So to say Walt Kowalski’s Gran Torino is a cinematic metaphor doesn’t really do it justice. That failure took Detroit - a once-beautiful city of broad avenues and majestic public spaces - straight to hell. It was this generation of carmakers, and indeed the one that came after, that failed to answer the challenges of an increasingly competitive global market. It was this generation of cars, which almost seemed to radiate contempt for their buyers, that drove Americans into the embrace of Japanese automakers when they came. The following year’s OPEC oil embargo sent them reeling. The Big Three would never again be as comfortable, and arrogant, and solipsistic, as they were then. automakers, the year that Detroit’s mighty cylinders began to seize. Managers were afraid to walk the factory floors alone.Īnd 1972 was in many ways an inflection point for the U.S. Drug use, absenteeism and even sabotage were endemic. Shop foremen battled against even the most common-sense efforts at accountability and quality control. In 1972, Detroit’s unionized workforce was in the full flower of its indifference. You could blame Ford’s penny-chiseling management for the Torino’s mediocrity, but you would also have to indict the assembly line. For 1972, the Torino returned to a virtually obsolete and inferior body-on-frame design, which lowered the costs of putting multiple body styles on the chassis. The previous model-year car was built on a unitized steel chassis, or monocoque, like modern cars. That year’s Torino - “Gran” or otherwise - also represented a significant retreat in terms of engineering. The 1972 Gran Torino was one of no less than nine largely redundant iterations of the Torino nameplate, part of a classic Detroit product strategy that attempted to fill every cranny of the segment at the lowest possible investment. (This isn’t the car’s first brush with pop-culture fame: A mid-’70s Gran Torino, with white hockey-stick paint scheme, starred in the TV series “Starsky and Hutch” and the 2004 retread movie.) That this oaf of a car should be given the sporty-sounding but nonsensical Italian name Gran Torino - meaning “great Turin” - is a bleak joke. It lacked even minimum corrosion proofing and so rusted with relish in northern climates. It handled like a block of ice with a steering wheel. Let’s begin with the thing itself: The car was tubby and it was awkward. You could prowl vintage car shows for years and not find an automobile that, in its malign typicality, better summarizes Detroit’s fall than the 1972 Gran Torino. Why not something heroic, a Chevrolet Camaro or Corvette? Why not a Dodge Challenger or even a boattail Buick Riviera? Why did the director (Eastwood again) go with a Gran Torino as the motorized MacGuffin? Hence.The title character in Clint Eastwood’s Motor City morality tale is, by the reaching light of history, a fairly negligible hunk of machinery: a green 1972 Ford Gran Torino Sport, with a sleek “SportsRoof” and a gold “Laser Stripe,” one of many million overfed, undersprung and largely unlamented muscle cars that poured out of Ford, GM and Chrysler factories in the early 1970s. But what is a Crossword? Terminologies and TypesĬrossword Puzzles A crossword is a puzzle with overlapping answer words.Meet Myles Mellor, a true puzzle expert who turned his passion into. From Puzzle Enthusiast to Crossword Syndicate Extraordinaire.The Art of Crafting Crossword Puzzles: Insights from an Oregon Puzzle CreatorĬrossword puzzles are a beloved pastime for many people, but what goes.Unveiling the Compact Charm of NYT’s Bite-sized Crossword In a world where. In the old town of Ashland resides a crossword creator extraordinaire, Steve. From Ashland to The New York Times: The Journey of an Amateur Cruciverbalist.When facing difficulties with puzzles or our website in general, feel free to drop us a message at the contact page. Today's puzzle is listed on our homepage along with all the possible crossword clue solutions. This crossword clue might have a different answer every time it appears on a new New York Times Puzzle, please read all the answers until you find the one that solves your clue. When you see multiple answers, look for the last one because that’s the most recent. Did you came up with a solution that did not solve the clue? No worries the correct answers are below. Gran Torino eg Crossword Clue Answers are listed below.
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