Word: detroit
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Most Interesting Year." The other Detroit compact cars are also firing up great expectations in the marketplace. Next week Ford, rushing up its introduction by two months to catch Corvair, brings out its front-engine Falcon. Late this month Chrysler, advancing its debut from February 1960, bows with its front-engine Valiant...
This is just a prelude. Next spring Ford will roll out a compact Edsel called Comet. In a year Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac will come in both compact and regular sizes. All told, Detroit is betting $700 million on these cars-about $150 million on the Corvair, $100 million each for Falcon and Valiant, $350 million for the "bigger" compacts. How well this huge gamble pays off will affect not only Detroit, but automakers and buyers round the world. Says West Germany's Heinz Nordhoff, president of Volkswagen, with some understatement: "1960 will be the most interesting year...
...Hearing that, Detroit wags recalled the time when Big Bill Knudsen, G.M.'s late president, boasted to Adman Bruce Barton that a certain new-model Chevy was "almost the perfect low-priced car-and it will really become perfect next year when we make one small change." Barton bit hard. "What change?" Deadpanned Bill Knudsen: "We're just going to hang a small hammock under the chassis. Catch all the goddam parts that fall...
...Helps Business." Who will buy the compacts? Detroit, which prides itself on having market surveys to answer almost any sales question, this time is stumped. Buyers have been unpredictable and have shown a notable disregard of polls telling them what they should like, especially that they liked bigger, chrome-decorated cars. Detroit guesses that the compacts will appeal particularly to people on tight budgets. But it is not certain, since consumers no longer buy cars to match their pocketbooks. Most buyers of the low-cost foreign cars and of the Rambler and Lark come from higher-income brackets...
...compacts cut deeply into the present low-priced three, Detroit dopesters expect that they will certainly be bad news to what is left of the ailing middle-priced market. Says Cole: "The middle-priced field is sitting there with a gun to its head." Some middle-priced dealers have already pulled the trigger. New Orleans' leading Buick seller, Stephens Buick Co., fortnight ago surrendered its franchise and switched to Chevy...