The gas crisis: Who knew it could possibly happen again?

Shown here is a July '73 Datsun ad claiming that by switching from your "average" car to a Datsun, you could save one gallon of fuel a day. (Datsun later changed its name to Nissan. I also changed my name to Nissan at the time but their lawyers made me change it back.) I was a sophomore in college during the 1973 gas crisis. I lived at school. But I saw the end-of-the-world style lines of cars waiting to get their transfusion of life giving fossil fuel. What?s so interesting to me about every gas crisis is how everybody seems surprised. But it?s one thing for the general populace to always feel caught off guard; it?s another when our big three auto manufacturers and their politicians seem even more shocked than we are.