Word: rambler
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Around Romney has grown up an army of surprisingly loyal and enthusiastic Rambler owners. Some of them go so far as to call the Rambler "the most reliable car since the model T." Others take their pleasure in less rhapsodic praise. Women like it because its compact size (15.9 ft. long, 6 ft. wide, 108-in. wheelbase v. 17.3 ft. long, 6.4 ft. wide, 118-in. wheelbase for the standard Ford) makes it easy to handie in traffic, easy to park. The Rambler's unitized frame construction, in which body and frame are welded into a single unit (Ford...
Hidden Ingredient. But the hidden ingredient of Rambler's success is the Big Three themselves. "They are," says George Romney happily, "my best salesmen." The Big Three have used every device of the designer's art and the engineer's skill to make cars steadily bigger, sleeker, more luxurious, almost self-operating. Surrounded by soaring fins, dazzling in their chrome, perched behind an engine of steadily, growing power, the U.S. driver had what Detroit says he wanted. But was he happy...
What caused the Big Three to make up their minds was the take-off of Rambler sales in 1958. Belatedly, Detroit's Big Three (and little Studebaker-Packard) saw that there was a big market for the kind of car they themselves could make in the U.S. Dubbed a "compact" car to distinguish it from the tiny imports, the Rambler had offered the economy and easy handling of the foreign car plus much of the comfort, power and durability...
...Three quizzed Rambler buyers, discovered that economy of operation was twice as important in their choice as initial price, that the Rambler was bought no oftener as a second car (one in three sales) than Big Three low-priced cars. George Romney became a prophet with honor in his own country. In 1955 he had predicted: "By 1960, the compact car will be a top contender with present-type cars for the bulk of the market...
...After the war, Romney went to work for Nash-Kelvinator as assistant to President George Mason. The company, which had started in 1902 with Founder Thomas Jeffrey's Rambler, a one-cylinder runabout, was bought in 1916 by Charles Nash, president of General Motors, who introduced the first Nash in 1917. As solid and conservative as its uninspiring cars, Nash had for years been a profitable but never a spectacular company...