The Outlook for Autos

When I first arrived in America, America seemed to be all about cars. It was the early 1980s, and I had come over from Ireland to do a Ph.D. in economics at Michigan State University. The campus was strewn with the hand-me-down vehicles of the student body – great gas-guzzling behemoths rendered hopelessly uncompetitive by the soaring gas prices of the 1970s and fighting a losing battle against Japanese imports. Still, the domestic auto industry was crucial to the U.S. and particularly Michigan, and rising sales numbers, released every 10-days, were monitored as the hopeful early shoots of recovery from the brutal double-barreled recessions of 1980 and 1981-82.

You can listen to The Outlook for Autos online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

The Outlook for Autos is an episode from Notes on the Week Ahead by Dr. David Kelly.

This episode is 10:21 long.

This episode was published on Dec 1, 2025.

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