Car and Driver's 60th Anniversary: The 1990s - Car and Driver (blog)
Car and Driver rolled into the '90s the way General Norman Schwarzkopf's troops rolled into Kuwait. Nissan and Toyota went after Cadillac, Lincoln, and the Germans by starting their own luxury divisions. It was rumored that Lexus required fewer hours to screw together an LS400 than Mercedes needed to repair problems on each S-class after assembly. The Germans responded by changing their production methods and introducing a slew of models, including SUVs built in America. At General Motors, market share slid from 46 percent in 1978 to 34 percent in 1992 as GM's sales kept shrinking. The truck division, formerly led by Bob Lutz, conjured up the 1991 Explorer , which infected the American public with an epidemic of family SUVs that remains virulent today. Chrysler, having entered the decade under the aging Lee Iacocca, extruding one K-car clone after another, ended it slumping badly after CEO Bob Eaton sold out to Daimler. In between, the company spit out the sexiest cars and trucks in the business, including the Shelby Cobrainspired Viper. I would get to know all these corporate chieftains after taking the editor-in-chief's office in March 1993. Early in my tenure, our owners were eager to get Car and Driver on television, which somehow degenerated into a wacky scheme in which I... Source: www.caranddriver.com
