Many of the most important vehicles built in the United States since the end of World War II—cars that defined new style, pioneered new technology or just plain kept companies going—are overlooked to this day. The innovations implemented by these cars and trucks seemed at the time so minor that few realized they were, in fact, revolutionary. So, this Fourth of July weekend, we celebrate our favorite unsung American car heroes.

By the mid-1980s American buyers were fleeing traditional American family cars in favor of vehicles like the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry. But Ford’s 1986 Taurus changed all that.

Obviously designed with aerodynamics as the foremost consideration, the first Taurus was undeniably different. But, beyond that, its neat size and elegant packaging meant buyers instantly perceived this sedan as a better, more modern car. There wasn’t a single frivolous styling flourish on the Taurus; this was a rational, attractive car that seemed to promise years of reliable motoring.

Mechanically, the first Taurus wasn’t actually all that radical—it was simply a front-drive unibody vehicle with either a four- or six-cylinder engine mounted transversely between the front wheels. The suspension consisted of simple MacPherson struts at each corner in the sedan with the wagon using control arms in the back to maintain a lower load floor. But it was straightforward engineering that made the Taurus an honest value.

Americans bought the original Taurus in droves and it soon established itself as the best-selling car in the country, with over 400,000 units a year finding their way into buyers’ hands. And it re-established Ford as a maker of mainstream, family-friendly transportation.

Conventional wisdom says the first “muscle car” was the 1964 Pontiac GTO. But more sophisticated automotive enthusiasts know that the 1955 Chrysler 300 has the better claim to being first.

By 1954 Chrysler’s Hemi V8 (introduced for 1951) was already approaching hagiographic status—it had had success in Briggs Cunningham’s Le Mans vehicles and was quickly becoming a favorite of drag racers. Robert Rodger, then Chrysler’s chief engineer, was convinced that a standard 331-cu.-in. (5.4-liter) Hemi running one of Cunningham’s camshafts, solid lifters and dual four-barrel carburetors could produce a reliable and smooth 300 hp. The problem? There was no proper car in which to showcase such an impressive powerplant.

So Rodger created one. He took the top-of-the line Imperial’s nose, combined it with the lighter New Yorker two-door hardtop shell and grafted the rear quarter panels from the Windsor. Of course the only natural name for a car with 300 hp was “300.”

Back when NASCAR’s top Grand National series still used cars that were close to stock automobiles, the Chrysler 300 was crushingly dominant. That year Tim Flock drove one of Carl Kiekhaefer’s 300s to 18 wins in 38 races and a total of 32 top-five finishes. Throw in another three wins each for Tim’s brother Fonty and Lee Petty and that put the 300’s win total at 24. And Kiekhaefer’s Mercury Outboards team racked up that record without any factory support.

The 300’s immediate successor, the 1956 300-B, would establish the tradition of Chrysler’s legendary “letter” cars. But it’s the powerful, confident and race-winning original 300 that first brought true muscle to the American market.

Volkswagen began producing its Rabbit in the United States at a plant in New Stanton, Pa., in 1978, with almost instantly disastrous results. Instead of duplicating the German-made Rabbit (sold as the Golf there) that had been on sale in the U.S. since the 1975 model year, VW “Americanized" the Rabbit for this market with square headlamps, a squishier suspension, color-keyed interior bits, and some of the ugliest hub caps ever press-fit onto 13-in. wheels. It was a betrayal of all the reasons VW had been enjoying success in America.

But during the 1983 model year VW came to its senses and began producing a sporty GTI version of the Rabbit for American consumption. Featuring a slightly enlarged 1.8-liter, fuel-injected, four-cylinder engine making 90 hp and a close-ratio five-speed manual transmission, the U.S. GTI was in most ways a direct match for the legendary European-market model. And it proved nearly as popular over here as it was over there.

The GTI was the first of the “hot hatchbacks" that combined driving excitement with the practicality and thriftiness of a small front-drive economy car. You bought it because it was fun to drive, not just because it was cheap and fuel efficient. And it was the first small performance car to attract a significant enthusiast following in America.

But it wasn’t enough to save VW’s American plant. It closed ignominiously on July 14, 1988.

There had been overhead-valve V8 engines before Oldsmobile’s fabulous 1949 Rocket V8 (the incredibly awful 1917 Chevrolet Model D, for instance), but this was the first mass-produced, popularly priced, thoroughly modern, OHV V8 to take hold in the marketplace. And, wow, did it take hold.

Displacing just 303 cu. in. (5.0 liters), the first Olds V8 was rated at a thrilling (for the time) 135 hp—enough to make the 88 one of the quickest cars of its era and a dominating presence in early stock car racing. Soon every American manufacturer had an OHV V8 of its own. The design became the quintessential American powerplant.

Sure, Ford’s 1932 flathead V8 was the first V8 in a reasonably priced car. But it was the Oldsmobile Rocket V8 that, for nearly 60 years, has set the standard.

Pickup trucks were originally developed as work vehicles, originally sold as work vehicles and originally bought as work vehicles. After all, who would want to drive around in a pickup truck all day if they didn’t have to? Give the pickup truck a little extra cab room, however, and it turns out that millions of Americans would happily drive a pickup as everyday transportation.

Dodge was a perennial third-place finisher in the pickup-sales race when it had the bright idea of adding 18 in. of additional length to its D-100 cab to create what it called the “Club Cab” for 1973. Finally, here was a truck with enough weather-protected room that you could take your groceries home in the rain. And thanks to two small jumpseats, you could carry five people in a pinch. The pickup truck now had the capability to haul something other than plywood and potting soil: actual people.

While the Club Cab sold well, few would have thought this was the start of a revolution in how pickup trucks were used in America—not as workhorses but as personal transportation. But it was.

Chrysler’s superboxy, megaboring and thoroughly plain K-Cars—the Dodge Aries and Plymouth Reliant—saved the company from bankruptcy. There’s no way to argue or imply that these front-drivers were technologically daring or innovative, but they made a virtue out of being pedestrian, and they sold in huge numbers.

Chrysler was in such desperate shape by the end of the 70s that it went to the U.S. government looking for help. And in order to get that help, then chairman Lee Iacocca freely shared plans for the car he assured lawmakers would save the company: the K-Car. Iacocca was an effective salesman and in 1980 President Carter signed the Loan Guarantee Act, ensuring that Chrysler would be around long enough to at least launch those K-Cars.

But even Iacocca must have been shocked by the success of the four-cylinder 1981 models. There may not have been one single exciting molecule in any K-Car’s structure, but buyers (many of which were fleets) seemed to like their no-nonsense construction and scant ornamentation. And, of course, everyone loved those low, low sticker prices.

Strapped for cash throughout the ’80s, Chrysler would spend the decade coming up with seemingly endless variations on the K-Car, ranging from the completely forgotten Plymouth Caravelle sedan to the sporty Dodge Daytona Turbo Z coupe. But the company’s real stroke of K-Car genius came with the creation of the Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager for the ’84 model year. Yes, the K-Car was the basis for the minivan revolution.

There are people who seem to believe that sport utility vehicles emerged from some sort of evil Detroit conspiracy to pillage the earth’s resources. Not so. In fact, even as late as the early ’80s GM, Ford and Chrysler saw SUVs as marginal products with a limited audience. Until, that is, Jeep came out with the 1984 Cherokee.

Back then, Jeep was a backwater brand owned by also-ran American Motors Corporation. The operations of America’s “little fourth” car company rarely concerned the larger manufacturers. But scraping together a few bucks from then-partner Renault, Jeep poured all its talents into developing its first unibody vehicle, the compact “XJ” Cherokee and Wagoneer.

Ford and Chevy were already in the compact SUV game with the half-effort Bronco II and S10 Blazer, but while those two were capable vehicles, their utility was limited—they were both two-doors. The Cherokee, meanwhile, was available in both two-door and four-door versions. Those extra two doors made all the difference in the world.

The four-door Cherokee was the first domestically built, compact SUV that was wholly useful as a family machine. It was a station wagon without the station wagon stigma; something a young family could pile into that looked rugged instead of over-decorated. The Cherokee was a huge hit, almost instantly doubling Jeep’s sales and completely revitalizing the brand. And because it was a Jeep, with durable solid axles at each end of its chassis, the XJ was then and is today a cult favorite among hardcore off-road enthusiasts.

The Cherokee was such a fundamentally sound design that it remained in production through the 2001 model year.

Eventually Chevy would add a second set of doors to the Blazer, and the Bronco II would evolve into the Explorer. SUVs would go on to rule the ’90s. But it was the unexpected success of the Jeep Cherokee that opened the eyes of Detroit to the massive market for SUVs.

By the mid-1970s America had already gone through a couple of fuel crises and was generally caught up in the malaise of a stubbornly sluggish and inflationary economy. But the cars the Big Three (it was still the “Big Three” back then) were making at the time were still giant parade floats. For example, the 1976 Chevrolet Caprice sedan stretched out a full 222.9 in. long. That’s a half inch longer than a 2008 Suburban. Even an organization as inherently conservative as General Motors recognized that cars were going to have to get smaller.

And smaller is exactly what appeared for the 1977 model year in all of GM’s showrooms as it “downsized” its biggest sedans. The ’77 Caprice, for example, saw its wheelbase shrink 5.5 in. down to 116.0 in. and overall length dwindle down to 212.1 in. Beyond that, the big-block 454-cu.-in. V8 was gone from the lineup; the biggest engine available was a relatively modest 350-cu.-in. (5.7-liter) small-block V8.

It was an open question whether the public would embrace the smaller full-size cars. That embrace was more like a bear hug, with Chevy selling an utterly stunning 661,661 Impalas and Caprices during the first model year—up 237,805 units over the ’76 models. Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac all experienced similar success with their downsized big cars.

There’s a natural reluctance to think of the Honda Accord as an American car, but with the opening of Honda’s automotive assembly plant in Marysville, Ohio, in 1982, that’s exactly what it became. Sure, that first Ohio-built Accord used a lot of parts imported from Japan, but the North American content of the Accord has steadily increased ever since, and every subsequent redesign of the car was further optimized for America. And because of this, the Accord has been ludicrously successful sales-wise.

Foreign manufacturers had tried establishing American manufacturing facilities before Honda (most notably Volkswagen during the ’70s), but it was the Marysville plant that proved it was a smart business move. Soon afterward Toyota, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Subaru and Mitsubishi followed Honda’s example.

Today, most of the products Honda sells in America are built in America using American-made parts from American suppliers. And that’s true for the company’s arch competitor, Toyota, too. In many (but certainly not all) buyers’ minds Hondas and Toyotas are as American as, well, Ford and Chevrolet.

Small cars were practically nonexistent on American roads until a German automaker named Volkswagen began importing the Beetle in 1949. It took more than 10 years, but General Motors and Ford both responded to VW’s increasing sales with radically different compact cars for the 1960 model year—the Chevrolet Corvair and the Ford Falcon.

The Corvair, with it’s rear-mounted, air-cooled, flat Six engine and a diabolical swing-axle rear suspension was certainly innovative for Detroit. But safety concerns would attract Ralph Nader’s wrath a few years later. A total of 250,027 Corvairs were sold that first model year. In contrast, the Falcon was a strictly conventional, if slightly scaled down, American car with Ford’s familiar straight Six engine in its nose and a solid rear axle in back suspended on leaf springs. Ford sold an astonishing 435,676 Falcons during that first model year and Nader never uttered a peep.

While the Corvair has a devoted cult following today, it was never more than a middling success commercially and a technological dead end. Meanwhile the Falcon may not have engendered as much passion, but it sold in huge numbers and set the pattern for virtually all compact cars sold in America for the next two decades. And when Ford decided to grab a slice of the youth market in the mid-1960s, the engineers simply slapped some more attractive sheetmetal over the Falcon’s mechanical bits and created the Mustang.

The ultimate measure of the Falcon’s success is that Chevrolet was compelled to introduce a car just as strictly conventional two years later in the form of the Chevy II Nova.

I used to make fun of Chrysler worshipers. I always said those types marched to a different drummer. However, I have an ‘02 Ram 1500 with 265K miles on it. Original engine.

I plan to get 400 - 500K out of it. When I was a kid, any iron that got over 100K over it was unheard of.

if you added an oil accumulator and a pre-oil system to a modern port injection engine 400,000 miles would not be out of the question.

The owner of a local repair shop that I patronize was service manager for a large Honda dealership for several years. He told me that it was not all that unusual to see a Honda come in that had 300K or more on the original engine, and had seen more than one with 400K. I can't vouch for his truthfulness, so take it FWIW.

One of my responsibilities as service manager for a national corporation was keeping track of maintenance on the delivery truck fleet. It was not too unusual for our F-700 Ford trucks' 390 ci gas engines to go over 300K highway miles without any major engine work, and I know of at least one 18-wheeler over the road tractor with a Caterpillar diesel engine that went over the million mile mark before an overhaul. My experience on that job gave me a lot of respect for Caterpillar equipment.

Every time I see a Lincoln Navigator, I think of that car. Heh heh heh

"You think you hate it now, wait until you drive it."

i was 6yrsold in 61 when we got it and that was the last 2door we had. my Dad never complained.

saturday mornings were fun since he had to take it up the four lane to "Blow the Carbon out of it." built up during the week... of course i always had to go with. 8^)

The Ford FE engine which included the 390 used in all the heavy duty models was an engineering feat; short of running one out of oil they ere nearly indestructinle other than severe overheating.

They were built with seasoned blocks, forged crankshafts, forged connecting rods, forged camshaft, high voluime oil pumps, sodium filled exhaust valves and equipped with governors to limit any chance of overspeed.

The cam profile combined with a favorable bore/stroke ratio allowed for over 420 ft. lbs. torque at 3300 rpm; transmission selections along with two speed differentials allowed for extreme loads to be handled with ease by an experienced operator.

If there was a weak point it was the valve springs and top end over oiling which mostly led to carbon buildup with poorly maintained fleets.

We had these on our 4600 Manitowoc draglines. They had Cat 379 stationary engines which we worth 12000-15000 hours per overhaul. These motors probably would not have lasted 10,000 hours without this early prelube system.

True story, the brakes gave out and it started rolling backwards on a slight hill. Three people couldn’t stop it from crashing into the car behind it (try as we might). It completely caved in the side of the car it hit and only had slight damage to the chrome on the tip of a wing. It is a tank...

That was never my experience. During my formative years, I had both a Pinto (a ‘71) and and Mustang II (a ‘74 Ghia). Trust me - the Pinto was the better car.

The Rabbit GTI. German engineering combined with legendary UAW craftsmanship turned a decent pocket rocket into a mechanic’s constant companion.

Too bad they didn’t build them in Germany.

here are 2 under appreciated:

1972 Ford Maverick Grabber

1976 Dodge Dart

Agree with the Taurus. I have had five or six in the past, and loved everyone of them. Although, my favorite was a SHO I had sometimes in the 90’s. Hubby worked for Ford and we got a new car every year and sometimes two. My favorite car of the 27 years was the Mark VIII.

Now yur talkin!

Inside my '66:

Actually, though, you can hardly call Impala underappreciated. From something like 61 to 69 they were the largest selling car in American history. Beat out finally only by the Escort, if memory serves.

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Top 10 Underappreciated All-American Cars And Trucks

1972 Ford Maverick Grabber

1976 Dodge Dart