Quote:
Originally Posted by bruce.augenstein@comcast.
Then it hit me; They meant to do this! Buick buyers expect certain characteristics in their cars, so, first rule of marketing - don't piss off the faithful.
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It took me a few years to get this as well. And the fact that these cars are not built for people on this forum like you and me, but for an entirely different user/consumer, who, for whatever reason, want that car to drive the way it does. From that perspective, one could even argue that those are well-designed products given they are appealing to their target user group. What remains to be seen is if that user group will be around 5, 10, 20, 30 years from now.
However, the mistake American manufacturers seem to have made is that they seemed to have assumed all/most Americans are a part of that user group (and I guess that was true at some point in time), and therefore, there really isn't any need to develop other types of passenger cars. Or there simply is too much momentum that gets in the way of change in companies that size, and they resist change and simply keep on doing what they've been doing. That seems to be changing these days, but they have already lost so much marketshare and their finances are so out of order that it will be difficult to turn things around.
After getting my M.S., more than 10 years ago, I interviewed with a bunch of American car companies. In an interview of with a Ford exec high up the R&D chain, I pretty much told him the above, and asked him why exactly is it that they aren't engineering passenger cars that appeal to the emerging needs/wants of the American consumer. He put me on the top of a special hiring list because he clearly wanted change...