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Classic Cars What Will Be a Future Classic?
588 messages, Last post on Sep 06, 2009 at 3:54 PM
You are in the Classic Cars Forum. Your Host is mr_shiftright
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Replying to: andre1969 (Dec 28, 2008 11:44 am) In the same vein, the K car and its derived minivan have special interest because it saved Chrysler at the time. Unfortunately, it also made it clear that Chrysler had lost its past mojo.
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Replying to: berri (Dec 28, 2008 12:26 pm) Hindsight is also fun to play with-----why go full speed ahead in a sea of icebergs? Why design such an obviously hideous car, and why give it such a bizarre name? You can just see people marching to their doom, unawares of what is to befall them. It's just macabre enough to be fascinating.
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Dec 28, 2008 12:38 pm) I think in the early-mid 1950's, Mercury tended to be down towards the lower end of the mid-priced spectrum, in range with Pontiacs and Dodges...maybe also the Buick Special, cheaper DeSotos, and the base Olds 88. So in order to compete more with Chrysler and GM, it probably made sense to bring out a new brand. 1955 and 1956 were very strong years for the auto industry, and 1957 was a bit of a cooling down period, sales-wise. That year, Mercury was moved upscale, more into DeSoto/Chrysler and Buick/Olds territory than Dodge/Pontiac. The cars only did so-so, sales-wise, at that new price point. For 1958, Edsel was brought out, to slot in between Ford and Mercury, and it couldn't have happened at a worse time. IIRC, the domestics sold about 8 million cars in 1955 and 1956, but that would contract to around 6 million for 1957, and bottom out around 4.2 million for 1958. Meanwhile, the mid-priced market had just gotten overcrowded. Sales-wise, the Edsel wasn't really THAT disastrous. I read that they forecast selling 100,000 units for 1958, and ended up selling about 63,000. Meanwhile, Chrysler saw sales fall by about half. Dodge and DeSoto were down by more than that, about 58%. Mercury, Buick, and Pontiac also got hit hard, probably to the tune of a 30-40% decline. Oddly, in the mid-priced field, only Oldsmobile seemed to do fairly well, and I'd always thought it was one of the ugliest cars of that year (but still cool, in a sick sort of way!) I think they were down about 25%. Interestingly, once the Edsel was cut from the lineup, Mercury moved back downscale in price, so while it was the Mercury name that survived, it essentially did so at the Edsel price point. In a similar fashion, Dodge moved considerably downscale. For 1960, the only popular Dodge was the Dart lineup, which matched Plymouth in price, model for model. The "traditional" bigger, pricier Dodges, sold poorly. Similarly, once DeSoto went away, most of Chrysler's volume came from the Newport, a car that sold at about the same price point as the old DeSoto Firesweep, which from 1957-59 was the cheapest car in DeSoto's lineup. And even at GM, Pontiac, Olds, and Buick were moving into cheaper territory. Not just with compacts, but base level cars like the LeSabre and Catalina started coming down in price. So in that recession, everybody was hurting, and it caused sweeping changes in the auto industry, and a major turmoil in the mid-priced market. Edsel wasn't alone in experiencing the pain, but over the years, I guess that brand came to symbolize the failure. I still think it's pretty amazing that they could introduce a brand and kill it, all within the course of about 2.2 model years back then. Heck, I think Oldsmobile and Plymouth lasted longer than that from the announcement of their death, until when it finally came!
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Replying to: andre1969 (Dec 28, 2008 1:39 pm) What if you were a CEO and someone brought you an Aztek, but re-named it "Harvey" and told you this was meant to compete against the Honda Odyssey? Right, you'd have them sent to the medical office. These days, we'd call it "believing your own BS"
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Dec 28, 2008 2:01 pm) Definitely true, I think the thing was ugly, no matter what. Scary thing though, is that the Edsel almost had some influence on Chevrolet! Fortunately, GM decided to realign their models for 1959 so the A-bodies would redesign the same year as the B/C bodies, so the '57-58 B/C only lasted two years and the '58 A-body only lasted one year. But for Chevrolet, had that body held on another year, one of the concepts they were working on was a "central" theme, like the Edsel. Now as it was, the '59 Chevy was pretty controversial, and the T-bird inspired Fords actually beat it in sales. But I think a facelifted '58 Chevy with an Edsel-esque center section would have been an all-out disaster! |
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Replying to: andre1969 (Dec 28, 2008 1:39 pm) DeSoto had some of the same problems and I think that after the economy and quality issues started hurting Chrysler's reputation, that spurred the DeSoto death rumors that quickly spiraled against it. It was really unfortunate because I think DeSoto had some of the best looking mid and late 50's cars
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Replying to: berri (Dec 28, 2008 6:15 pm) I think cars like Edsel and Desoto simply didn't have an identity. There was no way to build brand equity.
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Dec 28, 2008 9:50 am) |
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Dec 28, 2008 7:03 pm) The recession, by textbook definition, was over with by 1959. However, once a recession is over and growth starts, you're starting from a low point...the bottom of the recession. 1959 might have been a strong year, compared to 1958. But auto sales were still down compared to 1957, which itself wasn't a particularly strong year (although it is always looked back on fondly) Also, while auto sales did go back up, the mix was different. Chevy and Ford both saw huge gains, to about 1.4-1.5 million units apiece. That's up from about 1.1 million for Chevy and around 987,000 for Ford. So in a market that rebounded by about 1.3 million units, Ford and Chevy probably accounted for around 60%. Plymouth saw a slight improvement. Dodge went from around 137K to 156K units, thanks mainly to the low-priced Coronet. The pricier cars really weren't selling. Chrysler went from around 63K to 69K units, but again it was mainly thanks to the lower priced Windsor. Oddly though, at the other end of the market, I believe the 300E slightly outsold the 300D. DeSoto saw a slight drop, from around 49K to 46K units. Its sales pattern was similar to Chrysler's though. The cheap Firesweep and the pricey Adventurer saw sales go up, but in this case, the more mainstream Firedome and luxurious Fireflite dropped enough to drag total division sales down. Imperial sales rose slightly. Mercury and Edsel both saw sales drop in 1959. And again, it was the pricier models that saw most of the drop. In Edsel's case, the expensive, Mercury-based models were totally dropped, leaving just the Ford-based ones. Lincoln's sales went up, but not enough to be notable. With GM, Cadillac made a bit of a comeback, and I think Pontiac did as well. Not so sure about Buick, though. And Oldsmobile, which relatively speaking did well in 1958, didn't boost much for 1959 IIRC. Studebaker and Rambler sales went through the roof. 1960 would be a better year than 1959, possibly getting back to 1957 sales levels. But again, the market mix would change even more. Dodge had its best sales year ever up to that point, with around 375,000 cars. But it was no longer the medium-priced brand it once was. About 330,000 of those sales were from the Dart, which was more a Chevy/Ford/Plymouth class of car than the Pontiac/Mercury/Edsel-priced car it had been. The remaining "traditional" Dodges, renamed Matador and Polara, sold poorly. Chrysler went from around 69K units to 77K, but again it was mainly on the strength of the cheap Windsor. DeSoto shriveled up from about 46K units to 26K. Imperial saw another slight increase. Mercury sales went up pretty substantially, but that was thanks mainly to the cheap compact Comet. The big Mercurys sold fewer units than they had in 1959. Edsel was gone by the end of calendar 1959, only moving about 3K units, down from around 45K in 1959. At the low end, cars like the Falcon, Valiant, and Corvair helped boost Chevy, Ford, and Plymouth sales. And the Studebaker Lark and Ramblers were still coming on strong. For 1961, I think auto sales actually fell again, and the mix of cars still trended towards cheaper models. The B-O-P compacts came on the scene. Dodge cloned the Valiant at the low end, while trimming the upper end back to just the Polara. Mercury moved down to Edsel's price class. DeSoto went away after selling about 3,000 units. Chrysler sales jumped from 77K to 96K units, but something like 57,000 of those were the new, low-priced Newport, which undercut the Windsor and even what was left of DeSoto, and moved down into Dodge territory. At the upper end of the market, I think Cadillac and Lincoln did well, but Imperial fell. So it seemed like the market as a whole, was starting to migrate more towards the cheaper and upper end of the price spectrum, leaving the middle empty. |
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Replying to: andre1969 (Dec 28, 2008 1:39 pm) In terms of a car becoming a future "collectible" (notice I didn't say "classic"), how about the most recent iteration of the T-Bird? (forgive me if this car has already been analyzed as I didn't wade through all of the previous posts). I believe 2005 was the last year for these and and while I know Ford made tons of them, their styling/concept is unique enough to qualify it as a future collectible. Plus, being a convertible adds to its "fun factor". Much like '78 Corvette pace cars, I'm sure plenty of speculators bought these new and tucked them away. Admittedly, it'll be a long time before it's value bottoms out then rises back to approach its original sale price, but in the mean time, I think some folks already own these as a third/fun car that's trotted out only on nice days - which loosely defines a "collectible car".
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