D^2;
Believe it or not the auto industry probably did use computers to some
extent to keep track of inventories. I know that Chrysler used computers in
the mid fifties to keep track of what cars were built in which models, in
what colour, with what options. There is a fellow with a 55' Plymouth
website that optained a copy of a punch card from Chrysler with this
information listed on it.
The other factor to remember is that there were a certain number of
standard options for each car and one could ad more at extra cost or have
some deleted in exchange for a lower price. Usually you could buy the
standard option cars right off the lot but with extra or delete options you
needed to order ahead. I believe this was a way that they could build cars
to customer demand without having to stockpile inventories of optional items
on spec that may not be used. All that computers have done with such a
system was speed it up, and the faster the computers became the faster the
system. Instead of taking weeks to deliver a car to order it can now be done
in days.
Best Regards
Arran Foster
1954 Imperial Newport
Needing A left Side Taillight Bezzel
----- Original Message -----
From: "D. Dardalis" <dardal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <mailing-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2002 11:29 AM
Subject: Re: IML: Valentine's Day Yin & yang
> 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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