Toyman,
Gotta disagree here. No doubt Nader had influence, but that's not what
killed the Brit car industry. Poor management killed the British car
industry. There were several articles in British Car Magazine, written by
those who lived through it, detailing this. There are also entire books
written on this. Management was unable to read the market(s), had little
interest in making a better product, aided in creating poor labor relations
(though the gov't had a lot to do with this), could not cope with gov't
regulations (theirs and ours), and finally, had gone too far down the tubes
by the time the pseudo oil crisis hit. Conversely, the Japanese car
industry coped with all these problems and changes and thrived.
Nader was one part of the equation. Given the direction some European car
manufacturers were heading (MB and Volvo) with safety options pre-Nader,
the industry may have eventually made safer cars. I don't see that Nader
directly did much good, but as a center of controversy, he got safety
issues on the table.
Jeff
"Light fuse and get away!"
---
On 5/29/99, toyman@htcomp.net wrote:
> One of my 69 Midgets has two wipers, no side reflectors, and no headrests.
>
...
>the Spridget
>went to the three wiper system in the mid-68 production year at the urging of
>'ugh' Ralph Nader aka the man that killed the british sports car,he placed
>so many saftey requirements on the manufacturing of these cars that England
>couldn't keep up,since the U.S.imported the majority of the cars,England
>finally gave up trying to please this pain in the ass advocate of saftey who
>had way to much influence,and stopped making the LBC,s(the ralfph nader info
>was read in a different source of info and will not be found in the book I
>previously mentioned"DISCLAIMER")
>
Jeff Boatright __o_\__ '65 Austin-Healey Sprite
http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~jboatri/sprite/sprite.html
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