I think the big drop in the domestic steel industry was due to many other things. The low end products like rebar and nails were made from inexpensive steel from US minimills or foreign manufacturers in places like India or South Africa. Integrated steel mills just couldn’t compete with them on a price basis. The higher end products were losing out to European and Japanese mills that either produced them cheaper or subsidized their steel industry to make them competitive. The Chinese steel industry was not a presence in the US in the 1970s. They weren’t installing modern equipment until the 1980s, and then they had to learn how to use it. And there was the USW control of job practices. We had more than twice the number of people needed to run the mill I worked in because of union featherbedding. Management could have fought them, but there would have been a long strike. There would have been small losses with feather bedding or huge losses with the strike. Management also did not modernize early enough to compete with foreign suppliers. Almost all foreign suppliers had post-WWII mills built from scratch, while most US mills were build well before WWII; many before WWI.
Nixon put the Japanese and Chinese steel industries ahead of USS steel and caused the near capitulation of the domestic steel industry…
A good portion of the problem with the steel industry can be blamed on the unions. During the 70’s the unions would go on strike if the company even hinted they were modernizing their equipment which meant laying off any workers. Then when the steel industry started to collapse the unions went begging to the owners to upgrade the plants before the whole plant was out of business…but by then it was too late.
My 1975 Civic was a rust bucket. Just sayin’.
I think of the Wrangler as a poor man’s convertible because, let’s face it, a lot of the people who own one never take it off-road, and it looks like a lot of fun to drive with the doors off and the top down. In fact, if I had one, I would probably get a bikini top for it and leave the doors off.
The one reason I will never own one as a primary vehicle is that I like to take long road trips, and a Wrangler isn’t suited for them.
The Japanese car manufacturers didn’t get the rust out until mid 80’s. My wifes Datsun 510 was rusting away in 3 years.
“During the 70’s the unions would go on strike if the company even hinted they were modernizing their equipment which meant laying off any workers.”
I must have been lucky. We didn’t have any strikes in the 70s at my plant, and I don’t think there were in the company as a whole. We even had modernization at the time. But it was a new product line, and everyone liked that.
“Japanese car manufacturers didn’t get the rust out until the mid 80’s”
IMHO, it had little to do with the steel either. M y early 70s SAAB was outstanding in body drainage and design making it far easier to maintain. My early 70 's Subaru had, are you ready for this, foam gaskets between the fenders and body mounting areas which guaranteed it would rust. Ford trucks, at least the ones I examined, had NO drain holes in certain areas what so ever as of the 2000s. The doors were rusted through in 6 years. When you don’t use rust preventing alloys in body panels, you need drainage. It was not poor engineering, it was engineering designed for planned car replacement. It isn’t difficult or particularly expense to make a car “rust free”. But it is not good for business. No conspiracy, just fact.
Steel ordered from mills by car companies conform to their specifications. It has little to do with the mills other then the bid cost. We went through this before. Some mills could produce the product, some could not but made steel for other uses.
Rust prevention is only used to the degree their cars are mandated by regulation or used as a competitive edge in sales. It takes little effort to make cars generational. It has little to do with unions.