Economy rises
Cadillac Seville - 1983
The Cadillac Seville is a luxury car that was
manufactured by the Cadillac Motor Car
Division of American automaker General
Motors from 1975 to 2004, as a smaller-sized
top-of-the-line Cadillac.
Pontiac Astre Wagon - 1975
The Pontiac Astre is a subcompact
automobile that was marketed by the Pontiac
division of General Motors as a rebadged
variant of the Chevrolet Vega. Initially
marketed in Canada for model years 1973-
1974, the Astre debuted in the U.S. for the
1975 model year, competing with other
domestic and foreign subcompacts that
included the Mercury Bobcat and Toyota
Corolla.
AMC Pacer Wagon - 1976
The AMC Pacer is a two-door compact
automobile that was produced in the United
States by the American Motors Corporation
between 1975 and 1980.
Cadillac Allante - 1991
The Allanté is a two-door, two-seater
roadster manufactured and marketed by
Cadillac from 1986 until 1993, with roughly
21,000 units built over a seven-year
production run.
The collections Allante is driven only 34 000
km´s and is for sale from the first owner.
Smart Crossblade - 2002
Crossblade: a 2002 limited-edition variant of
the city cabrio, a roadster without a
windshield, roof or conventional doors. Its
weight was still 740 kilograms (1,630 lb). The
Brabus-tuned engine developed 52 kW (71
PS) from its 599 cc engine. After Robbie
Williams purchased Crossblade number 008,
Smart began a marketing association with
him, using him to promote the brand and the
new Forfour.
Special vehicles
Back in 70´s BK-Group ordered several
specially equipped bus bodies from Kiitokori,
Kausala Finland. Renting the buses was a
huge success for the multiple uses as a
showroom on the road.
1970-1979
In the 21st century historians have increasingly portrayed the decade as a "pivot of change" in world history focusing especially on the economic
upheavals. In the Western world, social progressive values that began in the 1960s, such as increasing political awareness and political and economic
liberty of women, continued to grow. In the United Kingdom the 1979 elections resulted in the victory of its Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher,
the first and to date only female British Prime Minister. Industrialized countries, except Japan, experienced an economic recession due to an oil crisis
caused by oil embargoes by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries. The crisis saw the first instance of stagflation which began a
political and economic trend of the replacement of Keynesian economic theory with neoliberal economic theory, with the first neoliberal governments
being created in Chile, where a military coup led by Augusto Pinochet took place in 1973.
Novelist Tom Wolfe coined the term "'Me' decade" in his essay "The 'Me' Decade and the Third Great Awakening", published by New York magazine in
August 1976 referring to the 1970s. The term describes a general new attitude of Americans towards atomized individualism and away from
communitarianism in clear contrast with the 1960s.
In Asia, affairs regarding the People's Republic of China changed significantly following the recognition of the PRC by the United Nations, the death of
Mao Zedong and the beginning of market liberalization by Mao's successors. Despite facing an oil crisis due to the OPEC embargo, the economy of Japan
witnessed a large boom in this period, overtaking the economy of West Germany to become the second-largest in the world. The United States withdrew
its military forces from their previous involvement in the Vietnam War which had grown enormously unpopular. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded
Afghanistan which led to an ongoing war for ten years.
The 1970s saw an initial increase in violence in the Middle East as Egypt and Syria declared war on Israel, but in the late 1970s, the situation in the
Middle East was fundamentally altered when Egypt signed the Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty. Anwar El Sadat, President of Egypt, was instrumental in the
event and consequently became extremely unpopular in the Arab World and the wider Muslim world. He was assassinated in 1981. Political tensions in
Iran exploded with the Iranian Revolution in 1979 which overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty and established an Islamic republic of Iran under the leadership
of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
The economies of much of the developing world continued to make steady progress in the early 1970s, because of the Green Revolution. They might
have thrived and become stable in the way that Europe recovered after World War II through the Marshall Plan; however, their economic growth was
slowed by the oil crisis but boomed immediately after.
1980-1989
The time period saw great social, economic, and general change as wealth and production migrated to newly industrializing economies. As economic
liberalization increased in the developed world, multiple multinational corporations associated with the manufacturing industry relocated into Thailand,
Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, and China. Japan and West Germany are the most notable developed countries that continued to enjoy rapid economic
growth during the decade; Japan's would stall by the early 1990s.
The United Kingdom and the United States moved closer to laissez-faire economic policies beginning a trend towards neoliberalism that would pick up
more steam in the following decade as the fall of the USSR made right wing economic policy more popular.
Developing countries across the world faced economic and social difficulties as they suffered from multiple debt crises in the 1980s, requiring many of
these countries to apply for financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Ethiopia witnessed widespread famine
in the mid-1980s during the corrupt rule of Mengistu Haile Mariam, resulting in the country having to depend on foreign aid to provide food to its
population and worldwide efforts to address and raise money to help Ethiopians, such as the famous Live Aid concert in 1985.
Television viewing became commonplace in the Third World, with the number of TV sets in China and India increasing 15 and 10 fold respectively. The
number of televisions in the world nearly doubled over the course of the decade from only 561 million in 1980 to 910 million in 1987 and around a billion
by 1989.
Major civil discontent and violence occurred in the Middle East, including the Iran-Iraq War, the Soviet-Afghan War, the 1982 Lebanon War, the Nagorno-
Karabakh War, the Bombing of Libya in 1986, and the First Intifada in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Despite a peak in tensions in the early part of the decade, by the late 1980s the Cold War was coming to an end. In the eastern bloc hostility to
authoritarianism and the rise of nationalism in communist-led socialist states, combined with economic recession resulted in a wave of reformist policies
instigated by Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR - such as perestroika and glasnost, along with the overthrow and attempted overthrow of a number of
communist regimes, such as in Hungary, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 in China, the Czechoslovak "Velvet Revolution", Poland and the
overthrow of the Nicolae Ceauşescu regime in Romania and other communist Warsaw Pact states in Central and Eastern Europe including the Fall of the
Berlin Wall. It came to be called the late 1980s' "purple passage of the autumn of nations". By 1989 the Soviet Union announced the abandonment of
political hostility toward the Western world and the Cold War ended with the USSR's demise after the August Coup of 1991. The changes of the
revolutions of 1989 continue to be felt today.
The 1980s saw the development of the modern Internet, starting with the specification of File Transfer Protocol in 1980 and ARPANET's move to TCP/IP
around 1982-83. Approximately 1.1 million people (86% of them in the United States) were using the Internet at the end of the 1980s. Tim Berners Lee
created a hypertext system called ENQUIRE in 1980 and began his work on the World Wide Web in March 1989; after its first demonstration at the end of
1990 it was released to the public in July 1991 and by approximately 1995 became widely known, beginning the ongoing worldwide boom of Internet
use.
People born in the 1980s are usually classified along with those born in the 1990s as part of the Millennial generation.
The issue of global warming first came to the attention of the public in the late 1980s, largely due to the Yellowstone fires of 1988.
1990-1999
Culturally, the 1990s was characterized by the rise of multiculturalism and alternative media, which continued into the 2000s. Movements such as
grunge, the rave scene and hip hop spread around the world to young people during the decade, aided by then-new technology such as cable television
and the Internet.
A combination of factors, including the continued mass mobilization of capital markets through neoliberalism, the thawing of the decades-long Cold War,
the beginning of the widespread proliferation of new media such as the Internet from the middle of the decade onwards, increasing skepticism towards
government, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to a realignment and reconsolidation of economic and political power across the world and
within countries. Many countries such as Canada and Sweden privatized much of their economy, moving power away from governments, and more
towards private corporations. The dot com bubble of 1997–2000 brought wealth to some entrepreneurs before its crash in 2000–2001.
New ethnic conflicts emerged in Africa, the Balkans and the Caucasus, the former two which led to the Rwandan genocide and Bosnian genocide,
respectively. Signs of any resolution of tensions between Israel and the Arab world remained elusive despite the progress of the Oslo Accords, though the
Irish Troubles came to a standstill in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement after 30 years of violence.
Photos mainly by Matti Kreivilä. Historical facts and technical details of the vehicles provided by Wikipedia. Movies YouTube.