The symmetry was perfect. It was the Sixties, and just

as American society at large was engulfed in violent

change, so too did the domestic auto industry hurtle into

a turbulent and controversial part of its history.

The horsepower race that had begun in the Fifties accel-

erated in the Sixties. On top of that, the auto industry

expanded its offerings to include a previously unheard-of

variety of cars: big personal-luxury hardtops, miserly

compacts, potent muscle machines, and sporty pony-

cars--something for every taste and budget.

Detroit s marketing language was equally memorable:

Wide-Tracks, Scat Packs, Super Sports, and Cobra Jets.

All this, plus gasoline that seemed pricey if it topped 30

cents a gallon, combined to make for a unique generation

of cars.

Cars of the Sixties were a powerful expression of

America s waning postwar euphoria. Here was a decade

that produced the Pontiac GTO, a showroom model that

could do 0-60 mph about 6 seconds; and the Studebaker

Avanti, which crossed the Bonneville Salt Flats at 170

mph. Today, such rowdy performance strikes many as a

guilty pleasure, and a mere echo of an era that is long

gone. Indeed, by the Seventies a whole host of economic,

social, and environmental factors conspired against the

flash and dazzle offered by the cars of the Sixties. From

cockpit safety to tailpipe emissions--the federal govern-

ment mandated requirements for those and more.

Ironically, it was the car-buying habits of the public

that encouraged the heavy hand of government interfer-

ence-the same heavy hand that the public soon grew to

loathe. Consistently, and to Detroit s undoubted puzzle-

ment, consumers showed themselves unmoved by techni-

cal progress and innovation. Consumer apathy caused

Chevy s cleverly engineered Corvair to fail in its mission

as an economy compact. Buyers yawned at the 61 Pontiac

Tempest and its innovative rear transaxle and all-inde-

pendent suspension; the conventionally engineered

Tempest that arrived after 1963 handily outsold the 61.

The front-drive 66 Toronado could not match the sales

figures of the ent~irely orthodox Buick Riviera. And

Pontiac s economical 1966 overhead-cam six-cylinder

engine was almost completely ignored by a public that

overwhelmingly preferred gas-guzzling V-8s.

It s significant that most of the decade s technical inno-