Word: marketing
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Ford, which has been studying the minicar market for just about a decade, took a long time to decide. In 1962, the company was ready to roll with a small car called the Cardinal, but withdrew it within a few months of production because of fears that the market would not then support a new line. By 1966, however, it was clear that U.S. compacts were losing considerable ground to imports. The Falcon, which reached a peak of 493,000 sales in 1961, was down to 163,000 that year-and to even less in 1967. At a meeting...
...company spent 14 months testing the market, and its researchers interviewed scores of Volkswagen owners. For a time, the planners considered importing great numbers of Ford-made cars from Britain or Germany instead of building them in North America. Executives discarded that idea in part because they figured that it might provoke Washington to erect import quotas or raise tariffs...
...variety of options-including a 120-h.p. engine, automatic shift and air conditioning-that can jack up the price as high as $2,700. But the company has urged dealers to discourage sales of the high-markup options so as not to price the car out of its market. How does the car handle...
Volkswagen executives figure-or at least hope-that the new U.S. small cars will not cut deeply into sales of imports but will take markets away from existing U.S. lower-priced models. To reduce their own chances of loss, some foreign producers will send bigger and fancier models to the U.S. Later this year, for example, VW will begin shipping its four-door Audi (U.S. price: around $4,000). Sweden's Saab will soon begin importing a new Maverick-sized car. "If Detroit can come into our market," says Stuart Perkins, head of Volkswagen of America...
French workers are eager for wage increases to cover cost-of-living increases. Prices have been rising by an annual rate of about 6%, faster than in any other Common Market country. Consumer costs have been swollen further by huge tax increases designed to dampen demand. Inflation has debased the currency to the point where, for the first time in years, black marketeers are selling francs for stronger money at discounts of 5% or more. The economy's weakness has so greatly affected the country's political power the French are no longer campaigning in world banking councils...