[FWDLK] Plymouth Name

[Wayne Graefen <wrgraefen@A-OMEGA.NET>]

From USA Today on Plymouth's Passing and the naming of Plymouth

FYI
Wayne
******************

  Plymouth's passing
  Thur., Nov. 4, 1999
  FINAL EDITION -- USA Today
  Section: NEWS
  Page 18A

 "Every goddamn farmer in America's heard of Plymouth Binder
Twine."

 -- Walter Chrysler, 1928

 With that concise profanity, Chrysler, himself a plowboy from
way
 back, agreed to name his new make of automobile Plymouth. He
had
 been worried that consumers wouldn't associate the name with
 Plymouth Rock. But binder twine was entirely another thing.

Nowadays, of course, many consumers recognize neither binder
twine
 nor the Plymouth nameplate, which is why German-run
DaimlerChrysler has decided to discontinue it. Popular models
such as
 the Voyager minivan will go on, but the brand itself is no
more.
To which one consultant, George Peterson of AutoPacific, was
drawn
to say: ''What took so long? They've been considering this for
decades.'' That's a little cavalier, but he's not far off the
marque. The
internationalization of car making has fueled a long-inhibited
need to
consolidate successful products, minimize competitive overlap
and
 eliminate low-yield-sales architectures. It's not true that
brand loyalty is
dead, but it has diminished enough that there's little value in
car makers'
trying to compete with themselves. ''They had too many cars that
were
too close to each other,'' said one Chrysler-Plymouth dealer.
''It was
like a blur.''

But remember when blur was desirable? Plymouth was there, in the
 mid-1950s with push-button automatics and car-mounted hi-fi
record
players that blurred the distinction between home and car. And
in the
late 1950s, with streamy fins and roof lines that blurred the
distinction
between that Moderne present and its Space Age future. And in
the
1960s and early 1970s, with muscle cars (Fury, Roadrunner,
Barracuda) and muscle engines (the famous hemi-head 426) that
epitomized the glory days of blurred-vision acceleration.

 Plymouth has had a history of name problems. Long-lost models
 include the Belvedere and the Cranbrook. But for a nation that
has built
 its pop-cult rep on cars and car-think, the loss of a major
badge is a
 loss worth contemplating, both for what it says about the
exigencies of
 the modern world and the moderation of the American one.