1950s America

• When former General Motors chief executive Charles Wilson was President Dwight Eisenhower's secretary of defense, the media famously misquoted him as once saying, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." The sentiment, however, stuck. GM was the largest corporation in the United States in the 1950s and pretty much had carte blanche to produce whatever it wanted. That meant producing behemoth cars with inefficient gas-guzzling engines, poor suspension and brakes.
  
  

The Roadster

• Military servicemen brought home European two-seater sports cars after the end of the war. The first to arrive on American shores was the 1945 MG TC, and after 1950, the MG TD. The MG featured a 54 horsepower in-line four-cylinder engine. It wasn't just transportation, but a joy to drive. After four years of war in North Africa and Europe, ex-GIs were used to danger and fast, low-slung open cars fit the postwar lifestyle. Detroit automakers, recognizing that foreign roadsters were eating into their profits, produced the 1953 Chevrolet Corvette and the 1955 Ford Thunderbird.
  
  

Volkswagen

• No other foreign car had a bigger impact on the U.S. automotive industry than the Volkswagen Beetle. It rose from the ashes of a destroyed postwar Germany and exported to North America in 1949. It featured a puny 36 horsepower in-four-cylinder engine and a Beetle-shaped body that Detroit abhorred. It was the antithesis of the American automobile. Yet more than 300,000 Beetles left showrooms in 1957 alone. By the end of the decade, on the drawing boards or in production were American compact cars: the Chevrolet Corvair, Ford Falcon, Plymouth Valiant, Studebaker Lark and AMC Rambler.
  
  

Technology

• The German automotive electronics supplier Bosch developed fuel injection for automotive road use and performance auto racing in the early 1950s. Chevrolet adopted fuel injection for its optional 283 cubic-inch V-8, but American cars did adopt its widespread use until the 1980s. By 1958, Bosch employed semiconductors in generators that eliminated the wear and tear of breaker-tripper circuits and helped reduced the generator's size. Bosch also developed braking assistance in the 1950s. In 1952, the Jaguar C-Type employed all-wheel disc brakes. The French-built Citroen introduced disc brakes in 1955. No production American car received them until the 1960s.
  
  

Advertising Industry

• In the late 1950s, Volkswagen initiated a print advertising campaign that sent the message that ugly was cool. VW specialized in counterintuitive self-deprecating advertising, such as displaying a photograph of the Beetle above the headline "Lemon" or using full-page newspaper or magazine space with a tiny Beetle in the upper left-hand corner and the headline at the bottom reading "Think Small." Ad Age ranked "Think Small" first in its Top 100 Advertising Campaigns. VW ads influenced such product advertising as Charmin bath tissue in its 1964 "Please Don't Squeeze the Charmin" campaign and American Tourister's gorilla abusing a suitcase in the late 1960s.