Back in April 1973, the American automobile industry was shaking in its tires. Detroit was under siege, as the Middle East played its trump card, restricting the flow of oil and sending the price of gasoline soaring into the stratosphere; some expected it to reach $1 a gallon e’er long.

Americans were still enamoured with the six-passenger car powered by a V-8 engine. If you wanted roominess, power and comfort, you bought American. But the few economy models Detroit was able to serve up were weak competitors for the array of models offered by the Japanese and Europeans, who had been designing fuel-efficient cars for ages.

What’s more, American manufacturers had not yet discovered the importance of quality. I could testify to that. My big, powerful stationwagon had rolled off the delivery truck with its handsome wood-grain finish already in a state of deterioration. After only a few miles, the radiator sprang a leak. The automatic choke never worked properly. Before it reached 70,000 miles, the power steering unit had to be replaced.

And there was the pollution issue. As smog descended on Los Angeles and other motor-dependent cities, the Environmental Protection Agency, called into being by the Nixon administration, mandated strict emission controls, which directly affected engine performance. The motor magazines were predicting that the 1972 model would be the last “good” model produced by American manufacturers for years to come. The 1973 models were already producing fuel economy 10 percent lower than their predecessors, thanks to mandated emission controls.

But Volkswagen’s frontwheel-drive Rabbit was hopping lustily along at 30 miles to the gallon, Toyota and Datsun (soon to be renamed Nissan) were rolling high-quality, fuel-efficient cars across American highways, Honda was proving that it could make cars as well as motorcycles, and Subaru was fighting for a toe-hold.

Things didn’t look good for Detroit.

I was the environmental reporter for the old Norfolk Ledger-Star in those days, and so I went to hear an executive engineer with one of Detroit’s “Big Three,” who spoke at a Norfolk hotel.

The other day, I ran across the story I wrote.

It began:

“The longer, lower and wider dreamboat that accelerated its way into the hearts of a generation of lead-footed Americans is disappearing into a smoggy sunset, its twin exhausts puffing clouds of pollution and its thirsty four-barrel carburetors gulping down a final toast to the horsepower race.

“Coming over the hill yonder in the future is tomorrow’s car – a bit vague in outline as yet, but nevertheless somewhat smaller, less powerful, bristling with safety equipment, its exhaust stream filtered through a labyrinth of emission controls that add hundreds of dollars to the price and subtract economy and performance from the engine.”

The old “bigger and better” concept of Amercan motordom was dying of twin ailments, I wrote: the energy crisis with its soaring fuel prices, and the environmental movement with its emphasis on clean air. Already the mid-size cars – Ford’s Torino, Chevolet’s Chevelle, Plymouth’s Satellite and Dodge’s Coronet – had begun to outsell the full-size models. But these intermediates were giants compared to the fuel-sipping imports.

“Americans, basking in the luxury of a supposedly limitless fuel supply, have allowed their cars to grow to outsize proportions by European standards, although the interior accommodations have remained limited,” I wrote. “The growth has been in the engine and rear-deck areas.”

I noted, for instance that the Mercedes Benz 300 SEL sedan had 18 inches less wheelbase than “a leading American luxury sedan,” and was half a ton lighter. It was 3 feet shorter overall, and its engine had only 58 percent of its American rival’s displacement. Yet, a consumer testing publication found that Mercedes offered 5.2 inches more rear-seat legroom while offering around a half-inch less front legroom. It produced 60 percent better fuel mileage and beat the American car from 0 to 60 by 1.3 seconds.

I probably got the Big Three engineer in trouble back in Detroit with my next paragraph. I paraphrased him as saying that “American automobiles have made less efficient use of their space because of styling considerations. The energy shortage and clean-air movement may force more attention to efficiency and less to styling. American manufacturers are turning to the catalytic converter as the answer to the problem of cleaning up the exhaust streams of a broad range of engine sizes. … Three foreign manufacturers are marketing cars they believe will meet the stringent 1975 standards. They are Mercedes-Benz, with its diesel; Honda with its stratified charge, and Mazda, with its Wankel rotery-piston engine.”

The Detroit engineer dismissed the diesel because “it smokes, it smells and it emits oxides of nitrogen.”

The stratified charge held promise, he said, but the Wankel “is expensive and uses more fuel than a conventional engine of similar output.”

Detroit did go through a period in which it was forced to sacrifice performance for fuel economy and cleaner emissions. General Motors offered diesel versions of its gasoline-powered V-8s. I remember Chrysler’s forgettable K cars, Chevrolet’s Vega – which it would like to forget – and Ford’s Pinto, which tended to ignite when struck from the rear and was never a world-beater in peformance or fuel economy.

The American industry was nearly brought to its knees, but today’s domestic products are presenting lusty challenges to competitors from abroad, most of which are made in this country anyway.

My copy of the old story shows a circle drawn around the paragraph that blamed styling considerations for less efficient use of space. In the margin is a hand-written note from the engineer: “Gene Owens, you have not reflected the truth.”

But I thought I came reasonably close.

Readers may write Gene Owens at 104 Belspring Lane, Anderson SC 29621 or email him at WadesDixieco@AOL.com.