Was quality really this bad in the 1970s?

[DAVES89]

I don't either but KIA means "Killed In Action".

[MCHinson]

KIA = Killed in Action

[Buffalowed Bill]

In answer to question regarding Kia, I made no comment regarding anything Japanese or Korean. I have only the utmost respect for the strides made by most of the products from these countries.-Bill  

[Guest]

Sorry for the mix up, I meant to capture the quote regarding the recall numbers posted by JamesBulldogMiller55Buick. I grabbed it from Buffalowed Bill's reply post by mistake.

And yes, the KIA reference is to the well known military term "Killed in Action".  

The bar I own in Palm Springs draws a lot of Marines from the 29 Palms base. This subject (both heated and laughingly) has come up countless times with those boys.

 

[28 Chrysler]

A Ford PU came into the body shop sometime about 1976 with a deep scrape down the right side.

The paint on the front clip was a different shade of ginger bronze than the cab, the box was still a different shade

A few weeks later a good customer came in to so us his new black Trans Am.

It had silver metallic in the paint on the front clip and straight black on the rest.

[Jim Bollman]

Knew a body shop owner in the 80s that would not paint any Ford from the 70s unless the customer agreed to a complete stripping of the body down to bare steel. Said he didn't want his name associated with a paint job that might fall off in a year or less.

[Chase392]

Can't really comment on the 70's,

 

    But I don't think the proceeding decades were much better. My grandfather worked at a Ford dealership in the late 50's.... he told me plenty of stories when I was young. Cars with no oil in the engines, no oil in the rear diffs, brakes leaking (he said they were usually on top of the hauler so they ruined the paint jobs on the cars below them), etc.

 

While he worked there he bought a brand new Ford... not sure which model. Driving it home he heard an intermittent rattle.... drove him crazy for a few days trying to diagnose it on the drive to and from work. He finally traced it to one of the rear doors, pulled the trim panel and found an wrench inside the door. I think I still have the wrench in my toolbox.... 

 

Same car... shortly after delivery my grandmother complained the carpet was lumpy on the passenger side. He didn't ride on that side and told her under no uncertain terms she was crazy... but she persisted and one weekend he pulled and seat and pulled up the carpet to find the mummified remains of a sandwich. 

 

In the 60's his brand new '65 Impala SS snapped the crank in less than 5,000 miles.... although being a 4-speed car owned by an avid street racer... he might of had something to do with that one 

[DavidMc]

My dad bought his first new car, a Ford Zephyr in the 1960s.  Not long after he bought it he removed an inner door trim to fix a problem with the window window and was horrified to find that his pride and joy had no paint on the inside of the door panels and they were already starting to rust, further investigations showed that only the outside surfaces of the car had been painted.  I don't think the problem was confined to these English Fords.  Needless to say he gutted the car and painted all the inside of the body panels and filled the door sills with oil.  In later years that car had not rusted away like most of the others of its type.

[stude24]

My wife's first new car was a 1979 Mercury Zephyr, 2 door sedan, 6 cylinder. A nice looking car at the time. We drove it for a couple years when it started having stalling problems. We brought it back to the dealer numerous times, but to no avail. It got so bad it would stall every time you came to a stop. We finally traded it in on a brand new 1982 Ford Escort 4 door hatchback. We later learned that the problem with the Mercury was that a plastic part used in the carburetor wasn't compatible with ethanol they started putting in gasoline after the 1979 oil embargo and it would distort and cause carburetor problems. Too bad it took them so long to figure it out. Oh ya, the Escort's timing belt broke at 72,000 miles bending three valves.

[Rusty_OToole]

4 hours ago, stude24 said:

My wife's first new car was a 1979 Mercury Zephyr, 2 door sedan, 6 cylinder. A nice looking car at the time. We drove it for a couple years when it started having stalling problems. We brought it back to the dealer numerous times, but to no avail. It got so bad it would stall every time you came to a stop. We finally traded it in on a brand new 1982 Ford Escort 4 door hatchback. We later learned that the problem with the Mercury was that a plastic part used in the carburetor wasn't compatible with ethanol they started putting in gasoline after the 1979 oil embargo and it would distort and cause carburetor problems. Too bad it took them so long to figure it out. Oh ya, the Escort's timing belt broke at 72,000 miles bending three valves.

So you bought  another Ford? This is what mystifies me. Buy a car, get a lemon, buy a different make next time. Buy a Ford, get a lemon, trade it in on another Ford. I have seen this so many times and can never figure it out. Ford owners just seem to expect their cars to break down all the time. It rolls off them like duck water.

 

In our family in the sixties and seventies we had seven or eight Dodge slant six cars, all good reliable economical cars, until my brother bought a 1975 Volare that was a damn mess.  He swore he would never buy another Chrysler product and never has. Instead he has bought a series of Fords that broke down more than any Dodge ever did. One was an Escort with manual trans, bought new. The throwout bearing failed and had to be replaced under warranty. They told him he was lucky it was under warranty because it was a $3000 repair job, as the throwout bearing was inside the clutch and the complete drive train had to be out on the shop floor to get at it. A year or so later it failed again, got replaced under warranty again, and shortly after wards he dumped the car because the warranty was running out. He traded it on another Escort, this time an automatic. He also had a Ford pickup that blew its engine, he happily paid for a rebuilt engine and kept driving it. I have never seen a slant six car or truck with a blown engine.

 

My father the same, he bought a new Pontiac Parisienne Brougham diesel in 1980 and it was a lemon. From then on he bought nothing but Fords and cursed anything GM. Even though his Fords and Lincolns were far from trouble free, it never seemed to bother him when they broke down.

 

Have seen this again and again with different people and never could figure it out.

Edited May 23, 2017 by Rusty_OToole (see edit history)

[8E45E]

On ‎17‎/‎05‎/‎2017 at 4:03 AM, DavidMc said:

My dad bought his first new car, a Ford Zephyr in the 1960s.  Not long after he bought it he removed an inner door trim to fix a problem with the window window and was horrified to find that his pride and joy had no paint on the inside of the door panels and they were already starting to rust, further investigations showed that only the outside surfaces of the car had been painted.  I don't think the problem was confined to these English Fords.

It was also a HUGE problem on early 1970's North American Fords; especially full-size models.  They suffered premature rust-out of the doors and front fenders, especially in the rust belt areas in the northeast.  It was a huge scandal, and caused Ford to take a serious look at rustrproofing and offering a 'Duraguard' body warranty starting in the 1977 model year.

 

Craig

[Restorer32]

Dad bought a new '78 GMC pickup. Color was a reddish brown, almost the color of lacquer primer. In the right light you could see that most of the back of the cab had only a very light coat of color with the reddish primer showing thru.

[stude24]

20 hours ago, Rusty_OToole said:

So you bought  another Ford? This is what mystifies me. Buy a car, get a lemon, buy a different make next time. Buy a Ford, get a lemon, trade it in on another Ford. I have seen this so many times and can never figure it out. Ford owners just seem to expect their cars to break down all the time. It rolls off them like duck water.

We live in a small town (actually city, but it only has 7500 people) where everybody knows everybody. My wife went to high school with the son of the local Ford dealer (the son eventually took over the dealership from his father) and also our youngest son and his youngest son were good friends growing up and still are today. They always treated us right when it came to trading cars so we bought Fords for a number of years, however that ended when we bought our first Toyota, a used 1992 Corolla with over 100,000 miles on it. The most reliable car we ever owned up to that time and we've never owned anything else since then (except for antique cars and a Volvo C70 piece of crap, but that's another story).  

Edited May 24, 2017 by stude24 (see edit history)

[plymouthcranbrook]

My X-neighbor would not buy anything but Chrysler or Dodge Minivans for years because he got the Friends and Family Discount. Bought a new one at about 80,000 miles each time as they seemed to start falling apart around then.

[Rusty_OToole]

I've had half a dozen Dodge minivans all bought as cheap used vehicles with at least 80,000 miles on them (one had 180,000 when I bought it). All served me well for at least 2 years, usually 4 or 5 before they played out. I used them as work vehicles and never spend more than the minimum on repairs or upkeep, if they needed a repair of more than a couple hundred bucks I bought another one.

 

All except the last one, a 2006. It has required more repairs than the rest put together. Don't think I will buy another one.

Edited May 24, 2017 by Rusty_OToole (see edit history)

[bobg1951chevy]

On ‎5‎/‎7‎/‎2017 at 8:23 PM, Frantz said:

I had a 18k Chrysler Lebaron, and the "S" of "Chrysler" on the truck was upside down. It took me awhile to notice. I don't think it had ever been repainted. But that seemed like more of a "whoops" not a "I don't give a darn"

Back in the '70's, I would take GM techs on various "field trips", to Lordstown ,Ohio Vega assembly plant or the Flint, Michigan truck assembly plant or the Tonawanda, NY engine assembly plant.

 

The largest "warranty dollar spent" back then was for cosmetic issues, such as paint orange peel or paint runs or misaligned or incorrect trim.

 

A good example was watching a 1/2 ton GMC truck being assembled. The GMC and Chevy trucks ran down the same assembly line. This particular GMC received a "CHEVROLET" tailgate ...... correct color but wrong name on tailgate.

 

Our plant tour guide assured us the incorrect gate would be discovered, pulled off the assembly line and refitted with the correct tailgate. We followed the truck, the inspectors viewed the truck, the truck went off the assembly line, into the water leak testing, then onto the roller dyno and out into the yard, to be parkjed for shipment.  The CHEVROLET tailgate remained ...... onto the dealer for them to correct.

 

The most organized assembly plant was the Lordstown Vega assembly plant.  Super clean, superior organization, but the Asian sheet metal rotted so quickly, the car was doomed from that factor alone.

[Rusty_OToole]

Speaking of Asian sheet metal... in 1985 or 86 a body shop I worked at got a late model Dodge truck, less than a year old, for crash repair. The owner insisted on OEM parts, as was his right. He didn't want any cheap aftermarket parts made in Japan or Taiwan.

 

A new door came in from the local Dodge dealer as an empty unpainted shell. You could look inside and plainly see the trademark of a Japanese steel company.

[cahartley]

As long as foreign sheet metal is on the table.........about 20 miles away from me is a Del Monte canning plant where they actually make cans AND can peas and beans primarily.

A few years ago they had a great deal of trouble with American steel for making the cans.

They couldn't get American steel with a consistent enough quality that would play nice with the can forming machines.

When it's canning season it is an intense business with no time for screw ups....... 

Long story short is they wound up using Japanese steel.

 

I need to ask a friend who works there how everything washed out.

[Mark Gregory]

I know in Canada in the 1970's they were using Japanese steel to make steel rebar for construction . I was told then that they had to use more steel rebar to get the same results in the poured concrete slab as it was not as good quality as the domestic steel . Tensile strength ? ?

What I do not understand is why were they were importing the steel when in the article below all this was going on ?

 

Yet, the steel industry’s rejuvenation was not a straightforward story of success. The reality of the US steel industry’s reinvention was that employment and production were slashed dramatically. In total, nearly 300,000 steelworkers lost their jobs between 1976 and 1986. In places like Youngstown, and Gary, Indiana, whole communities were left devastated by plant closures. As such, while the US steel industry did survive the crises of the 1970s and 1980s it did not do so unscathed.

 

 

Edited May 24, 2017 by Mark Gregory (see edit history)

[padgett]

In the '30s a lot of the steel from the Chicago "L" was sold to Japan. It was said to be returned in the Mitsubishi A6M.

 

In the 70s I was living in Indiana and a thorough pre-delivery check was just something I expected for a new car. My main concern after that was rust.

Today my last new car was a '12 Jeep from the Daimler-Chrysler period. The factory has fixed more things than I ever noticed. Now have all three generations of the same V6 drivetrain with three different badges on the hood.

[cutlasguy]

I bought a 68 Fairlane Fastback new in January of 68 and a week later the doors froze shut! I borrowed my dad's car for work and my parents phoned the dealer about the problem. A mechanic came over and it took him four hours to get the doors open! That same thing happened every winter when the temperature fluctuated between above and below freezing until the day I got rid of the car.I got so disgusted with it that I would leave work with a cup of hot water and throw it up against the driver's side window until I could open the door! That piece of crap wore out every set of tires I bought for it after 10,000 miles, no matter how many alignments I had done. I t couldn't even climb a hill over 30 mph!