Euro Styling and American Buyers <for Brent P

Brent, here's a article I posted some time ago. Your comments please.

Reply to
NoOption5L
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Because they tried to sell them as tempos. Or are we supposed to believe americans so stupid as to actually consider the successful tempo the better car?

It started badly due to quality issues in the mexican assembly plant and likely some cost cutting on the US version. It's slumping because it's been on the market for some time and has not been changed or updated. Ford in Europe has replaced the vehicle.

I don't know GM as well but they have done things in a similiar craptastic fashion.

That's true, they haven't done them well. It's appears that it's sabotaged from within much of the time. Somebody along the way refuses to get behind the project.

If you ignore successful vehicles from overseas. I doubt any ford guy is going to turn down a Pantera. Nor would I expect any to take a taurus over an aussie falcon.

They decontent the cars, sell them poorly, don't understand the market and just leave the models to die. If they pushed them half as hard as some of the crap they do sell, they would sell too. GM manages to sell FWD hunks-o-crap by slaping classic name badges on them which leads me to believe they just leave cars like the holden with a GTO badge on it out to die in the field.

They seem to be able to do quite a bit with US platforms... There is no reason a ford of europe platform would be any more limiting than a ford US platform.

Wrong. Falcon and fairlane went to the austrailia. Mustang went to europe. Jeep goes to europe. Just a few I know right off the top of my head.

Because a lot of what is foisted upon the US market is crap. Americans aren't buying the vehicles either! The author doesn't seem to notice that.

It seems everything that goes through the US executive and marketing process gets crapified. The longer it spends in the process in the US, the crappier the car much of the time. Just cheapness and gagetry rather than vehicle performance and function.

Once again the author backs overhimself, as chrysler is sharing platforms and is importing a number of vehicles (like some vans) unchanged. The difference is chrysler is apparently doing it successfully, but doing what he claims is difficult on the order of impossible when ford and gm are talked about.

Anyone who believes that the tempo was a better car is on crack. Sorry. The only way ford could have done better IMO was to build a proper RWD compact again. But the problem is, going through the US system a car turns out like the tempo.

It's hard to explain how this works, but in product development I've found that overseas they are allowed much more freedom and forced to turn out crap. When I worked at a large US corporation the product from overseas was often better in many ways often had things we wanted to do. However internal processes and politics made those products impossible to do in the US. I doubt it's any different at ford or GM.

The reason for turning to the overseas product isn't that a good car cant be designed here, but that it would take a very long time to dismantle the entire culture and create the vehicles that time doesn't exist. Will ford be able to exist for another 7 years or so the way it's going?

Reply to
Brent P

...rip...

  1. There's nothing inherently wrong with the platforms, generally, it's the presentation... and sometimes the support logistics

  1. Dont tell me the Crossfire is a success... my kid has one and likes it, but, like the Ram-look Chryslers, I think the design fails fast.

- do you prefer the Charger.. or the concept Challenger? nuff said?

  1. Are we going to blame the -blah- 500 on some inbreeding? Or is it a lack of vision in the US?

Remember the japanese never got it right -with the auto-enthusiast- until they started up the US design studios.

And it goes both ways... what's wrong with Jag lower lines? Simple... looks too much like a Ford.

Contour looked too much like the Taurus

Reply to
Backyard Mechanic

That's much of what I stated.

I didn't even mention it for specific reasons. However it is typical chrysler styling on the MB platform. They accomplished what the author stated earlier in the article couldn't be done.

The challenger looks like challenger. The charger looks like a truck front end grafted to a 4 door sedan. (which is typical of chrysler styling these days)

The 500, is based on a volvo platform as I understand it. is it blah because it's just another blah vehicle in realm where ford apparently thinks it should be making blah vehicles? Is it blah because it's a volvo based taurus replacement? (a sort of melding of blah)

240Z,280Z,RX7. They got it right with the auto-enthusiast pretty early on. I don't know when they opened the US design studios, but that has them doing it in the early 1970s late 1960s if your statement is true. But as I recall they didn't do it until the 1980s.

Nissan's website appears to agree with my memory...

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I'll have to check printed material at home. I have an automobile quarterly from the late 70s with an article on the RX7's design.

It's always been a stupid idea to use a higher production platform to make a lower end luxury car. The cimeron being the most glaring example. And that was an all US vehicle. Perhaps that was also the catera problem. Lincoln versailes... another one based on the granada which was built on a stretched maverick platform which was an evolution of the mustang/falcon platform.

Such similiarities are typical of US makes going back to the 1930s at least.

Ford and GM can design good cars here. The problem is they'll never/rarely see the light of day that way. The people doing them always have to run the car though a crushing political system and internal requirements that end up ruining it to at least some degree, sometimes fatally.

I've experienced this myself with other products and what I know of Ford and GM it isn't any different there.

Reply to
Brent P

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