Detroit?

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From Detroit to motorcycles?

OK: anecdote time. A number of the techs I worked with when I was a test engineer were bikers. Nary a one had a good thing to say about Harleys, especially the one who walked into a Harley dealership and found pans under the bikes in the showroom to catch the oil dripping out of the engines. At the time (late 1970s/early 1980s), Harley's build quality stunk. One of the engineers I worked with had worked at Harley and he would relate that Harley did no technical product development. This is why the Japanese bikes were eating Harley's lunch until there was some protectionist legislation passed, essentially to keep Harley afloat.
 
Just a wee breather....

Just WHAT was it that made the Big Three end up in, choose, or whatever we can call it, Detroit??
 
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I am not sure the "BIG 3" choose it to begin with, in the sense that the companies that became the "BIG 3" started small and were just a few of the hundreds of car makers distributed over a number of states. In the 1910s-20s-30s being close to suppliers/transport helped. The Great Lakes offering cheap transport of steel and some other raw materials. Most of the early engineers were actually somewhat self taught so if you wanted to learn the Industry you went were the Industry was. I think the "BIG 3" just sort of evolved in Detroit.
 

AMF years...not the best. HD's big trick was playing the heritage card and getting people all over the world to buy into the American dream motorcycle and life style. It was a marketing master stroke.. and still is. Where else would people pay £10k for a bike and then spend a fortune to make it run properly and sound like a Harley?

I wish Triumph,, Norton and BSA had been as clever.
 
If you look at the location of Michigan, you'll see it's centrally located in the nation, with close access to the Great Lakes, trans-continental railroads, nearby sources for steel and coal (coke) for the steel mills and of course, water for those mills. Detroit wasn't the only location for automaking, they were all over the state like Dearborn, Willow Run, Flint, Lansing, etc...
 
throughout the 60's and into the 70's; the "big three" was actually the "big 3 and a half". AMC was still around until it was absorbed by Chrysler.

One factor in the decay of Detroit was due to the old age and obsolescence of the factories there. In the 60's and 70's when new factories were built, it went to outlying areas and not in Detroit proper. It was just a matter of time before those factories that went in during the 20's - 50's were abandoned and left to rot.
 
..or maybe "Big Three" and nine-sixteents. Studebaker was still around, although I think it was in the corporate equivalent of hospice.
 
vikingBerserker said:
The Avanti's always looked odd to me.

I believe all the remaining AMC Eagles now reside in Western NC.
Click to expand...

The Avanti did look odd. Studebaker was an interesting company, and it certainly foundered in its last decade or so of existence. Packard also foundered after ww2.
 
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I thought the Avanti was so far ahead of its time and much more practical - from a design standpoint - than some of the other crap that was coming out of Detroit in the early 60s. Some of the worst looking cars in the world are from the early 60s - at least until the new millennium where everything looks like a diamond cut suppository.
 
Love the phrase "diamond cut suppository."

I have a severe dislike of tailfins on cars, so that trend was, in my view, the worst blight on automotive esthetics.

I don't dislike or like the styling of most current models of car, as they're pretty much all so banal. The current Cadillacs, on the other hand, for some bizarre reason remind me of electric razors.
 
They sure do! question is though, which were the best looking fins??
Chrysler musy have had some of the largest taillights on those '57-'60 fins...

Than again, those on the early to mid-'60's Thunderbirds weren't small either!
 
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