"Black Friday" from a car perspective
11/24/2021
This Friday, the cheerful consumer society celebrates "Black Friday" on November 26, 2021. For years, record sales have been recorded on this day, with customers benefiting from discounts and special prices. This "Black Friday" has also been spreading in our part of the world since the early 2000s, with American companies being the pioneers here too, of course. Hardly anyone can escape the flood of advertising emails announcing Black Friday these days.
In automotive history, however, "Black Friday" has a completely different aftertaste, as a brief searchin the zwischengas.com magazine archive shows. July 9, 1999 went down in history as "Black Friday". On that day, General Motors lost a lawsuit in California. Patricia Anderson, her four children and a friend were awarded 4.9 billion American dollars because they had been in an accident in their Chevrolet Malibu on Christmas Eve 1993 and suffered serious burns when the tank exploded as a result of a rear-end collision caused by a drunk driver.
In August 1999, the verdict was revised and the fine was reduced to USD 1.2 billion, but the product liability case was still lost and GM was punished as the guilty party. Never before had a car manufacturer had to pay such a large fine in a single trial.
Incidentally, Europeans also know "Black Friday" as the day of the stock market crash in October 1929, but Americans speak of "Black Thursday" in this context.
P.S. Incidentally, we at zwischengas.com will not be participating in this "Black Friday" custom. Sorry to all those who have been waiting for a bargain ...
