Thanks a great story and one I can relate to
I just like the car and there aren't many like it.. I always want what
others don't it makes life differant. The path less traveled etc.
Allen
56 Crown being repainted and releathered owned since 1976
On Sun, 18 May 2003 10:49:35 -0500 "Hugh & Therese" <hugtrees@xxxxxxxx>
writes:
> The old story goes something like this: An Imperial owner is buying
> gas.
> An interested bystander is enamored of the Imperial and asks
> enthusiastic
> questions about it. One of these includes price. His visceral
> response on
> the answer is, "For that much you could have got a Caddy."
>
> The essential element missing from the Imperial equation was
> "prestige."
> Unlike Lincoln and Cadillac, Imperial never truly made it to the
> exalted
> ranks of being a true prestige car. It has long been my contention
> that
> this is squarely the fault of the old Chrysler Corporation. In
> their own
> minds it was an advert for the rest of the line up, a loss maker
> that might
> attract the more wealthy client into the showrooms in order to
> switch them
> to a reasonably similarly equipped Chrysler, De Soto, Dodge or
> Plymouth.
> The Imperial never got its own distribution chain, unlike Ford and
> Cadillac.
>
> I have been accused of "revisionism" for promulgating this idea,
> although
> this was a decidedly minority response. However, exactly the gas
> station
> scenario happened to me when I was trying to sell a Chrysler
> Pacifica
> yesterday. "For that sort of money I could get an Escalade." I
> have had to
> attend many meetings about the Pacifica and sit through several CDs
> worth of
> introductory material. Each one repeats ad nauseam the idea that
> the
> Pacifica is up against premium completion - the BMW X5, Acura MDX
> and Lexus
> 330. However, despite our new German ownership, the old mistake is
> being
> repeated. They can say what they like till they are blue in the
> face, but
> the Chrysler brand is not a prestige brand.
>
> There is a 76 year old salesman at our dealership who sold his first
> car in
> 1952. He inherited his fathers, and his fathers before him,
> dealership and
> ran it until the late 80's. It was in a small Texas town. I asked
> him
> about selling Imperials and he said they were a real pain in the
> butt for
> him. He was obligated to take several of them a year by Chrysler in
> order
> to be allocated a larger amount of better selling vehicles. He was
> also
> obligated to maintain a certain inventory of spare parts and get
> training
> for technicians on a car which would never yield back the
> investment. The
> dealership for which I work is in a similar situation with the
> Pacifica.
> They are an obligation for doing business, they are being very
> poorly
> marketed by a corporate management team that has begun to believe
> its own
> illusory promotions. (Let's just say it is even further handicapped
> than
> the Imperial in that it is a dull vehicle, and leave it at that.)
>
> Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
> With the
> right support, the Imperial could have been a strong contender.
> Lousy build
> quality in its most successful year - 1957 - and an inadequate
> distribution
> network scuttled it pretty effectively. How many non-Imperial
> Mopar
> enthusiasts know enough about your car to not cal it a Chrysler
> Imperial?
> And if they can't be bothered to get it right, who else might?
>
> We have Concorde LXis and Limiteds we can only unload with steep
> discounts.
> Sigh. The beat(ing) goes on.
>
> Hugh
>
>
>
>
>
>
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