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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Moominoid who wrote (67038)	8/6/2005 10:16:37 PM
From: Slagle	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74559

Moominoid Re: "1973" You had rapidly rising demand then too, that made the OPEC curtailment really effective. The late 1960's was the "go-go" era with rising prosperity in the US and elsewhere and this was increasing oil consumption, even European cars were becoming larger. And Detroit just went completely nuts. The real gas guzzlers were not the 1950's tail finned behemoths but the late 1960's and early 1970's cars because of the tremendous increase in engine size. The reason that Detroit was even able to build such cars had nothing to do with oil or engines but advances in gear cutting and design, in particular the hypoid differential gears that were capable of transmitting the torque produced by the new engines. Till the 1960's Detroit had to limit the engine size to keep from stripping out the rear ends; half way through the decade the sky was literally the limit. By the late 1960's there were several models that cost under $2500 and would run over 200 miles per hour in stock trim: I had one. In the USA an important factor was the completion of the interstate highway system, mostly complete coast to coast by 1970 though there were some important stretches not finished till the mid 1970's. And it lots of places it was used just like the Autobahn with traffic in the fast lane running way over 100 miles per hour. I think 1973 was the peak year for auto accident deaths also. Another big factor was the rise of the environmental movement. Before this the fuel of choice for utility boilers everywhere was coal, but the enviros hated coal due to the smokey particulate emissions from the stack so the electric power utilities everywhere began switching to oil. Later, after the perfection of scrubbers and percipitators they switched back to coal again, but this was up in the 1980's. And the early emission control junk that was placed on cars made them get even worse mileage. This rising demand in the USA, Europe and elsewhere allowed the OPEC curtailment to be effective. Slagle