For those of you who drove a Japanese import in the 60’s/70’s/early 80’s, did you get any heat from family/friends/coworkers/general public about your choice of car? How bad was it? What were some of the consequences and what was the most extreme example you’ve seen or heard of?
This question applies to americans as well as some western europeans, whose auto industries were also in decline with the exception of germany.
This discussion might also be a good predictor of what will await the first owners of chinese cars when they do arrive in north america.
This also makes me wonder if there was any animosity toward owning a German car in the 60s’ and 70s’. VW’s looked distinctly different than American cars and the whole Nazi connection seems like it would still be a sensitive issue for a portion of the general public.
Yes there was. My father bough a 1974 VW. Beetle as a second car. It was inexpensive and he had about a 20 min drive back and forth to the steel mill he worked at. The Bug got great gas mileage compared to the Plymouth Satellite he had with a 318 V8. He owned it about 2 years and caught crap daily for driving not only driving a foreign car, but a German made car.