Chevrolet: 1960-2012

By Michael W. R. Davis

Images of America: Chevrolet: 1960–2012 is the second of a two-volume photographic history of Chevrolet, one of the world’s best-known automotive brands, symbolized by the bow tie emblem. From 1960 to 2012, the US auto industry and Chevrolet experienced fundamental changes in their products and business plans. In the 50-plus years illustrated here, two basic changes in the marketing of motor vehicles is evident: the rising proportion of trucks among all vehicles sold and the incursion of European and Asian brands into the market. Even though the number of different Chevrolet passenger car models tripled, total car sales for the brand fell. Chevrolet: 1960–2012 relates the year-by-year evolution of the US auto business via what was once the largest-selling make.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Dec 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781439641903

Michael W. R. Davis

Author Michael W.R. Davis is a veteran automotive journalist and historian, as well as an author of six previous Arcadia photographic histories. Though he is a Chevrolet historian, Davis spent 25 years with Ford Motor Company before returning to journalism, authoring and serving as the executive director of the Detroit Historical Society for five years. In addition to holding degrees from Yale and Eastern Michigan Universities, Davis is a member of the Society of Automotive Historians and a trustee of the National Automotive History Collection at the Detroit Public Library, a main source of many of the images in this book.

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2002.

INTRODUCTION

Chevrolet’s second 50 years began with the start of the 1960s. A few months before, in October 1959, Chevrolet introduced as a 1960 model the radical, rear-engined Corvair, a symbol of the forthcoming plunge into product proliferation that the domestic auto industry experienced in the 1960s.

The importance of product proliferation was that there no longer would be just one high-volume Chevrolet car in the marketplace. By the end of the decade, in 1969, Chevrolet Division of General Motors would be marketing six distinctive Chevrolet passenger cars: the big, or standard, Chevrolet; the radical Corvair (soon to be withdrawn, its replacement Vega not yet ready); the compact Chevy II (1962); the midsized Chevelle (1964); the sporty Camaro (1967); and, of course, the unique high-performance Corvette sports car, which was originally introduced as a separate brand in 1953 but did not reach volume production until the following decade. Each of these Chevys presented different sizes and chassis designs (platforms or architecture in recent terminology), requiring large investments. While altogether the volumes thus achieved exceeded those of earlier years, the associated costs could not be covered by the revenues previously generated by just one Chevrolet. And eventually, Chevrolet’s volume leadership was eroded by domestic and foreign-brand competition.

The 1960s also were marked by a number of other industry-shaking trends that continued into the 2000s. Onset of federal regulation of various aspects of the auto industry was foremost, initiated with window price stickers stipulated by the Mulroney Act of 1958. Then came California regulations of automobile engine pollutants beginning in 1961, federal regulations of vehicle safety in 1967, and the Federal Environmental Protection Agency authorization of 1969. These impositions of outside control were onerous for the domestic auto industry, especially market leader Chevrolet, which, in preceding decades, had basked in the glory of contributing to the nation’s economy and helping win World War II with the Arsenal of Democracy. Some of the restrictions represented superior advocacy and lobbying ability by traditional industry adversaries, including dealers, auto insurance companies, and trial lawyers.

In between, especially as it concerned Chevrolet, were strong rumors circulating in Detroit in the early 1960s that federal antitrust activity would be aimed at forcing General Motors to divest Chevrolet Division and make it a separate company—as it had been before 1918. This never happened, and whether the rumor had a basis in fact is unknown, but it affected Detroit thinking at the time.

The 1960s for Detroit also meant the rise of trucks, previously used mostly for work, into recreational vehicles and family transportation. Eventually, more trucks—to include passenger vans, minivans, sports utility vehicles (SUVs), crossover utility vehicles (CUVs), and other variants—than cars would be sold in the American market. In 2012, Chevrolet was marketing eight different car-like vehicles and nine different truck-like vehicles in the United States. Chevy sold 975,617 trucks in 2011, compared to only 800,185 cars. However, the definitions of—and differences between—cars and trucks had become blurred by both marketing and applicable federal regulation classifications.

Finally, the die was cast in the 1960s for the globalization of the auto industry, beginning with a rising proportion of import-brand vehicles in the United States, led by Volkswagen of Germany, resulting in both foreign manufacturers dominating the US market by the 1990s and domestic manufacturers producing global, or world car, designs rather than selling only familiar American vehicles in foreign markets as they had done in previous decades.

The entire history of Chevrolet has been characterized by intense competition with crosstown rival Ford. This was especially true during the product proliferation of the 1960s, where a new offering by one brand triggered a competitive response by the other. Generally, upstart Ford, seeking to regain the market leadership it had held before the rise of Chevrolet in the 1920s, instigated those exchanges. Through those years, Chevrolet correctly maintained that it was still selling more of its big, or full-size, car than Ford was with its matching full-size product. Through this, the customers benefited with a greater choice of car sizes and design features.

But Chevrolet also had to contend with strong competition from within General Motors, especially Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Buick. To build up GM in the 1920s, Alfred P. Sloan Jr. had created the money-machine of step-up marketing to cater to the rising hopes of the American population. Products were designed to invite buyers to demonstrate their economic success by moving up-market to a better equipped and thus more expensive car, expanding the market for GM’s medium-priced cars. More lavish Chevrolets of the 1950s competed directly with the other GM divisions. Then, the product proliferation of the 1960s began to unravel Sloan’s magical formula as four of the five GM car divisions began to compete with a full complement of different sizes, prices, and designs of cars. Out of this, by the end of Chevrolet’s second 50 years (2011), the bowtie brand survived to be the best of GM’s vehicle divisions.

This book is a sequel to the earlier volume (released in August 2012) covering the first 50 years of Chevrolet history in images. Further, this second volume looks ahead to the 2013 and 2014 model years, of which some entries already had been introduced at press time. The meeting place of the two volumes is 1960, creating overlap for continuity of that one year. The author demonstrates through images those significant historical trends discussed above; though, it is not always possible to illustrate ideas or thoughts. For this reason, an overall historical perspective is thus presented in this introduction.

—Michael W. R. Davis

Royal Oak, Michigan

July 2012

One

PRODUCT PROLIFERATION

1960–1964

In this staged 1967 publicity photograph issued by Chevrolet, the monumental changes of product proliferation during the 1960s are dramatically shown. Chevrolet has gone from one car as late as 1953 to, here, the six distinctive Chevys