The winds of optimism that wafted through the auto industry during the 1950s and into the 1960s started to peter out by mid-decade. In the U.S., the sense of optimism and prosperity was pierced by the Vietnam War, which was brought directly into living rooms by that new invention, the television. Many young people began to question what they were fighting for. As surely as the crew-cut GI morphed into the long-haired hippie, the 1960s gave birth to willingness to debate authority and government policy.
