Headache Remedy: The Story of the 1975-78 Mercury

摘要

If you were a major automobile manufacturer in late 1974 and early 1975 you had your pick of headaches. Though America was now some months removed from a disruptive oil-supplier boycott, the country was in a recession and consumer confidence was very low. New Chrysler Corporation cars were lan- guishing on storage lots. The chairman of General Motors extolled the virtues of buying new cars in open letters that were published as advertisements in major newspapers. At American Motors, the company that prided itself for offering products that were economical to own, sales were off by almost 50 percent. The situation was so dire that Henry Ford Ⅱ, chairman of the Ford Motor Company went to Washington to plead with lawmakers to cut taxes by 10 percent and to extend unemployment benefits to help spur the economy. Almost 300,000 people on the unemployment rolls were automotive assembly-line workers laid off when people stopped buying cars. Ford itself had shut down 17 plants and idled more than 85,000 workers.