Your right and I agree that the carmakers fell alseep and got caught. Import cars when you and I were kids were total junk. Bad cheap shit and there was no doubt. Today, they rule the world.

Chrysler has great stuff today and they shold have done it in the 80's like you say. Gleasons made all the gear cutting machines but never wanted to go after the gears for front wheel drive cars. they, like the car makers suffered heavy for those mistakes.

It was always more simple. I often wonder if all this progress, inflation and upward spiraling is worth it. We have tonns of shit today. games, gadgets and widgets that make our lives simple and easy?! or not. It all comes at a cost.

Remember when the stereo system was all american, like you say? you had a choice to listen to the radio or listen to a record. NOW, good god! tubes or ss. SET or Mosfet, Radio, records, CD's DVD audio, SACD Mp3, and satellite radio for goodness sake. you get the idea. too many choices.

It's all a pyrmid scheme and its getting close to the top. I think we are all after nastalgia for one single reason. It was simple and its relaxing.

The hard decision is. We all want to earn more money, have our house values increase for no reason and have a retirment plan that we could actually live on for a few years. But, we want to be less frustrated, fewer traffic jams, less trips to the store to buy and finance some new thing everyone else has to make things easy. and lets not forget it would be nice to take less prozak, heartburn, blood pressure and cholesteral medications too.

I dont know if we make things that are inferior for any other reason than affordability. Speaking of cars though. I always thought the car companies were holding out on fuel economy technology to hold up the heads of the oil industry. If a driver in a race car can survive a crash at 150mph, why is it so many 50 mph crash's produce fatalities