Why did American cars look so different back then?

Compared to cars from anywhere else on earth.

And why are American cars now almost completely European/Japanese/Korean design now?
What happened?

design regulations, aerodynamics, fuel economy, road sizes, trends.

Yes American cars very unique

The market globalized. Manufacturers are making cars that try to appeal to everyone, not just one specific market.

>Why did American cars look so different back then?
Because Detroit thought the American market would live in its own happy bubble detached from reality forever.

>And why are American cars now almost completely European/Japanese/Korean design now?
Because Detroit realized they'll go bankrupt (again) if they don't compete in more markets.

People kept getting into car crashes. People kept drunk driving, kept hitting pedestrians, and so on, and of course everyone thought this was just the result of the auto industry existing; there'll be accidents. So instead of imposing more stringent tests and regular checks on citizens for driving skill and responsibility, we changed the cars instead; now they're all bubbles with no windows.

We also as normal people fell for the emissions and global warming meme, which restricted our cars internally.

Am I saying you personally did? No, just that either automakers are continuing to fall for it. Either that or they're doing it on purpose. More regulations means more cost to the consumer means more money, too. And we lost our sense of community long ago in America, so automakers, if they ever once cared about the cost of their vehicles to the public, no longer care about not jewing their buyers out the door.

Welcome to the current year

Automakers have never cared, in the '50s and '60s both sides simply had so much money to piss away that neither cared about who jewed whom. Build an expensive car and sell it for cheap or build a cheap car and sell it high, who cares. Buy whatever you want, who cares, it's the '50s and '60s!

This particular facelift president started in 1985
nice try

At least pretend that you know what you're talking about

Leave Reagan out of this

i abdicate

No, fuck the cunt.

You'll notice that these decades are the only ones when the compensation has ever been higher than the productivity.

Good old 1970

>immigration laws opened up like floodgates for nonwhites

>wages stopped rising with inflation

>multitude of other Very Bad Things

It wouldn't even be hard to fix our pay deficit now. Literally adjust pay across the board for inflation, bring down top CEO earnings to a slightly more reasonable level according to the work they do and the worth of their companies, and then force all sellers and companies to not raise prices while you raise the pay, keep it that way for 5-10 years. Economy will poop itself but we'll recover. As long as we revert our demographic percentages to what they were pre - 1970. Preferably pre - 1955.

>according to the work they do
But they're not getting paid to stack files or write Word documents, they're getting paid for making high risk decisions. Just like pilots aren't getting paid for pressing autopilot buttons, they're getting paid for knowing what to do when shit goes southwards. Getting the income tax back in shape and tackling tax evasion would help a lot already, back in the '60s the top tax bracket for multimillion earners was 77%.

CEOs getting overpaid and all sucks, but it's just self indulgence. They get away with paying the workers less because there is an unending supply of labor, so you aren't really worth anything to your employer. H1B, illegals, migrant workers, and women shafted wages in most fields because they were either willing to work for less and artificially keep wages down, or because they flooded the labor market. For instance, where I live there hadn't been illegals entering into our trades jobs/manual labor until recently. Wages climbed with inflation, and now electricians, plumbers, and carpenters live in relative luxury, but that won't last for long, because the foreign horde is coming.

tl:dr - Foreigners need to fuck off back to where they came from and women need to get back in the kitchen

>CEOs pocketing millions and billions sucks, but the real problem are poor Mexicans!

That and employees have it way fucking easier than ever before thanks to robots and computers

>women shafted wages
The wage gap is a myth you stupid faggot.

First of all that's already reflected in the ever worsening ratio of productivity and pay, and also it's not made things entirely easier because as automation progresses, the tasks left to humans are getting more and more intellectually challenging, eventually locking entire chunks of the intellectual lower class out of the labor market. You can't just put someone stupid besides a belt and have him put two components together anymore because that's what robots do now, the person left must actually be able to program and service these robots.

butthurt lefty spotted

I bet you think you deserve $15 for flipping burgers.

Companies don't have to pay their employees shit or raise wages because if someone gets uppity they just get fired and 200 people almost instantaneously are in line to suck some HR cock for the spot because there aren't enough fucking jobs for everybody.

...

It's one and the same. Pay illegals slave """wages""" and reap profits.

Double employee pool = less pay for workers

because after World War 2, USA was left the richest country in the world, and the postwar boom resulted in impractically large cars because fuck it, why not, gas is cheap and theres lots of long straight roads! Route 66 motherfucker!

it was a trend started by the Greatest Generation, because they were high on life, and car companies were at their peak, and still cared about design and American tastes. Cars were practically works of art themselves.

this trend lasted till the 70's, when regulations started to tighten, and Automakers, who were still the Greatest gen, toned it down a bit. so cars became less ornate, and more boxy and simple. But the Greatest Generation being the greatest, they adapted to it and kept on truckin, despite regulation and higher oil, they still knew how to design around their limitations.

by the 90's, the Greatest generation started to fizzle out. the few left went full ham, and came up with some crazy designs. thats where the 90's caprice and the 90's panther came from. 90's was the last gasp of the greatest gen, and the last gasp of their influence on the industry. coincidentally, the last gasp of the classic large sedan.

past that boomers took over and boomers globalized and mismanaged the American Auto industry. they practically laylanded themselves, at least, GM did. And so the auto industry bought into the globalization meme. And since they want their cars to sell in europe, they have to be made to their tastes and specifications.
and since gas prices got so high in the mid 00's, people were all to happy to give up big American gas guzzlers and embrace euro cuckmobiles.

And Obama pushes it further by tightening the restrictions. As well as Cash for Clunkers, which removed a lot of perfectly good old cars from the used market.


TL;DR American Car styling and design from the 50's to the early 90's was by the greatest gen, who handed the keys to the world over to the Boomers in the early-mid 90's

>companies don't have to pay employees shit
Fuck off communist faggot

...

this. so much this. The Greatest Generation had a real passion for car design. And Boomers ran their legacy into the ground.

this

>50's to the early 90's
>greatest gen

Limited to cars, maybe.

>all this boomer hate

I guess you're in for a wild ride with the generations after them.
It seems like they try their best to top boomers.

OKAY well here we go. log in from a hard day of data mining in club penguin for rich toddlers from dubai only to see this bullshit TRASH of a poster.

World War 2 opened a new paradigm for small men with bigger ideas to cram small engines (this is in japan btw) with all of their hatred and malice, which was a direct darkness (darkside if you will) to the samurai code. that is why you see so many of the American big strong muscle men, and then the weaker smaller cowardly cars from Toyota, but here was the kicker that no one expcted, small liter engines made from vengeance tactics for the atomic bomb THE JAPANESE MADE SMALL FUN CARS IN ORDER TO GET REVENGE FOR THE AMERICAN SHIT so they killed us with great products while Americans cars albeit better and full of muscle temperance, they were weak of soul and perhaps maybe you should read the rest of google you ignorant fuck

told

Globalism happened and America got fucked the worst.

this

Cool car!


All that be damned!
>Pic related, my car

huh?

boomers were not running the auto companies in the 80s and 90s, they were building the cars. the "greatest" generation was still in charge and were the people who ran those companies into the ground.

Americans exist in their own little world and are okay with it

Meme answers (that may or may not be true) aside. The simple fact is that There was a dark period in American manufacturing where the cars were notoriously bad and the Japanese brands took over and became synonymous with reliability.

And so American brands had to make their cars look exactly like Toyota's and Hondas so that normal folks wouldn't be able to tell the difference to stay in competition.

The rules and regulations answer is complete bull. All you have to do is look at SUV's and pickups. Those are way worse than any box style car model ever was (taking into account the difference in material used).

very nice

They actually did care. Seatbelts, padded dashes, energy absorbing steering columns were all things before there was any sort of requirement for it if at all. People never cared for them so government forced it.

Really do miss the old boxy style. Guessing everything is rounded now because of better aerodynamics for less fuel consumption or something. Not 100% sure. Correct me if you may.

>back then
You should narrow that down a bit, because I fail to see that. Especially because you posted a boxy sedan from the eighties which was the norm nigh everywhere. Bigger yes, because bigger roads and cheap oil but the styling of cars has always been quite global

The HUGE cars of america where a thing because of the fact that america unlike the rest of the world was designed for cart travel from the start in cities, etc...

Places like europe and japan where build up from the ground with horse travel and walking on foot, thats why the roads over here in the EU are so small at times compared to the US ones.

And gas was cheaper then water in the US, that had a big part in it too.

I guess it would be convenient if you took those tomatoes from your eyes for once

What an insightful post, thanks for enlightening me with your wisdom

Nice cherrypicking but OP has the point

Boomers introduced SUV's and Minivans in the 90s and killed off Station Wagons