically. The consumer's expectations regarding automotive innovations have been deliberately held low and mostly oriented to very gradual annual style changes. The specialists and researchers outside the industry who could have provided the leadership to stimulate this flow of information by and large chose to remain silent, as did government officials.

The persistence of the automobile's immunity over the years has nourished the continuance of that immunity, recalling Francis Bacon's insight: "He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator." The accumulated power of decades of effort by the automobile industry to strengthen its control over car design is reflected today in the difficulty of even beginning to bring it to justice. The time has not come to discipline the automobile for safety; that time came over four decades ago. But that is not cause to delay any longer what should have been accomplished in the nineteen-twenties. Images: Book Cover scanned From the Collections of The Henry Ford. 1) NC 629.231 N135 1966 History of Business Journalism Ralph Nader in Time magazine 1969 1965 – Ralph Nader publishes “Unsafe at any Speed.” The book criticizes the auto industry for failing to make cars safer to drive. In 1965, a little-known book criticizing the Detroit automakers would receive widespread attention for its accusations after General Motors, the largest company in the country, was found to have investigated its author.

Ralph Nader was not a well-known person in the United States in the early 1960s. A lawyer, Nader had written an article in The Nation in October 1963, noting that some cars seemed to be more accident-prone than others and that the safety of a car was a function of how the car was built as well as how it was driven. “Slaughter on the highways has been a perennial phenomenon for nearly half a century, and still an industry is permitted to produce, unhindered, vehicles full of accidents and tragedies waiting to happen,” wrote Nader. The article was virtually ignored, and the auto industry was successful in thwarting attempts to force it to build safer vehicles for nearly a decade. In the spring of 1965, a Senate subcommittee led by Connecticut Sen. Abraham Ribicoff began investigating highway safety. Nader, who was an advisor to the subcommittee, testified about a Cornell University study that showed a relationship between the design of a car and fatal accidents. The first time Nader appeared in the New York Times, however, was on Nov.

30, 1965 , the day his book “Unsafe at Any Speed” was published, criticizing the safety of several cars, particularly GM’s Corvair. In an article on p. 68, Nader blasted the auto industry, the tire producers, the National Safety Council and the American Automobile Association for ignoring safety problems. The second paragraph of the article read, “Ralph Nader, a Washington lawyer, says that auto safety takes a back seat to styling, comfort, speed, power and the desire of auto makers to cut costs.” The story later stated, “Mr. Nader charges that the President’s Committee for Traffic Safety is little more than a private-interest group running a public agency that speaks with the authority of the President.” Unsafe at Any Speed by Ralph Nader The industry reacted swiftly. The next day, the Times ran an article on p. 37 in which the automobile industry denied Nader’s charges. Both the Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 articles mentioned his book, however. In the Nov. 30 article, the book was mentioned in the sixth paragraph, but in the Dec. 1 article where the car companies denied ignoring safety, it was mentioned in the third paragraph.

Interest in Nader’s accusations and his book would have likely died if not for what General Motors did next. The company hired private investigators to pry into the life of its adversary. When details of its investigation into Nader became public, Ribicoff and others were outraged. On March 9, 1966 , the Times reported that two senators – Ribicoff and Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin – called for a Justice Department investigation into the harassment. “No citizen of this country should be focused to endure the kind of clumsy harassment to which Mr. Nader has apparently been subjected since the publication of his book,” said Ribicoff. “Anonymous phone calls in the middle of the night have no place in a free society.” A day later, General Motors admitted that it had investigated Nader. By this time, the Times had moved the story to the front page of the paper. And with GM backtracking, the media continued to cover the story aggressively. On March 23, the apology to Nader from GM prominently written about on page one of the Times, along with Nader’s picture, as Ribicoff had held a hearing the day before on GM’s spying.

How 'Unsafe at Any Speed' by Ralph Nader Kept Drivers Safe TIME The Dec. 12, 1969, cover of TIME 'Unsafe at Any Speed' was published 50 years ago on Nov. 30, 1965 When a young lawyer named Ralph Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed in 1965, the reception was not all warm. The book set out to show how automakers had valued style over safety—particularly in cars like the Chevrolet Corvair—thereby putting consumers at risk. A TIME essay the following year portrayed Nader as a polemicist who was trying to paint auto accidents as solely the fault of the machines, with no account for driver error, and asserted that the book was “an arresting, though one-sided, lawyer’s brief that accuses Detroit of just about everything except starting the Vietnamese war.” But that was nothing compared to what General Motors did. The occasion for that essay was the company president’s appearance in front of a Senate subcommitee to answer to the accusation that G.M. had secretly hired a private eye, Vincent Gillen, to snoop on Nader.

“Gillen sent his agents a frank letter about what they were supposed to try to accomplish,” TIME reported . “‘Our job,’ he wrote, ‘is to check Nader’s life and current activities, to determine what makes him tick, such as his real interest in safety, his supporters if any, his politics, his marital status, his friends, his women, boys, etc., drinking, dope, jobs, in fact all facets of his life.'” The agents attempted to find nefarious reasons why the 32-year-old remained unmarried, attempted to find proof that his Lebanese immigrant parents were anti-Semites and even attempted to follow him into the Senate Office Building when he was called to testify about traffic safety. “You can feel pretty proud,” Sen. Abraham Ribicoff told Nader. “They have put you through the mill and they haven’t found a damn thing wrong with you.” By the end of that year, President Johnson had signed two auto-safety bills into law and established the National Traffic Safety Agency, despite the auto industry’s outspoken desire to regulate itself. The new laws addressed a wide range of problems from safety codes and vehicle inspection to highway design and driver education.

By 1969, Nader was on the cover of TIME, with a story that dubbed him the nation’s “toughest customer”: As the self-appointed and unpaid guardian of the interests of 204 million U.S. consumers, he has championed dozens of causes, prompted much of U.S. industry to reappraise its responsibilities and, against considerable odds, created a new climate of concern for the consumer among both politicians and businessmen. Nader’s influence is greater now than ever before. That is partly because the consumer, who has suffered the steady ravishes of inflation upon his income, is less willing to tolerate substandard, unsafe or misadvertised goods. It is also because Nader’s ideas have won acceptance in some surprising places. Last week, for example, Henry Ford II went farther than any other automobile executive ever has in acknowledging the industry’s responsibility for polluting the air and asked—indeed, prodded—the Government to help correct the situation. The auto companies must develop, said Ford, “a virtually emission-free” car, and soon. Ford did not mention Ralph Nader, but it was not really necessary.

Nader is widely known as a strong critic of the auto industry for, among other things, its pollution of the atmosphere. Nader, for his part, merely shrugged away the praise. “I should not be given an award,” he said, “for doing what I should be doing.” Read the full 1969 cover story about Nader, here in the TIME Vault: The Consumer Revolt Sign up for The Corvair in Automotive History The Corvair in Automotive History The following is an excerpt from Richard A. Wright's A Brief History of the First 100 Years of the Automobile Industry in the United States, and chronicles the environment in which the Corvair was developed, with particular emphasis on the factors contributing to its eventual demise. A Brief History of The First 100 Years of the Automobile Industry in the United States - Chapter 12 - Insolent chariots unsafe at any speed by Richard A. Wright The American auto industry's golden age started with the end of World War II and it began fading in the mid-'60s.

Through the '50s and the early '60s, Detroit dazzled the world with a procession of cars that were reliable, luxurious, powerful, low-priced, often beautiful, always interesting. Americans loved them and bought them in undreamed-of numbers. There were hints of what was to come. Along with the good-humored cracks about Studebakers back in the '40s, Bob Hope and Jack Benny also joked about the smog in Los Angeles. Before the '60s ended, Detroit did not think the jokes were funny. Automobile exhaust was suspected of contributing to, if not causing, the smog. Detroit was also coming under increasing fire as engines got more powerful and tailfins got bigger. Critics wanted more sensible, more economical smaller cars. Many servicemen returning from Europe brought back little Volkswagens, MGs, Triumphs and Porsches, strange-looking relics of the '30s. Detroit had not ignored the small car. Both Ford Motor Co. and General Motors had plans at the end of World War II to build small cars.

Harlow Curtice, president of GM through most of the '50s, explained why neither program came to pass: "You can take the value out much more rapidly than you can take the cost out." At the end of World War II, American makers were invited to consider purchase of Volkswagen. Ford executives dismissed the idea, as did Chrysler Corp. One Ford executive put it this way: "You call that a car?" While Ford and GM canceled their small-car programs -- both of which had been quite advanced -- Chrysler offered a smaller version of its '49 Plymouth and Dodge, which was a dud and was killed by '52. The Crosley, Kaiser's Henry J and Allstate (marketed by Sears), the Nash Metropolitan, Willys Aero and Hudson Jet all came and went in the early '50s. But the VW, dubbed "the Beetle" by its owners and later by the importer, continued its steady and rapid sales growth. In 1952, Charles E. Wilson resigned as GM president to become secretary of defense in President Eisenhower's administration. He had served GM well during the hectic war years and the post-war changeover. He had been a central figure in bringing labor peace to the industry.

But he is remembered most for telling the Congressional committee considering his nomination "what's good for GM is good for the country," a statement often cited as an example of corporate arrogance. But that was not what he said. And what he did say was not out of arrogance but out of Wilson's old-fashioned patriotism. At the confirmation he was asked if he could make a decision as secretary of defense in the interest of the nation if it were adverse to GM. "Yes sir, I could," Wilson said. "I cannot conceive of one, because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa. The difference does not exist." Harlow Curtice, as general manager of Buick Division in the late '40s, was intrigued with a custom job Buick's chief engineer Ned Nickles had done on his car. The engineer had put four "portholes" on each fender with bulbs wired into the distributor so they would light sequentially as each of the engine's cylinders fired. Curtice ordered the portholes put on all Buicks, but without the lights. They became Buick's trademark. Like tailfins, they had no function except to sell cars.

Buick moved from its eighth rank in sales to challenge and displace Plymouth in third. Curtice succeeded Wilson as president of GM in 1952 and the Buick portholes were an example of his uncanny ability to divine what the buying public would go for. Ford Motor Co. demonstrated that despite all the scientific research available, the odds are steep against a new car. It introduced the Edsel as a '58 model amid great hoopla. It was dropped in '60. The Edsel has become a symbol of failure, but in fact Ford lost little but face. The production facilities used for the Edsel were sorely needed to meet demand for the Falcon, Ford's highly successful compact car. Had it not been for the Edsel, the Falcon could not have set a record as the biggest selling new car ever introduced. The first rumbles of trouble came from dealers who were losing sales to imports. Many in Detroit dismissed the growing ranks of foreign car buyers as oddballs, flakes, college professors and leftists. But many of the dealers knew they were buyers with above-average incomes, many of whom owned more than one car. They were not all oddballs, they were trend-setters.

When George Romney took over the new American Motors in 1954, he ordered that the Rambler be revived and launched his famous crusade against Detroit's "gas-guzzling dinosaurs." Detroit was not worried. It sold more cars in 1955 than it had in any year in its history. Then in 1956, sales slumped, but import sales doubled. Romney was convinced. So was Ed Cole, general manager of Chevrolet. He wanted to build a small car of unusual design and he did. But not quite the way he wanted. The Big Three unveiled their "compacts" as '60 models -- Ford Falcon, Plymouth Valiant and Chevrolet Corvair. The Falcon and the Valiant were very conventional, but the Corvair was all-new, revolutionary in many ways. Its air-cooled six-cylinder engine was in the rear of the car. And unlike Charles F. Kettering's copper-cooled engine of the '20s, it worked well. There were compromises between Cole's original design and what GM top management approved for '60 introduction. Frederic Donner had succeeded the ebullient salesman Curtice as chairman.

The financial people were taking over Detroit and not just at GM. Tire diameter was cut, the aluminum engine was modified, the plush interior was downgraded and a $15 stabilizing bar was deleted from the suspension system. A Chevrolet test driver rolled over the first prototype on the test track, admittedly at high speed. A Ford test driver also rolled one over. Word spread at Ford that the Corvair had problems. In high-speed turns, the rear end of the Corvair tended to lift or "jack" and the wheels tucked under. And because of the rear engine placement, the car tended to oversteer, that is, turn more sharply at higher speeds. Most American cars have always understeered, which means they make a wider arc when turning at higher speeds. The combination of jacking and oversteer made the Corvair handle quite differently from most cars. The Corvair split GM deeply. When Semon "Bunkie" Knudsen, son of William Knudsen, was named general manager of Chevrolet in 1961 succeeding Cole, it is said that he insisted he be allowed to make some changes in the Corvair or he would quit the corporation.

Knudsen installed the stabilizer bar on the '64 Corvair and ordered a completely new suspension based on the Corvette's design for the '65. But before the fix was made, more than one million Corvairs had been sold and the car had come to the attention of a young Harvard Law School graduate named Ralph Nader. Nader had been handling insurance litigation in Hartford, Conn., and gathering information about auto accidents. In 1964, this austere, intense loner moved to Washington and set up shop as a self-appointed lobbyist for the public. He served as unpaid consultant to a new Senate Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization, chaired by freshman Sen. Abraham Ribicoff, former governor of Connecticut and brother of a Ford dealer. Ribicoff decided to hold hearings on the federal government's role in auto safety. Among Detroit "celebrities" called to testify were GM Chairman Frederic Donner and the new president, James Roche. They were not prepared for the hostile grilling they received from Ribicoff and, in particular, the committee's counsel, Robert Kennedy. The brusque Donner and the grandfatherly Roche turned in dismal performances.

Nader had collected an enormous amount of data about the Corvair and wrote a book, "Unsafe at Any Speed," an indictment of the auto industry in general and the Corvair in particular. By 1965, more than 100 lawsuits involving the car had been filed. It came out that GM had hired a private detective to follow Nader to try to "get something" on the crusader. But there was nothing and the public was outraged that mighty GM would put a gumshoe on the trail of this lone lawyer. The upshot was that Roche appeared again before a congressional committee and publicly apologized to Nader. It was a class act by Roche. It was also a painful humiliation for this honorable man. The Corvair was dead. In his book Nader cited the suspension on the '65 Corvair as an example of excellent engineering, what Chevrolet could and should have done in the first place. But the damage was done. Nader probably did not kill the Corvair by himself. He had a lot of help from Ford Motor Co. in the form of the Mustang, introduced in 1964.

Corvair sales plummeted and in 1969 it was quietly dropped. It was not widely mourned at GM. The Chevrolet sales department had never liked it, many dealers didn't like it; it was an engineer's car. The auto industry was making money and sales were strong as the '60s came to a close. But things had changed. The golden age was over. Detroit was on the defensive. America's love affair with the auto, some said, was on the rocks. Copyright 1996, Richard A. Wright Published by Wayne State University's Department of Communications Copyright ï¿½ 1996, 1997, 1998 The Auto Channel. Posted with permission. The Auto Channel can be accessed via the Links section, under the heading Other & Special Interest. Select from the navigation bar!

Question: Who wrote a book about the US car industry, published in 1965, called "Unsafe at Any Speed"?
Answer: Ralph Nader