Liberal Do-Gooders

--the hideous 1976 AMC Matador Coupe,
the beginning of the end

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories,
the police are prowling through the cities,
the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers,
but the earth is still going round the sun
--Some Thoughts on the Common Toad, 
George Orwell 

Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes our way 
--Born to be Wild, Steppenwolf

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Just an ironic aside:

In last night's third Presidential debate, candidate Mitt Romney said he did not want to see car companies fail, giving by way of explanation the fact that his father George once headed one.

Mr. Romney the elder left the helm of American Motor Company (AMC) in 1962 to become governor of Michigan leaving his his successor, Roy Abernathy, to compete with the Big Three.  But I especially liked this description of the typical AMC customer:

From a book reviewed in Esquire ("Cool Cars Nobody Wants") author Alan Wellikoff describes the 1974-75 AMC Matador as heralding the car company's inexorable decline:

"long considered the automaker to geeks, American Motors began its slow decline, we believe, when the liberal do-gooders who made up its core market began earning enough money to buy Scandinavian cars."

<sup>It is hard to make the leap from the Matador to Scandinavian sensibility, and amusing to consider that the senior Mr. Romney was once the pied piper of "liberal do-good" style.  The author of the Cool Car piece articulates the crux of the biscuit, really: When your liberal do-gooders move up and out into that Scan style, your home-grown products are sunk. 

Who would have known that Scan design from the likes if IKEA would one day be a Chinese stepchild?</sup>