GM fought safety, emissions rules, but then invented ways to comply.

[Jeff Maltby 4194]

If I recall, the cat removed 80% of the emissions back in the day ?

https://www.autonews.com/article/20080914/OEM/309149832/gm-fought-safety-emissions-rules-but-then-invented-ways-to-comply

[cadillacmike68]

And I'm sure that ford, chryshler and all the foreign mfrs were just so happy with every government mandated regulation... 

Typical GM bashing from a Naderlite even.

[fishnjim]

Depends what you call "emissions"?   

It's too easy to go back and "re-write" history these days or slant the record for political reasons.   One of the things that technology brought that isn't welcomed by many.  Pretty hard to go around collect all teh books, edit and replace, but anyone can edit WIKIs.   They seem to forget, horses went out because of the "manure" issues in high traffic areas.   Population density is at the heart of all pollution, etc.
Mostly the effort was targetting "smog" reduction(EPA) from unburnt hydrocarbons in urban areas by increasing combustion efficiency*.
There was a lot of effort to develop the catalytic convertor, I worked with at least two guys, much later, that had been involved.   One from GM is deceased and was the kinetics/wrote the book guy.   Other from cat manufacture.
It lead to the removal of lead(Pb) in gas, lower octane/compression, and a few other unwanted things that resulted like tailpipe acid mist which lead to sulfur in gas reductions.  Early tailpipes didn't last very long after the change and bumper staining.  Also fires ensued from parked cars before heat shields were adopted.    Lots of combustion research during that period, that got us to where we are today in injection tech, "clean" burn, etc.   So from perspective, resist or not, it improved.
* - Carbs don't evenly atomize the fuel(low energy), and when droplets burn, some goes out unburnt.   Injection(high energy) was developed to better address atomization.

[bcroe]

In the late 60s a lot of rather poor (desperate) things were tried to
reduce emissions.  It took a bucket of technology to get these things
to work well, without serious negative effects.  I am sure the general
realized fuel injection would be necessary.  Remember the
microprocessor was only invented in 1972.  Some modest experiments
using them were tried in the late 70s, but the 1980 models were the first
to use the micros universally.  Working with them were other inventions
such as electronic MAP and MAF sensors (75 model), OXygen sensors
(78 model), cat converters, electronic powerful and nearly service
free ignitions, valve rotators with hardened valve seats, and more. 

And oh yea, safety.  I do not believe the incremental cost was that much
for door beams, collapsing columns, dual circuit/disc brakes, good door
latches, and good seat belts.  Every mfr had to have them, so it did not
cut into competitive advantage, just allowed them to sell more hardware. 
Bruce Roe

[Dr. John T. Welch]

There were no catalytic converters installed on any GM vehicles for model year 1972.  EPA regulations requiring catalytic converters and unleaded fuels  to achieve EPA mandated emissions levels for certain categories of passenger cars did not apply until Jan 1, 1975. Early model year '75 vehicles equipped with catalytic converters  were built in late '74. The first Impala with a catalytic converter would be a 1975 model.

["Cadillac Kid" Greg Surfas 15364]

The word I got in my discussions with Mr. Robert Templin who was Chief Engineer CMD during this era (Retired form CMD in 1987) was that they fully expected emissions to be an issue as far back as the early 60's and were themselves advocates of unleaded fuel.  Mid-60's motors had hardened valve seats in anticipation of this.
Templin "came up" in the Kettering Labs so he was intimately aware of the time required to develop the technology and was himself instrumental in the development of Emissions systems as they "grew up" using '70s technology.
Greg Surfas

[colinlikens]

Am I wrong in my understanding that GM was a leader in the switch to unleaded fuel? 

I thought the oil companies were objecting to calls for an unleaded gasoline formulation until there was a significant demand in the marketplace.  And since GM was somewhere 50% market share in those days (oh, to return to that!), they voluntarily reduced the 1971 compression ratios on their engines to accommodate unleaded gas.

I realize that very likely this was merely to get ahead of the inevitable.  And perhaps it was even a calculated decision meant to pre-empt political momentum for even cleaner regulations.  But even so, it means that GM was an active (maybe reluctant) participant in the change to cleaner air.

[Jeff Maltby 4194]

Excellent review on the history of the cat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalytic_converter

From a 49 pal:
GM did NOT invent the automobile catalytic converter.  It was developed at Engelhard Industries, then located in Newark, NJ by a young PhD metallurgist named Carl Keith.  He and Engelhard won many environmental awards for its development.  I knew Carl as I also worked at Engelhard when he rose to President.

[Dr. John T. Welch]

Although  the old GM is recognized and remembered for its stylish products and the  brilliant marketing  which permanently tatooed the brains of generations of American  consumers, the real genius behind the financial success of GM was their  manufacturing engineering and production processes which were largely invisible to the public. In the final analysis, those were the elements which delivered  corporate products and profits decade after decade, brand after brand, model after model.

Two enduring and influential people in both GM manufacturing engineering and production process were Ed Cole and Robert Sempel.  Although often identified with specific GM products ( Cole with Chevrolet and the small block V-8 and Stempel with the  front wheel drive Oldsmobile Toronado) these two individuals exercised massive cross divisional  influence and authority in the interest of overall corporate profits. Both would ultimately be elevated to the highest ranks in GM: Cole as President before his tragic accidental death in an airplane crash, Stempel as brief CEO  just before  the massive financial catastrophe which required financial engineering in the futile attempts to avoid a different type of crash.

A standout career achievement of Stempel was his engineering management of the GM cross divisional implementation of catalytic treatment of exhaust gases to comply with the EPA mandates effective January 1, 1975.  This required a massive companion engineering  effort to reliably modify upstream exhaust gases within stoichiometric limits that would render them catalytically reactive downstream in the converter.   In other words, Stempel was in charge of seeing to it that the engines of the five autonomous  GM  divisions  would produce a  uniform stoichiometric exhaust effluent into a standardized  corporate catalytic converter that would then render the final vehicle emissions compliant with the law. And do so under the threat of massive penalties for non-compliance  warranted over a period of five years or 50,000 miles. Remember, at that time  each GM division had autonomous engine products, the proud legacy engines of the individual divisions being their signatures. These engine families were old  and very profitable, most having been “clean sheeted” way before any thought of  making them emissions compliant and were fully amortized. Never had any thought been given for the need to make the engines of each proud division essentially identical in their exhaust output to  satisfy a corporate catalytic converter.   But the laws of physics and chemistry are harsh task masters. Talk about ID theft!! Stempel did it.

Stempel did not have direct involvement with the  basic science and techonology of the catalytic coverter itself.  Others especially at Englehard are properly credited with that. Just like the another GM cross divisional effort that involved styling and bumper modifications to comply with federal crash standards, the catalytic converter program was a major corporate undertaking but much more complicated, expensive and largely invisible. Stempel is properly credited for managing the essential manufacturing and  volume production engineering for the successful integration of the catalytic converter across all GM product lines. At a meeting of our local electric vehicle enthusiasts group several years ago Stempel said that he had to “knock a lot of divisional engine engineering heads together to accomplish the converter  program.”  Beyond that Stempel was quite a visionary and had his feet firmly planted in the future for electric autos.  He died too soon.   

[hornetball]

Ahhhhh . . . the days when engineers and technologists could rise to become heads of companies.

[fishnjim]

Humans seem to have a penchant for inventing things, then when they grow into problems by wide adoption*, seek more solutions rather than address the core issues.   If early engines didn't spout partly burnt vapors and use tetraethyl lead to improve octane for higher compression, it might be a different story.   Those two lead to noticeable smog and lead pollution.   Electrics were rejected over a 100 years ago, so either a timing issue or do not solve the transportation needs.   I've come to believe that when the cumulative production of anything exceeds 1 Billion lbs, then it becomes a global issue.  That's about a 1 ppb level uniformly across the Eerth surface, hence becomes more noticeable in non-uniform distribution.
But we don't get to re-write history and seem to have lost the ability to learn from it.  A blame game, such as the title suggest, is not "success".   
Historically, there were early catalytics that found their way into cars prior to '75, but mostly from a test basis.   Sources say "commercial" volumes by '73.   Frankly, I don't recall exactly, I was in college then.   Just the horror stories from their adoption.   There was a bit of stumble along the way. like most mandated things, once the "mandate" arrived.   There were other players in the cat market too.   My shiny new '77 (non cad) was my first foray.   And the bugs were mostly worked out by then.
We(US) seem to detest working with our Govt on stuff in this country in favor of adversarial approach.   General thinking it amounts to collusion or caving to financial forces, which is not always the case as seen in other countries and govt sponsored research, etc.
* - many examples today.

[Jeff Maltby 4194]

Last year my truck flunked the smog test here in calif. Replacing both sensors did the job until they did the cat # inspection on my 6 year old 16,000 mile Walker generic cat that was replaced after some So? stole my oem. The muffler shop said it's the same cat but they changed the # so your stuck buying a new $200 cat..what a racket.

Course, it only took the Dmv 2 months to send me my new tag. No wonder their requesting $1.2 billion to update their system :<)