Sunday 4th November 1979

Hundreds of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60 American hostages. The students, supporters of the conservative Muslim cleric Ayatollah Khomeini, demanded the return of Iran’s deposed leader, the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, who had fled to Egypt in January 1979 and by November was receiving cancer treatment in theUnited States. After the student takeover, President Jimmy Carter ordered a complete embargo of Iranian oil. This embargo only exacerbated an energy crisis that had been going on since the beginning of 1979. An Iranian oil-field strike and the January revolution had disrupted oil supplies from that part of the Middle East, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel had announced a per-barrel fee increase that sent prices inching toward an all-time high. By the time the students took over the Embassy in November, Americans were already dealing with the effects of this crisis: long lines and short tempers at gas pumps, panics over petrol and heating oil shortages, and frustration with the inefficient, petrol-guzzling vehicles manufactured by American automakers. This “oil shock” reminded many Americans of the oil crisis of 1973-1974, when an Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) embargo sent petrol prices through the roof: By the time that embargo ended, the average retail price of gas had climbed to 84 cents per gallon from 38 cents per gallon. As a result, the big, heavy cars that American automakers were famous for became incredibly expensive to operate—many got fewer than 10 miles to every gallon of petrol!—and many people traded their petrol-guzzling muscle cars and gigantic luxury saloons for more fuel-efficient compact cars. This episode had not ended well for American carmakers, who had rushed some smaller cars to market without thoroughly checking them for problems and quirks, which in turn contributed to their growing reputation for unreliability and poor craftsmanship. Once the immediate crisis had subsided, most of those domestic compacts were left to languish on dealers’ lots.