WTVJ / MIAMI - Bob Mayer - 1978 - 'Behind The Wheel In Detroit' - How New Cars Are Made 

This was a great interview! When you questioned the guy about defects on Mondays and Fridays he gave you an entire song and dance about how the cars are just as good when made those days. Then you asked straight out.. are there more defects on Mondays and Fridays. And he said yes. lol

Wow!!! This video was educational. All the things we take for granted today like that in a relatively new car, the A/C would work, fit and finish would be excellent, the engine wouldn't stall in the rain . Or the radio wouldn't stop working .... Or the brake lights wouldn't go out..... Or bad weatherstripping would allow water to seep into the vehicle. Quality has improved leaps and bounds in American cars from the 70s. I have a 2011 Hyundai Elantra made in Birmingham, Alabama. I love it

Second set of comments, on the cars/industry. Unlike the usual RU-vid commenter, I actually have some experience in the industry... 3rd generation Chrysler employee who has done a variety of work in my 22-years of employment. The guy beating the hell out of the '79 Impala? I've been that guy as well as the guy on the line. ASE Certified and very interested in all eras of auto history. Counting my other family members, we've seen the industry from just about every angle. 1979 would have been the absolute low-point and perfect storm of misery for the domestic industry. First of all, I'd like to point out that US emissions standards and fuel economy REQUIREMENTS were (very suddenly) tougher than those imposed anywhere else in the world. Other nations had small cars, but also high fuel taxes that drove demand. While GM perfected the catalytic converter in 1975, the very heart of hydrocarbon and NOx reduction, it wasn't even a requirement in Europe until 1993. At the same time, Chrysler was using the very first "Lean Burn" electronic engine controls to control fuel/air mixtures based on sensor inputs. Yes they were a disaster and they required a helluva learning curve, but the principles are used to this day. While the Japanese were using carburetors and points. It's a larger metaphor for the whole industry... Detroit was forced to re-invent itself in a decade while the Japanese simply built the products it had built a decade earlier from an island insulated from any competition. This requires enormous amounts of capital, and that means those plants suffer deferred maintenance and morale. Add in a decade of US drug-culture as the WWII-era employees retired. Then include the need to work with new plastics and alloys to shed weight. Customers that only wanted small cars when prices spiked. All those gadgets that didn't work in the road tests? Imports usually didn't have them to frustrate their customers. I was absolutely stunned to see the conditions inside those plants. I can't believe they allowed a camera inside!!! Nothing like that exists today. The plants are quiet, bright and well-light. Floors are painted white and so is the machinery. Miss work more than 3-days in a year and you are in an attendance program. Miss two more times and you're fired. But you don't turn a giant ship around like that in a year or two; this isn't a service industry. It's hugely capital intensive. It takes almost a generation to produce the massive shift required. All of that said, the basic engineering of all three companies was solid. Those jobs were still being done by an older generation. Funny enough, I bought a basically untouched '79 New Yorker (just like the one tested) back in the early 2000s. I spent a weekend correcting all the assembly mistakes from 20-years earlier and at the end had a really nice car! I've done the same thing it seems like a dozen times... 70s cars were generally crappy as-delivered. It's a shame they couldn't have deployed a squad of good mechanics at the end of those assembly lines to correct the defects. That is basically what Chrysler did with the 81-83 Imperial, and those cars actually set a record for initial customer satisfaction (Popular Mechanics Owner Survey... Before JD Power existed.) Unfortunately dealer techs weren't up to the electronics diagnosis and screwed that car's reputation; but that's a tale for another day.

I'm glad I stumbled across these videos...I love watching them, very interesting and informative.

Thank you for posting all of these Bob Mayer videos, I am riveted!! Unlike some of the parts in these cars 😜 Love learning about this part of our car culture .

My parents heard about the downsizing coming in '79 and they rushed in one of the last orders for a brand new 1978 Mercury Colony Park woodie wagon. We lived in California and you could only get the 351or 400 engine there so my dad had it shipped from another state with the 460 V8. That was the most gorgeous wagon you've ever seen! Basically a Lincoln Wagon. It even had the concealed headlights. I wish I had it today! The '79 wagons the following model year were cheap looking and butt ugly!

Thanks for the unvarnished history lesson. This is excellent archival material that clinically reveals the Malaise Era at the height of its malaise.

Going to make comments in two areas, first on the coverage/reviews: I've not watched any of the other videos (except the Yugo, for laughs). That said, at least in this series, Bob Mayer does a very good job with both his in-depth Detroit story, and his reviews. He does such a good job of NOT injecting opinion and bias that his style seems as out-of-date as the cars themselves...in a good way!) Useful information, well presented and backed up with visuals. If you're the same person who is posting the videos, I hope you're reading these comments. Good job sir.

My father bought a Ford Mustang in Germany was a beauty....1981

They're more defects on Mondays and Fridays? I would say yes LMAO these are extremely interesting articles please keep posting

7:57 YIKES!! so the legend is true then!! you never buy a car that was built on a Monday or a Friday...

Very cool to watch, thanks for putting this online!!

I love the 1979 Cadillac Eldorado! Bring it back GM!

Very interesting, I was never there but this is like a time machine into seeing what my dad had to deal with growing up!

Other than just being a consumer of the news, I have no real expertise with which to judge your craft. Bearing that in mind, I have to say these are some of the finest consumer reports of that era. My brother bought a new 1979 Ford, Mustang my father had the same year Lincoln, Mark V, and a Mercury, Marquis-brougham; (it just broke his heart to trade in his full-sized '78 Mercury, Marquis-brougham!) My mother-in-law bought an AMC, Spirit And, I had an uncle who bought one of those 1979 Chrysler, New Yorkers that you tested. Out of all of them, I'd have to say the Lincolns and Mercurys were the best. Not that any American-made car of that era was exactly a real prize-winning hog, but adequate, nonetheless. Thank you for sharing your excellent work, Mr. Mayer.

This is why they've gone to robots to build most of the cars. Human error is a lot less likely to happen around a freshly painted car.

The descriptions after about 18:25 I find quite funny. I must say his version of "All the power you could ever want" isn't mine LOL. As well is his description of the Stereos have "Excellent sound or quality" are pretty funny as even back then I was stunned at how low the sound and over all quality of the stereos all companies put in their cars. Very entertaining and a hoot to watch these old videos. Thank you for sharing them with us all!

13:20 Check out those 1978 3D computer graphics! Lolz! : )

13:25 That's quite crude rendition by modern standards, but a lot of late 1970s cars looked as if they had been designed on a system like that. I've always suspected that cars like the Omni 024, the Rover SD1 (3500 over here) and the 1978 Century/Cutlass fastbacks were the products of CAD systems that couldn't draw anything but straight lines.

28:04 I've heard that once the early build problems were ironed out, Chrysler's R bodies were among the best large cars they ever built and were much more reliable than the mid-sized cars they had been selling to police departments (both were descended from the unibody 1962 "downsized" large cars they nearly bankrupted Chrysler). It's a shame the government made the discontinuation of these cars a bailout condition after Chrysler had finally gotten them right.

It's hard to believe all these '70s and '80s model cars came Factory broke

Very coo video! Thanks for posting! Have you got anymore of these?

i love my 1988 Yugo GV!!! A/C still very cold too

The blue Mustang at final with the poor lady trying to start it...... lmfao. Turn the key, pump pump pump the accelerator, suddenly comes to life with a shudder and continuous shaking, like, wowww. Had to be that POS Ford 4 cyl. I believe it was in the Pinto as well. Every one of those i tested for compression, always very uneven, for all the talk of testing and retesting, they blew it with that one.

19:15 Most of those clocks self adjusted each time you set them, so that if he had corrected it each time if lost a minute, it might have been close to perfect by the end of the week.

FYI, the Yugo test drive I did in 1988 can be seen at: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tgG8K86wK2o.html

27:24 i can hear dogs howling in the distance

10:28 omg i‘ve seen this clip where the car hits that center barrier thing like ten years ago BUT NEVER could find it again 🙁 now finally i got it back 😃👍🏻

Series begins at 0:22. Road tests begin at 18:27.

"How polished turds are made... volumes 1-5"

I'm also certain the mustang review was probably the funniest thing i've seen in years. Absolutely priceless. Starts a 20:53

Bob Mayer was fine as hellll!! 👨🏻 👀 beautiful!

Superb voice and clarity of speech. This announcer's posts could be used for English-2nd-Language training.

My sister bought a new 81 Mustang. When she got it home we could see passenger seat back wasn't installed right-it was crooked.

I'll always remember don't buy a car built on Friday lol

Wow, cars today are SO much better. Hard to believe that there was a time where a 'minor' issue in a brand new car was the cruise control not working 100% of the time.

I remember on a RU-vid clip that you drove the Yugo, I take it that was an embarrassment the day you rode it.

"The line doesn't stop." Quality probably didn't care then.

3:40 They just had to film him screwing up. Pun intended.

genuine mono sound!

The Yugo was the worst car I tested in all the 30+ years that I tested cars!

27:43 Wow. The Eldorado got almost the same mileage as the Mustang and the LTD got almost 1MPG better.

12:57 wow. Chrysler building closed in 1992 Opened , 1910. It’s a dealership there now. 😐 dodge , keep, ram, Chrysler dealership.

11:50 Since this was the case I would have thought they would have gotten it a lot better on their Chevy and GMC trucks of that time. Any truck from the 1970's and 1980's was and is just crazy with rust if they are here at all. Which most of them aren't I'd hazard a guess due to their notorious and probably the very worst ever rust in the body. The ENTIRE body. First (after 1 year) the rear quarter panels would start to rust right around the wheel wells then it would spread like a wild fire and inside of four to five years the truck was almost undriveable and certainly not something you wanted to be seen in with all that rust.

And that's why that plant has long been closed by now...

Pontiac Phoenix burned like one as well.

8:10 If repair of all defects was the only reason a car made on a Monday or Friday could be called "just as good" as one from a Wednesday, that doesn't speak well for cars made on Monday or Friday. Who wants to drive a car that has already been touched up and fixed multiple times?

Driving these cars literally felt like being at sea. cars felt so disconnected from the road.

those cars would be so much better if they were made today, reason I like resto mods over original

i see why they use robotics for assembly😆😂

This car is rated for 15 mpg, I got 11...

Moops ... moores! Moop! Moores!! Lol

This video is definitely a time capsule, really, really cool. But, aye yi yi , the american car industry deep in the malaise era. Yikes. Love the mainframe computers, though.

Love that blue '78 Caprice or Impala. 10:30

8:12 no, every car has the same quality one moment later: yes, more defects on mo & fr 😄

8:12 OMG. No wonder Detroit sucked at building cars during those years. Plant manager admitted cars built on Mondays and Fridays had more defects (most of which probably left the assembly line uncorrected). And WTF? The cars get all dinged up in the assembly line and all the workers do is use touch up paint?? On a brand new car?? And 1 every 100 cars that were built didn't even start when they reached the end of the assembly line?!? Damn, the story keeps getting worse. No wonder my mom chose a 1978 Toyota Corona when she graduated high school.

Out of High School ASE certified tech, late 80's, I can attest to seeing a Ford product on the r/o and literally getting nauseous, especially if it was an electrical problem, Ford with the "brain box" Chrysler with the "Lean burn".... headaches and sickness for the all inclusive tech.... Honda civic comes in, just needs brake linings, or a V belt, Toyota the same. Lessons not learned quickly enough, I'm form the Detroit area and it hurt my heart and soul to see what was happening at that time...

1:54 Typical arrogant attitude from Big 3 management at the time. Ford was in fact 2 years behind GM in launching small cars. Yet, they sat on their laurels. All this while the Japanese were building better cars and starting to build a presence in North America.

No there is no truth to the cars being inferior on Mondays and Fridays. Are they more prone to defects on those day? Yes 🤣

This is a Chevy guy for sure ford LTD was better deal then the . El Dorado and the Ford LTD was less than half the price

The Capri was a turd

The lack of quality in cars back then is hilarious to watch. That Mustang was disgraceful.

Bob goes now here's next weeks piece of shit lol

These cars had the worst build quality EVER!