At 11:21 PM 2/14/2002 -0600, you wrote:
>To buy a stripper American car implied that was all you could
>afford. But buying foreign made you chic and cosmopolitan. And, to
>compound matters, these foreign cars were not selling in poorer areas, but
>in the wealthy ones.
Hugh, I had read a book a few summers ago called "The sociology of the car"
or something like that. It was a really nice book relating social matters
with car design in the US throughout the automotive history. They were
saying that people were buying VW bugs in the late 50's, not because that's
all they could afford, but because that made them "different". In the late
50's, many people would look at all American cars through their fins and
styling and come to the "conclusion" that besides the differences in
styling, they are basically the same "car". The thesis of the book was
that in the early 50's, the different styling from year to year did help
sell cars, but later in the decade, the customers wanted more
differentiation that the different shape of the tail fins or the "new"
bumper and grill could offer. And that was why for example the Edsel
failed, because all it offered different from the other Ford products was a
different skin, every thing else being "the same". The book continued and
said that in the 60's, the big 3 managed to re-introduce the concept of
"differentiation" from car to car, not so much by styling, but by offering
a huge range of options. That way, the customer ended up "customizing" his
car by choosing a combination of options that made his/her car unique. I
guess 60's Imperials were like that to some extend, but not as much since
the drivetrain options were typically limited. This large selection of
options allowed the big 3 to maintain a good portion of the market through
the 60's, but it did cost them a lot in $ due to the large stock of
different parts they had to have (before the time of computerized
inventories, it was very costly to maintain part inventory sufficient to
meet their fairly large option range). Finally, in the 70's people had
enough of this automobile culture, and the federal government started
regulating the industry to such an extend that it became one of the most
(if not THE most) regulated industry. D^2, 2x68's with so many different
options that the two cars have almost completely different characters...
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