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Thanks, brbethke. Here's where I'm heading:

What I discovered from the first three articles is that politics do matter: the bad times don't exist unto themselves, they come from somewhere, and things affect them one way or another, good and bad. Coming out of WWI, for example, the Wilson economic policies were disastrous upon the automobile industry. Or, FDR set in place not only Big Labor but the Big Three, which prior to the 1930s had not existed, or was not a set deal. (This observation, btw, goes against much of the established history on entry/exit and the growth of the automobile industry; I do not believe that the Big Three came about as a pre-ordained affair, as most economists treat it.) Studying WWII I was stunned to find that in his hyperactive anti-inflation measures Truman really screwed the auto industry and furthered the supremacy of the Big Three and Big Labor.

My questions are simple: what happened during the 1970s, and why? ....lol! The period is complicated: politics, economics, social trends all converged upon the automobile in a period of turbulence and change. I've got 3,000 words to figure it out...! I'll be pouring through the contemporaneous publications. What I'm interested in from Freepers is some direction, what to look for and why.

Here are two questions, brbethke: Did the small car triumph in the 1970s, or did the government just want it to? And what did consumers really want, and did Detroit give it to them?