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OPEC
OPEC is the acronym for the Oil and Petroleum Exporting Countries, a trade union set up in the late-Sixties. The union included every country which produced oil (Algeria, Angola, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Venezuela), and succeeded in raising the price of oil by almost 400%. So what does this have to do with cars?
Well, the subsequent oil crises which plagued the World in the Seventies were directly responsible for car manufacturers changing their performance outlook to one more of economy. Even performance car companies, such as Porsche and Ferrari went back to the drawing board to see how they could make their cars more economical - Ferrari apparently scrapped a couple of up-and-coming models, and Porsche responded by returning the four-cylinder engine, a much more economical powerplant than the V8 fitted to the 928.
The actions of OPEC were felt most in the States, where car manufacturers clambered over each other to unveil economical 'Compacts', such as the Chrysler Horizon. Gone were the days of huge, gas-guzzling monsters; in were the small, four- or six-cylinder cars, who succeeded in being slightly more economical with their fuel. The pattern of releasing 'greener' cars is echoed in today's society, with another, albeit more serious fuel crisis just around the corner, and manufacturers such as Toyota, Nissan and Ford all producing (or developing) hybrid or fuel cell automobiles.
But the oil crises did not spell doom and gloom for the whole of the car kingdom. The rise in the price paid for oil meant far larger profits for the countries doing the extraction and production, and consequently, lot of millionaires were made almost overnight. And where else to spend their fortune than on cars? Bespoke coachbuilders such as Buchmann, SGS and Gemballa were overwhelmed by orders from the Middle East. Oil money was rumoured to keep Aston Martin open through the early-Nineties, and without such rich personalities, we would be without such wonders as the McLaren F1.
So the OPEC, and its antics, proved a mixed blessing for the car world. On one hand, it proved a wake-up call that hydrocarbon fuel was not in infinite supply, but on the other, it was responsible for the vast number of supercars and sports cars which we enjoy today.
