The gas crisis: Who knew it could possibly happen again?

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By Peter Mooney, Special to the Los Angeles Times
Shown here is a July ’73 Datsun ad claiming that by switching from your ‘average’ car to a Datsun, you could save one gallon of fuel a day. (Datsun later changed its name to Nissan. I also changed my name to Nissan at the time but their lawyers made me change it back.)
I was a sophomore in college during the 1973 gas crisis. I lived at school. But I saw the end-of-the-world style lines of cars waiting to get their transfusion of life giving fossil fuel. What’s so interesting to me about every gas crisis is how everybody seems surprised. But it’s one thing for the general populace to always feel caught off guard, it’s another when our big three auto manufacturers and their politicians seem even more shocked than we are.

When I forget the fact that the price of gas is unpredictable it has no effect on anyone. I would have hoped the car companies would be better prepared by now. Decisions made with this mindset have caused eventual plant closings, large-scale job loss and all those giant SUVs, cars and trucks blocking out the sun.

To celebrate the first major fuel crisis the retail price of a gallon of gasoline shot up from 38.5 cents in May to 55.1 cents in June 1974. The New York Stock Exchange shares lost $97 billion in value in six weeks.

Soon, we’d be in one of the greatest recessions ever just in time for me to graduate from UC Santa Barbara and eventually give up looking for that swell job I thought all college grads were entitled to and took one pumping gas at minimum wage.

I remember hearing on the radio around that time the unemployment rate was 10%. So at least I could feel I hadn’t been singled out for humiliation. We were all staring at a new version of reality, much like today.

So, how did car companies get people to throw away their worries and shell out scarce cash for a brand new car they didn’t really need? In the 1970’s, economy car advertising stressed how much you’d save on gas and how little time you’d spend at the pump.

I remember attempting to figure out what I’d have to save on gas to make up for the costs involved in buying a new economy car. The first thing I considered was that my car was paid for. Then I took into consideration how much I’d lose selling my car for whatever the traffic would bear which would never be what the car was truly worth to me. A trade-in with a car dealer would be like giving the car away.

Then I figured out what these new unwelcome car payments would be for a new car and then I added in the finance charge. I decided I would have to drive my new, more fuel-efficient vehicle around the world at least ten times to have it make sense.

But now, as we are in the greatest fuel crisis to date, I believe it’s time for me to look at the whole thing again. Only this time I’ve got 25 years of advertising and marketing experience behind me.

I’ve got the perfect tag line for the big three automakers.

‘WHO KNEW?”