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. |