Dimitry Anastakis

2026 London

Abstract: “Safety doesn’t sell,” Lee Iacocca, then-president of the Ford Motor Company, declared in 1972: In the wake of the regulatory revolution sparked by Ralph Nader’s 1965 Unsafe at Any Speed revelations, car safety had become a major aspect of automobile design and consumer concern, but was difficult to market to American car buyers. The Big Three’s relative reluctance to embrace safety was reflected in Iacocca pithy statement, and Detroit’s lacklustre campaigns to make a virtue from a necessity. Meanwhile, far from Detroit, a plucky little 1973 automotive start up firm based in, of all places, New Brunswick, Canada, decided that they would build and market “the world’s first safety car.” Malcolm, Bricklin, a serial entrepreneur, saw an opportunity to carve out a place in the American auto market by embracing safety in the design and advertising of his Safety Vehicle-1, and creating a whole new sub-category of vehicle, the “safety-sportscar.” It didn’t work, and in 1975 the company failed spectacularly. This paper investigates how automakers in the North American auto sector responded to safety in their advertising and marketing campaigns in the early 1970s by assessing the case of the Bricklin Safety Vehicle-1, and how the Bricklin’s marketing and advertising campaign attempted to shift public perceptions of automobile safety and design. Though the firm ultimately failed, it’s brief appearance at a moment of profound transformation reveals much about change and constancy in the auto sector, and society’s attitudes towards automobile safety. Utilizing archival corporate records, advertising materials, and magazine, newspaper, and other documentary sources, it critically analyzes the Bricklin “safety campaign,” and assesses its effectiveness, and ultimate failure.