On Wed, 01 Jun 2011 10:17:37 -0500, Jim Yanik wrote:

" wrote in
:

On Tue, 31 May 2011 09:07:18 -0500, Jim Yanik
wrote:

" wrote in
:

On Mon, 30 May 2011 17:35:31 -0500, Jim Yanik
wrote:

"Ralph Mowery" wrote in
:


"Ed Pawlowski" wrote in message
...

"harry" wrote in message

.c om ...
Heh Heh. Finally catches up with where Europe and Japan were
fifty years ago.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/bu...30auto.html?_r
=1 &s
rc=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpag es%2Fbusiness%2
Fi nd ex.jsonp

.

The car makers are not catching up, the consumer is. Detroit
built small car back in the 60's. I liked my '62 Corvair. Then
the Pinto, Chevette, Horizon, Vega, etc, but they just never sold
many of them.

The American cars did have the small cars as far back as the 60's.
Just none of them were any good. The larger ones were not any
better.
I had a Ford , 3 Chrysler products , and 2 GM products. None of
them
made it to 80,000 miles. The last one was a 74 GM product and I
had to put two timing gears in it and the transmission went out at
75,000. I have only bought Toyotas for the last several cars.
One went 100,000 with only standard maint. Traded it off for a
Camry and put 190,000 on it and only changed one sensor. Just put
tires on a Tacoma truck at 45,000 and no unscheduled maint.

Glad RonB's wife has a better memory as to why not to go American
than he seemed to.

I hate to buy from another country,but if the American stuff is
junk, I am not about to help the big wheels in the US make the 100
million plus dollars a year for doing it
.





How many Pintos and Vegas do you see around these days,as
"antiques"? You do see a few Corvairs,but none of the others. They
were all crap.

I see a *lot* of vintage Mustangs. 64-1/2 models are quite valuable
and they aren't that rare. There is more to a valuable vintage car
than age.

the first Mustangs were a sports car,not an economy car.

Wrong.

No,RIGHT. Mustangs were never intended to be "economy" cars until the
Mustang II came out. they were -sporty- cars,AKA "pony cars".

Bull****. My brother paid $2K for his 64-1/2. It wasn't an expensive "sports
car". The Mustang-II came after it had been bloated into a full-sized whale.

It had a V-8.

Wrong. It came with either a small V-8 (289CID) or straight-6
(200CID).

Actually,the first Stang V-8 was a 260 CID. the 289 came later.

My brother had a '64-1/2 200CID and (his wife) a 289CID '65.

from Wiki;

Several changes were made at the traditional opening of the new model year
(beginning August 1964), including the addition of back-up lights on some
models, the introduction of alternators to replace generators, and an
upgrade of the V8 engine from 260 cu in (4.3 l) to 289 cu in (4.7 l)
displacement. In the case of at least some six-cylinder Mustangs fitted
with the 101 hp (75 kW) 170 cu in (2.8 l) Falcon engine, the rush into
production included some unusual quirks, such as a horn ring bearing the
'Ford Falcon' logo beneath a trim ring emblazoned with 'Ford Mustang.'
These characteristics made enough difference to warrant designation of the
121,538 earlier ones as "1964½" model-year Mustangs, a distinction that has
endured with purists.[28]

The point is that you were wrong. It did come with either a V-8 or I-6.

The very first ones were also firetraps,worse than the Pintos.
there was no metal barrier between the fuel tank and the passenger
compartment,any rear end collision resulted in the fuel filler
breaking and gas spilled into the trunk and passenger compartment.

As was posted elsewhere, it was a *Falcon* with a pretty face. It
was still a nice car. ;-)

the Mustang IIs economy cars of the 70's were recognized as junk.
Later,Ford "redesigned" the Mustang to bring the pony car back closer
to the original. It was actually a whole new car platform,not related
to the Mustang II.

What relevance does any of this have to the topic at hand?


We -were- talking about American junky small cars,at their beginning.

The Mustang-II was not "at their beginning". It came out almost a decade
later.