Word: falcon
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...believed that the compact boom of the late '50s marked the death of the American car buyer's traditional urge to move up to higher-priced cars. For a time, this skepticism seemed likely to lead G.M. into serious trouble. In 1959, when Ford's compact Falcon scored an immediate success while Chevrolet's rear-engine Corvair was something of a dud, it appeared that Ford might grab off the lion's share of an important new market. Almost by chance, however, Chevrolet dressed up some Corvairs with pizazz features to attract customers into showrooms...
...edge in diversity of product. With their 1962 lines, the other auto manufacturers hoped to persuade the buying public to settle down to a relatively few standard-sized, compact and intermediate models. Gambling heavily on the intermediate Fairlane-which has done well, but partly at the expense of Falcon and Galaxie sales-Ford downgraded its medium-priced Mercury. In similar mood, Chrysler turned the Dodge into a Plymouth-priced Dart, and American Motors shortened its Ambassador. Meantime, to flesh out its own big and standard lines, G.M. showed that it was not above borrowing a good idea from a competitor...
Nine F-10s Thunderchiefs swooped low, dropped 750-lb. bombs that disintegrated a target supply depot. A dozen F-100 Super Sabres scorched the earth with napalm. A Falcon rocket burst from an F106 Delta Dart, sent a drone aircraft to the ground in blazing bits. As a Tactical Air Command flight of F-105s sped overhead, a simulated nuclear bomb was exploded in a miniature fireball and nonradioactive mushroom cloud. As the waves of noise, heat and blast rolled across Florida's Eglin Air Force Base, Commander in Chief John Kennedy grinned from a rocking chair...
Ford's showpieces are a one-of-a-kind sports version of its Falcon compact, the Challenger I, with a tuned 244-cu.-in. engine and special suspension designed to cruise at 120 m.p.h., and the Cougar 406, with gull-wing doors and a top speed of 160 m.p.h. Chevrolet's sports compact is a 150-h.p. version of the Corvair known as the Monza Spyder, and there are two special show models of the Corvette-the Shark and the Kelly...
...directly compete, have shrunk to only 3.9% of the market-and in this area the dominant position is held by Volkswagen, which Ford regards as an uncommonly difficult competitor to dislodge. Beyond this, Ford fears that the Cardinal might make many of its sales at the expense of the Falcon, just as the Falcon ate into the Galaxie's sales and the new Fairlane has cannibalized both the Falcon and Galaxie markets...