Glory Days, When Horsepower and Passion Ruled Detroit
The book Glory Days, When Horsepower and Passion Ruled Detroit by Jim Wangers is a comprehensive look at Pontiac Motor Division in its heyday through the eyes of its chief advertiser. The rise and fall of the pop culture fad of muscle cars at Pontiac and its fall during the early 1970’s is explained in this book from a man who played a large part in Pontiac’s success. There are many candid stories and little known facts presented by the author to precisely let the reader understand the thoughts of Pontiac and how it accomplished its goal of selling overly fast cars to our nations youth. Glory Days, When Horsepower and Passion ruled Detroit is an interesting and enjoyable guide to Pontiac’s heyday through the author’s personal experiences and explanations about Pontiac muscle cars.
Many of Jim Wangers personal experiences were very fascinating and made the book very tough to put down. One of his most appealing experiences was when he personally became a Pontiac sponsored race driver. Wangers told the story of how he won the 1960 NHRA Championship and how he narrowly lost by only tenths of a second in the final race. He explained through vivid details on how he raced to sell the cars he was promoting through his advertising. He coined the phrase, “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday”. Jim explains another tantalizing story about how he and John Delorean created the first muscle car.
John Delorean and Jim Wangers would frequently test Pontiac’s new cars out at Pontiac’s test track in upper Michigan. They both figured out the idea of putting this larger engine in this small Lemans. When this happened the muscle car era was born. This was the first account of a factory putting a large engine in a small car. Wangers then explained that he and Delorean had changed American pop culture forever with their muscle car. His account on how this was done and how America was changed with this simple idea was simply amazing. Wangers also pulls in readers with his history of the cars that Pontiac made.
The most influential car Pontiac made was the GTO. He told the tale of how this mid-size car changed the auto industry and shaped a whole generation of children in the 1960’s. The tale on how this was accomplished by Wangers was told with clever side stories about promotional contests and cunning advertising the enraged the U.
Some say that automotive racing began when the second car was built. For over a hundred years, competition has driven innovation in the car industry, thus the industry maxim “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday.” NASCAR and drag racing contributed greatly to muscle cars’ success. Muscle cars were born from these competitions as factory made race cars. Because of this, the muscle car quickly moved from a low quantity specialty item to the image of the American automotive scene. Each brand had to have one and each one needed better performance and personality than the next. The Golden Age began in the 1960s with the introduction of more performance models such as the Chevy SS Impala and the Ford Galaxy Starliner (Auto Editors).
Purchasing a car is one of the biggest and most important decisions that someone will make during their lifetime. Over the past several years, the prices of a vehicle have increased significantly due to the rise of inflation. Economists compare averages of vehicles to calculate and determine the cost of every vehicle that ends up on the car lot. To determine the cost they interpret all the above information and include everything from the cost of making the vehicle to the time of selling it. In the long run, the demand for vehicles is inelastic because they become a necessity for many people. However, in the short run, the demand is elastic because the purchase of a new vehicle can be put off for a while.
When asked the question, “If you could meet any American of historical significance who would it be?” For me, I chose Henry Ford. Henry Ford is an iconic American who most people think invented the car, but the car had been invented some time before Ford. Although he did design a brand of car, which is still very much popular today, Henry Ford is famous for using the assembly line to produce his cars much faster and much cheaper than his competitors. A middle-class American could now afford an automobile that was dependable and stylish too. Henry Ford was “an automaker, the man who founded the Automobile Age.” (Brinkley 2003, 523)
Imagine how life would be if our society did not have cars. Today, our society is depended on cars for our daily routines. From getting our food, clothes, and technology to just going to the store across the street, cars are a very important part of our society. In the 18th century, only the wealthy people had access to automobiles, and they only used cars for fancy transportation and to show off their money. This was because of the extreme prices of cars in the 18th century. With these high prices not many people could afford them, especially not the working class. Henry Ford reevaluated the automobile industry in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. With Ford's enthusiasm to mechanics, he perfected the assembly line, developed cheap cars for the common people, and sparked an era of mass production. Because of this, Ford paid higher and his actions allowed the common people to have access to cars.
Those parties in favor of gun ownership and the freedom to use and keep weapons, rely on the fact that the facility for such rights is preserved in the constitution. In this climate of growing violence, common with chaos and crime, gun activists feel more than ever that their position is justified. As citizens of the “Land of the Free” owning a gun is an
Most of us don't like some aspect of our appearance, whether it's sagging eyes or excess weight in particular areas, to name a few complaints. Lately a record numbers of Americans are doing something about it by having plastic surgery. Since 1995, the number of cosmetic procedures, which range from liposuction to facelifts, has almost tripled (English 23). Is that a healthy choice-or a dangerous trend? Aging has become the field of the future for plastic surgeons whose patients have reasons not always valid in the search for youth and beauty.
In this report, we will present a brief history of the era in which Henry Ford lived, the background from which he came, and important management trends he followed.
Curtin et al. 370). The problem with single parent is the fact that usually the
Famous for being one of the few people to greatly influence the twentieth century, Henry Ford was an innovator with a vision for the future. With his astounding work on transforming the automobile from just a simple invention into a great innovation that people to this day still buy and use, he shaped the twentieth century to a great extent. He was an American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company in the early nineteen hundreds. Ever since Ford was a young boy he has always seemed to have an interest in machines. He loved to tamper with machinery and other simple mechanisms. His first job was in a machine shop in Detroit which inspired him to experiment with machines and learn how they work. He learned to fix things like watches by trial-and-error and no matter what he did not give up when trying to learn how to fix things. He was one determined young man who worked hard and turned out to be a great leader with a very creative and imaginative mind. By teaching himself how to put a simple wrist watch together, he was able to use his newly found knowledge to move on to designing machines such as full sized steam engines. A few men who ran the steam engines helped to expand Ford’s knowledge of the engines by teaching him how they operated.
When Henry Ford was born on June 30th, 1863, neither him nor anyone for that matter, knew what an important role he would take in the future of mankind. Ford saw his first car when he was 12. He and his father where riding into Detroit at the time. At that moment, he knew what he wanted to do with his life: he wanted to make a difference in the automobile industry. Through out his life, he achieved this in an extraordinary way. That is why he will always be remembered in everyone’s heart. Whenever you drive down the road in your car, you can thank all of it to Henry Ford. Through his life he accomplished extraordinary achievements such as going from a poor farm boy to a wealthy inventor who helped Thomas Edison. When he was a young man, he figured out how to use simple inventions, such as the light bulb. He then taught himself the design of a steamboat engine. His goal was to build a horse-less carriage. He had come up with several designs and in 1896, he produced his first car, the Model A. When Ford’s first car came out, he had been interviewed by a reporter and when asked about the history of the car, he had said “History is more or less bunk.” Ford worked in Thomas Edison’s factory for years and the left to become an apprentice for a car-producer in Detroit. While working there, he established how he was going to make the car.
The Family structure has changed significantly in the last fifty years. With higher percentages of marriage ending in divorce, and higher rates of childbearing out of wedlock, single parent families are increasing rapidly. “Seventy percent of all the children will spend all or part of their lives in a single-parent household.” (Dowd) Studies have shown that the children of these families are affected dramatically, both negatively and positively. Women head the majority of single- parent families and as a result, children experience many social problems from growing up without a father. Some of these problems include lack of financial support, and various emotional problems by not having a father around, which may contribute to problems later in life. At the same time, children of single-parent homes become more independent because they learn to take care of themselves, and rely on others to do things for them.
The automobile changed American life, but the process was gradual. Though historians argue the date and inventor of the first automobile, we can say that Henry Ford’s creation of his Ford Motor Company in 1903 marked perhaps the major milestone of the early twentieth century automobile industry in America and around the world. Five years after the company’s inception, Ford’s legendary Model T of 1908 would revolutionize transportation and the world economy. Before the Model T, automobiles in the US were associated with only the wealthier class. Ford sought to make cars available to every American. His cars would assume the general build that continues to characterize automobiles today, and his innovation and system of production would make him a legend.[i] The automobile led to an extremely advanced system of roads and contributed to an American mentality of freedom to move.[ii] Early drivers saw both benefits and difficulties as the automobile became the standard American mode of transportation.
Today cars are all around us. They come in many different shapes and sizes. Some of them are even becoming better for the environment. Let's go back to the car when it was first made. Believe it or not Henry Ford was not the first person to create the car. However, what he did was still very important.
Starting in the 1920’s America began its shift towards a consumer culture as the economic growth of the nation began to depend more on the proliferation of consumer goods than of capital goods. Even at the outset of this trend, the automobile held a significant place in the new consumer economy. The automobile, which was once thought of as a rare luxury, was being sold by the millions. Assembly lines were becoming more efficient, thus allowing cars to be made more cheaply allowing the price of automobiles to drop. The growth of the automobile helped stimulate the economy through its dependence on other industries such as glass, rubber and steel, which were connected to the production of cars. These automobile related industries created new jobs, greater affluence and more spending power for millions of American consumers. Even at the beginning of America’s transformation into the consumer culture of today the automobile was at the forefront this conversion.
Some people’s obsession with plastic surgery is obviously getting out of control. It starts with only getting one thing fixed or corrected but then quickly escalates and before you know it, a face that once was all-flesh turns into plastic. According to a study conducted by Nigel Mercer (2009), “The number of official cosmetic surgeries has more than tripled to 34,000 since 2003”. The two reasons why plastic surgery should be banned are because of its high health risks, and because of the additional pressure it puts on people to look picture-perfect.