Yes, but let's not forget that this was the era when engineers were just learning how to clean up engine emissions. The electronic sensors and controls that play a crucial role in helping today's engines be both powerful and clean were yet to be developed. Worse, they had to wrangle engines developed in the '50s and '40s or earlier into meeting emissions standards while running on lower octane unleaded fuel metered through imprecise carburetors and ignited through weak(ish) and imprecise mechanical ignitions. It could not have been easy.
No problem, in 50 years, people will be laughing at you because you thought 2 liter engines that only produced about 200-300 hp was impressive. The regulations came fast and hard in the 1970's. Emissions were greatly reduced in just a few years, some things like lead were eliminated completely, and others, like NoX, were reduced by like 80%. With no computer controls. Also, safety and trash regs added weight at the same time. GM's conversion of its fleet between 1977 and 1981 was the largest peacetime industrial investment up to that time. In reality, the industry should have been given more time. The ability to make all these requirements work and meet the performance benchmarks of the 1960's was not available until the 1990s.
40 years ago Lee Iacocca introduced the minivan at Chrsyler. He thought it would replace the station wagon. Actually, fall 1983 for the 1984 model year. Lee Iacocca first had the idea for the minivan when he was working at Ford, but Ford rejected it. The minivan is car based.
Minivans are great, utilitarian vehicles for people hauling or fold down/remove seats for cargo hauling. Some AWD & some with good towing ratings comparable to some trucks, many even encroaching luxury. Paired with car like fuel economy & cheaper insurance than trucks. It's a shame IMO many people rather have a large bulky inefficient SUV nowadays which make the roads less safe with heir heavy weights & blind spots.
@@triggeredcat120 Definitely. I remember the Aerostar being on sale at 25% discount of any advertised Caravan price in the 1990s at a local dealership to anyone who brought in any written offer for a new Caravan.
Davinp, Lee Iacocca couldn't build a minivan from scratch so they took a KCar chassis and built up The 1st minivans where assembled at the Windsor plant in Windsor ON Canada. The were underpowered no V 6 until 1989 model year the 6 cylinder was the Mitsubishi 3.0 from the dynasty and New Yorkers.
The hummer having 8,600 GRVW is actually insane! That number is so specific that you can tell they were just trying their absolute best to qualify the hummer as a normal truck and not a light truck.
Excellent video production! Some of those commercials remind me of when I was a little kid back in the 80's and 90's. We had Subaru Brats, Rabbit p/ups, S-10s etc.
One correction. It was the Europeans who were upset about cheap American chicken, not the other way. They slapped a tariff on US poultry, so we retaliated with a similar one on European produce (particularly, I think, asparagus for some reason). It went back and forth until we decided to go after trucks. Not many were imported at the time so this mostly effected Volvo. Though later the Japanese companies when they started importing small trucks.
Zack, today is my 19th birthday and this video is a PERFECT birthday gift! I love good stories about cars, especially ones about how automakers coped with difficult events such as the fuel shortages. Thanks for the video Zack!
Malaise era was bad for car styling. But the best trucks and full size SUV’s came out in that period. Square Body Chevy Trucks. Dodge, and Ford had some great styles! I have an 86 Bronco and a 77 K10 short bed. Both are worth big money. Some simple engine component swaps. And these are pushing 350-400HP all day. I had a 78 Dodge Li’l Red Express. They were very cool trucks.
Zack, thanks for this well-made documentary! I like how you tie together all the government led legislative changes along with how the car makers were sidestepping those rules at each chance, showing the transformation from cars to trucks to minivans to SUVs.
Also encouraging the suv push was that prior to cafe, cars were large enough, and powerful enough to pull boats, campers, etc. After cafe cars got lighter and weaker and most couldn't pull much of a trailer. So, if you needed to periodically tow, you had to get a pickup or suv. Then add the practicality of all weather 4wd, and it's obvious why more people abandoned cars and moved to pickups Hate suvs? Partially you can blame uncle Sam and cafe standards
As a '90's kid I bought a LOT of these 1970's era trucks and cars. The very first thing we did was pull off ALL of the nonfunctional CA emissions junk so our engines wouldn't suffocate! After that, smooth sailing man! It really, REALLY sucks that California emissions laws wrecked the rest of the country's enjoyment as far as vehicles were concerned. Still hoping for that one big earthquake someday. But hell, nobody reads this crap., in fact sometimes I think TH-cam has shadow banned me. EDIT- Also, in America we CLAIM to have an open and free market...we do not. He mentioned it in here, chicken tax. We are all governed by lobbyist as opposed to our actual elected leaders. Fun times!
Not a word about the AMC Eagle?! AMC didn't need to spy on GM...they had already invented the Cherokee in the mid 70's. Thanks for my new favorite word, though- "Quadrippled". :D
The malaise era will always be the golden age of pickups in my mind square bodies first gen rams bull nose fords s10 ranger and Dakota all just perfection in simplicity and usefulness I’ve owned quite a few 80’s full size dodge trucks
Jeep dabbled with Perkins diesels in the CJ-5 and CJ-6 off and on during those cars' lengthy runs. Likewise, the International Scout could be had with a Nissan six-cylinder diesel in either turbo or NA flavor towards the end of its run. Keep in mind, carmakers build what buyers buy. If buyers had rejected SUVs and crossovers in favor of cars, carmakers would have figured out how to make cars meet CAFE and their lineups would have many cars and few SUVs. They're not going to build a bunch of things that don't sell and hope buyers want them anyway.
I remember buying a used 1982 Chrysler Lebaron convertible as one of my first cars back in the early 2000s. It wasn't very fast and the quality wasn't very good but it was a blast to drive. Had alot of fun with that car and I only paid $700 for it. Owned it for 2 years and sold it for $1500 bucks to a dad with a teenage daughter. Car never gave me any issues.
My dad got my mom a new '82 LeBaron convertible for her birthday on Valentine's Day, 1983. I showed up nine months later. That car stayed in the family and was my first car once I got my license. I traded up to a '92 Celica GT a year or two later and was astounded by the night-and-day difference, but the old LeBaron will always hold a special place in my heart.
Chrysler used to be fun. What really killed the early diesel in dodge is that the slant 6 made more power than it while being unkillable. Till that first cummins sat in the frame of a dodge pickup in 1985 and only expecting a run of 1000 trucks it was almost over for the truck lineup.
I can't believe you didn't mention the Grand Wagoneer. It was the first SUV, and the first 4 door. It also one of thre last carb equipped vehicles produced, and was practically the same vehicle from the 60s to 91.
Cafe laws had very little to do with environmental efforts. They were designed to keep foreign cars at bay and us makers afloat. Effectively they held back American innovation. Current EV push is meant to do the same except this time EVs became so expensive very few can afford them unlike not so great us products of malaise Era.
But they inherited a more efficient, albeit designed by desperation, development system. With Chrysler's resources that system produced the truly excellent cars until Auburn Hills threw it all away.
Technology has come a long way! The modern truck engines are smaller than the old ones with much more power and better fuel economy. However, in my opinion, the trucks are far too tech heavy, and physically oversized with too small beds.
@@chrisridethatbloodything2044 Danke, you are quite correct. Less known is that Rudolph's siblings included Hansel and Gretel, who were gobbled up by a witch who worshipped steam power. True story.
Jeep started development of the XJ in 1978 and GM began development of the S10 Blazer in 1981. I don't deny the story about corporate spies, but there is no way Jeep could have spied in 83 and had the XJ on the road in 84
Not sure why Malaise Era Part 1 wasn't linked in the description, but I went looking for it. th-cam.com/video/rL3wwN1RRT0/w-d-xo.htmlsi=ORG_a_ITkZ0fkv8i
no SUVs aren't products of the Malaise era there are some that were in production prior to that such as the Chevrolet/GMC Suburban Jeep Ford Bronco Toyota Land Cruiser etc. others came out after especially your Luxury ones Oldsmobile Bravada 1991 Cadillac Escalade Lincoln Navigator 1998 etc. yes Minivans were released at the end of the Malaise era 1984 model year then Ford GM and Toyota followed in the later 80s late 90s for ex the Toyota Sienna debuted for the 1998 model year
What kills me about the malaise era is how it used some of the largest displacement engines producing less than semi-modern, small 4 cylinder engines.
Yes, but let's not forget that this was the era when engineers were just learning how to clean up engine emissions. The electronic sensors and controls that play a crucial role in helping today's engines be both powerful and clean were yet to be developed. Worse, they had to wrangle engines developed in the '50s and '40s or earlier into meeting emissions standards while running on lower octane unleaded fuel metered through imprecise carburetors and ignited through weak(ish) and imprecise mechanical ignitions. It could not have been easy.
@@CaptHollister190hp out of 8.2L is just ridiculous
No problem, in 50 years, people will be laughing at you because you thought 2 liter engines that only produced about 200-300 hp was impressive.
The regulations came fast and hard in the 1970's. Emissions were greatly reduced in just a few years, some things like lead were eliminated completely, and others, like NoX, were reduced by like 80%. With no computer controls. Also, safety and trash regs added weight at the same time. GM's conversion of its fleet between 1977 and 1981 was the largest peacetime industrial investment up to that time.
In reality, the industry should have been given more time. The ability to make all these requirements work and meet the performance benchmarks of the 1960's was not available until the 1990s.
@@hamburgerhamburgerv2 Yeah, but the torque figures were still very impressive and much more in keeping with the needs of the day.
Trucks need torque more than horsepower
40 years ago Lee Iacocca introduced the minivan at Chrsyler. He thought it would replace the station wagon. Actually, fall 1983 for the 1984 model year. Lee Iacocca first had the idea for the minivan when he was working at Ford, but Ford rejected it. The minivan is car based.
Minivans are great, utilitarian vehicles for people hauling or fold down/remove seats for cargo hauling. Some AWD & some with good towing ratings comparable to some trucks, many even encroaching luxury. Paired with car like fuel economy & cheaper insurance than trucks. It's a shame IMO many people rather have a large bulky inefficient SUV nowadays which make the roads less safe with heir heavy weights & blind spots.
Ford was probably kicking themselves after the Caravan was made.
@@triggeredcat120 Definitely. I remember the Aerostar being on sale at 25% discount of any advertised Caravan price in the 1990s at a local dealership to anyone who brought in any written offer for a new Caravan.
Davinp,
Lee Iacocca couldn't build a minivan from scratch so they took a KCar chassis and built up
The 1st minivans where assembled at the Windsor plant in Windsor ON Canada.
The were underpowered no V 6 until 1989 model year the 6 cylinder was the Mitsubishi 3.0 from the dynasty and New Yorkers.
The Ford Carousel was 1973.
The hummer having 8,600 GRVW is actually insane! That number is so specific that you can tell they were just trying their absolute best to qualify the hummer as a normal truck and not a light truck.
Excellent video production! Some of those commercials remind me of when I was a little kid back in the 80's and 90's. We had Subaru Brats, Rabbit p/ups, S-10s etc.
One correction. It was the Europeans who were upset about cheap American chicken, not the other way. They slapped a tariff on US poultry, so we retaliated with a similar one on European produce (particularly, I think, asparagus for some reason). It went back and forth until we decided to go after trucks. Not many were imported at the time so this mostly effected Volvo. Though later the Japanese companies when they started importing small trucks.
The target of the chicken tax was Volkswagen. Volvo has never imported small trucks to North America.
There were number of errors but overall not bad for a small TH-camr. He gets like 3-5k views mostly. He's clearly not making a killing doing this
Zack, today is my 19th birthday and this video is a PERFECT birthday gift! I love good stories about cars, especially ones about how automakers coped with difficult events such as the fuel shortages. Thanks for the video Zack!
Happy Birthday man, birthday car video is always the best suprise
@mysteriousmarvel8413 Thanks!
Happy Birthday.
Celebrating birthday is like celebrating one more year lost or closer to death 🥰
@@davidp2888 Thank you! :)
Malaise era was bad for car styling. But the best trucks and full size SUV’s came out in that period. Square Body Chevy Trucks. Dodge, and Ford had some great styles! I have an 86 Bronco and a 77 K10 short bed. Both are worth big money. Some simple engine component swaps. And these are pushing 350-400HP all day.
I had a 78 Dodge Li’l Red Express. They were very cool trucks.
We need more of these from Zach. Car reviews and docs.
Zack, thanks for this well-made documentary! I like how you tie together all the government led legislative changes along with how the car makers were sidestepping those rules at each chance, showing the transformation from cars to trucks to minivans to SUVs.
Also encouraging the suv push was that prior to cafe, cars were large enough, and powerful enough to pull boats, campers, etc. After cafe cars got lighter and weaker and most couldn't pull much of a trailer.
So, if you needed to periodically tow, you had to get a pickup or suv. Then add the practicality of all weather 4wd, and it's obvious why more people abandoned cars and moved to pickups
Hate suvs? Partially you can blame uncle Sam and cafe standards
All SUV’s are, are station wagons on a pickup platform. SUV = station wagon utility vehicle.
@@b-genspinster7895 this is the dumbest shit ive read today
Awesome job coming up with this series ❤
I really enjoy your narration style, Zack.
As a '90's kid I bought a LOT of these 1970's era trucks and cars. The very first thing we did was pull off ALL of the nonfunctional CA emissions junk so our engines wouldn't suffocate! After that, smooth sailing man! It really, REALLY sucks that California emissions laws wrecked the rest of the country's enjoyment as far as vehicles were concerned. Still hoping for that one big earthquake someday. But hell, nobody reads this crap., in fact sometimes I think TH-cam has shadow banned me.
EDIT- Also, in America we CLAIM to have an open and free market...we do not. He mentioned it in here, chicken tax. We are all governed by lobbyist as opposed to our actual elected leaders. Fun times!
Was a fun video to watch! Dang ol' TRUCK!
You are a great narrator, thanks for sharing this part of the american automotive history. As I am from europe, much of this is new stuff for me
Not a word about the AMC Eagle?! AMC didn't need to spy on GM...they had already invented the Cherokee in the mid 70's. Thanks for my new favorite word, though- "Quadrippled". :D
that irked me too! if anything the cherokee was also an invention by renault too, Chevy had nothing to do with it lol
@@mtndewman1022 Unless I missed something, Renault had nothing to do with the original Cherokee of the 70's- which was based on the Wagoneer.
The malaise era will always be the golden age of pickups in my mind square bodies first gen rams bull nose fords s10 ranger and Dakota all just perfection in simplicity and usefulness I’ve owned quite a few 80’s full size dodge trucks
Jeep dabbled with Perkins diesels in the CJ-5 and CJ-6 off and on during those cars' lengthy runs. Likewise, the International Scout could be had with a Nissan six-cylinder diesel in either turbo or NA flavor towards the end of its run.
Keep in mind, carmakers build what buyers buy. If buyers had rejected SUVs and crossovers in favor of cars, carmakers would have figured out how to make cars meet CAFE and their lineups would have many cars and few SUVs. They're not going to build a bunch of things that don't sell and hope buyers want them anyway.
I remember buying a used 1982 Chrysler Lebaron convertible as one of my first cars back in the early 2000s. It wasn't very fast and the quality wasn't very good but it was a blast to drive. Had alot of fun with that car and I only paid $700 for it. Owned it for 2 years and sold it for $1500 bucks to a dad with a teenage daughter. Car never gave me any issues.
My dad got my mom a new '82 LeBaron convertible for her birthday on Valentine's Day, 1983. I showed up nine months later. That car stayed in the family and was my first car once I got my license. I traded up to a '92 Celica GT a year or two later and was astounded by the night-and-day difference, but the old LeBaron will always hold a special place in my heart.
Get Zack to 1M ASAP! 🔥
Chrysler used to be fun.
What really killed the early diesel in dodge is that the slant 6 made more power than it while being unkillable. Till that first cummins sat in the frame of a dodge pickup in 1985 and only expecting a run of 1000 trucks it was almost over for the truck lineup.
Slight correction Mercedes-Benz had produced a small batch of taxi cabs powered by four-cylinder diesel engine engines in 1936 (the 260D).
Almost positive that blue Camaro used to be my dads back in the day
I can't believe you didn't mention the Grand Wagoneer. It was the first SUV, and the first 4 door. It also one of thre last carb equipped vehicles produced, and was practically the same vehicle from the 60s to 91.
brilliantly done, brotha
I love this series! I do have to point out a small error .. It's GVWR: Gross Vehicle Weight Rating
Zack, well done!
I had an 89 full sized bronc. Pa classified it as a station wagon, not a truck. Half the registration price
Good truck
So, after all, the regulations from the 70s lead to big and heavy SUVs and pickup trucks with huge and thirsty engines. Really?
Cafe laws had very little to do with environmental efforts. They were designed to keep foreign cars at bay and us makers afloat. Effectively they held back American innovation. Current EV push is meant to do the same except this time EVs became so expensive very few can afford them unlike not so great us products of malaise Era.
3:04 Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh Caillou you are grounded grounded grounded forever!
I remember the comparisons between the shape of the minivan and the Space Shuttle made by NASA.
Ford used it as an advertising gimmick in print ads when the Aerostar came out.
With affection and respect: The CEO of American Motors who lost the thread had a name with a long "a", not unlike his cousin Harry.
Airbags and opinion
In 1990, Ford introduced the Explorer
You neglected to mention the '70s and '80s Jeep Grand Wagoneer and the Ramcharger was called the Power Wagon in the early '70s.
For the Sports truck section what's that heavy metal music in the background? Its sounds amazing!
Chrysler bought AMC because they wanted Jeep
But they inherited a more efficient, albeit designed by desperation, development system. With Chrysler's resources that system produced the truly excellent cars until Auburn Hills threw it all away.
Technology has come a long way! The modern truck engines are smaller than the old ones with much more power and better fuel economy. However, in my opinion, the trucks are far too tech heavy, and physically oversized with too small beds.
Great content man! Love seeing you on ccf too!
Fun fact: Rudolph Diesel was actually the son of Randall and Rachel Gasoline. He was the black sheep of the family, of course.
Sorry, as a german I have to correct you: his psrents were Hans and Helga Benzin ;-))
@@chrisridethatbloodything2044 Danke, you are quite correct. Less known is that Rudolph's siblings included Hansel and Gretel, who were gobbled up by a witch who worshipped steam power. True story.
🔥🔥🔥
Jeep started development of the XJ in 1978 and GM began development of the S10 Blazer in 1981. I don't deny the story about corporate spies, but there is no way Jeep could have spied in 83 and had the XJ on the road in 84
I prefer the invention by a gentleman known as Filbert Reginald Gasoline.
cool
mayonnaise era😅.
Cool
No😊
Not sure why Malaise Era Part 1 wasn't linked in the description, but I went looking for it.
th-cam.com/video/rL3wwN1RRT0/w-d-xo.htmlsi=ORG_a_ITkZ0fkv8i
Poogot??
8,600 lbs?!!!
Sure. in vehicle weight + hypothetical load capacity.
I would say the truck cuv and cars in general looked way better back then. And hey if the had “that bad” quality then how are they still kicking
wow wasnt for reagan we wouldnt had mini van imagine what we could be driving if it was fot thees stupid laws
1d ago
no SUVs aren't products of the Malaise era there are some that were in production prior to that such as the Chevrolet/GMC Suburban Jeep Ford Bronco Toyota Land Cruiser etc. others came out after especially your Luxury ones Oldsmobile Bravada 1991 Cadillac Escalade Lincoln Navigator 1998 etc. yes Minivans were released at the end of the Malaise era 1984 model year then Ford GM and Toyota followed in the later 80s late 90s for ex the Toyota Sienna debuted for the 1998 model year
I'd like to take that old rusty caravan and go pick me up as many fat girls as I could fit in it.