WQ59B
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Posts posted by WQ59B
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13 minutes ago, padgett said:
...by the late '60s the Gov was talking about monopolies and breaking out car lines. GMs response was to eliminate the divisions (and company) independence by separating divisions responsible for things like carbs, radios, transmissions, HVAC, ignition and starters, & assembly from the individual car lines with a longer term goal to move to "corporate" engines (mostly only happened with small blocks).
GM's response to the anti-trust hearings was to divest themselves of Euclid and open their lending practices to outside competition. The car DIvisions remained operating as previously. The working theory was that GM might have to split off Chevrolet; obviously that didn't happen. Components were already handled by other Divisions years & decades earlier, and continued to be built to Divisional spec as before. Any consolidation (which did happen) was for efficiencies of cost, not anti-trust pressure.
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Correct- the generational break on the s-class was MY81 in the U.S., but the pic I posted was a 1980 model.
Daimler did do a nice nosejob on the '81-up car, modernized it by a good 15 years right there (heavy side cladding aside). Still I contend it wasn't until the 1998 redesign that it was truly fully integrated.9 minutes ago, Pfeil said:The bumpers on the Mercedes are a add on for U.S . regulation. Please consider a European model where the bumper was integrated. I don't think Mercedes is going to build a world car just to please the U.S.
I'm of course aware of the US regs requiring the bumpers be brought up to federal crash-worthiness, but it was mercedes that came up with that 'solution', not anyone else. And it was that solution that was competing with Imperial, not the off-shoire Euro version. If daimler had no intentions of adapting to the US market, why not just pull out? Obviously they set their sights squarely on this market, and made many many changes to better fit in it over time. The bumper solution wasn't one of them, and the front end was cartoonish and heavily dated as a result.
Seems an appropriate spot to ask; if mercedes was unwilling to build relatively attractive/well-fitting bumpers for a major market, should Imperial have engineered a brand new IRS for that same market? -
I disagree heartily that mercedes' interiors in these years (60s, 70s, 80s) gave positive impressions. They were spartan and loaded with cheap plastics. Door panels were flat & featureless, with VW-esque armrests. Seats often showed exposed hinging hardware. Plood was of shelf-paper quality. Switchgear was always black plastic. Seats were decent, but no better than the buckets in full-size 60s Pontiacs (which were actually pretty good). It's just really hard to get past the #1 interface the driver cannot avoid- those non-adjustable truck steering wheels staring up at you. Not sure when mercedes eventually made power steering standard, maybe they were a cheap fix for the lack of PS.
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• The 'GM shared body' issue likewise gets overstated. What that meant was the same hard points (cowl) and a lot of the same mounting points so Fisher could build them on the same jigs. Fisher= body shells, Divisions = chassis/everything else. And usually (not always) the same greenhouses. But make no mistake, the commonality as far as Fisher was concerned was strictly minimal. As each Division was billed separately, there was a very negligible cost savings by having a Cadillac, Buick and Olds on a C-Body. Later, certainly by the '80s, the inbreeding was chronic.
• The Imperial was a letdown stylistically once it went to the fuselage body. Dodge & Plymouth big cars actually came out better, with visual detail. The Imperial was stately, it was imposing, but it sorely lacked detail/definition, ESP compared to even '67-68. Go back to the dynamic '60 and forget about it. I don't think the '69 Imp holds up well at all next to a '69 Cadillac. Maybe that's just me.• I'm familiar with the '58 D-Elegance, my friend Don Butler designed a lot of it while at Chrysler and I have copies of the factory photos. That car had some very interesting detailing but some of the proportions were off vs. the segment's established look. It would have had to gone thru some revisions.
• Here's the period bumpers in question. Mercedes's has zero integration, and was apparently approached with the same mindset OEMs had in the 1940s (or a Mustang of 1965) :
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>>"Ford, like most of the other domestic auto makers, has decided that trucks are the future..."<<
They are the present; 71% of the USDM and still climbing. It's kinda why all the foreign brands have jumped hard on the truck/SUV/CUV segments, too. It's certainly not an arbitrary, baseless decision.>>"if they want to build a car-based SUV, or a SUV that seems like a car, or whatever they're calling it, it either has to be based on an existing model or it has to be a new model that needs to be crash tested and re-certified and all that. By using the Mustang's platform they were able to skip all those expensive tests and just put the thing out there and start making money."<<
It doesn't go by model name and it's not a Mustang chassis. It'll go thru all the certification processes like any other new vehicle.
The problem is, no one makes a profit on electric vehicles, so the money making thing is the big question mark.- - - - -
This actually makes a lot of sense. First, it's an additional model, not a Mustang replacement. Second, with sedans' volume crashing (Accord down 42% in just FIVE years), inevitably there will come a point where the car based CUV and the car will evolve into one vehicle, rather than 2 closely-related ones. Once upon a time an Suv meant a BOF, V8 / 16-MPG Explorer and little else. This is literally the future going forward.-
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4 hours ago, Mahoning63 said:
I think we have to assume that Imperial was dropped after 1975 because it wasn't profitable, and not just for the '75 model year but for years prior. Else, why would an OEM walk away from a profitable brand?
My original post assumed that Imperial was struggling to make a profit in the Sixties, and put forth a strategy that accepted Imperial's low volumes as reality and tried to build a new business case around it: smaller package, higher content, higher pricing, higher per unit margins. Beyond that, the new Imperial could have sparked a new way of thinking for the rest of Chrysler Corp. Imagine the lesser brands beginning to add content to its small cars while GM and Ford did not. And focused more on quality. And drove stronger pricing, not sales, as a result.
Re: '81 Imperial. Yes the team worked hard at the appearance details. Yes the I/P had lots of tech. Yes the interior materials were top notch. Yes the engine was fuel injected. And yes the car was carefully assembled in its own factory. But... why still a solid rear axle? Why standard rear drum brakes? Why the pillow soft ride? Why the cheesy honeycomb wheels? Why the bumpers sticking out when new S-Class were tucked in? And worst of all, why copy Mitchell's dead-end sheer look and an ancient Rolls-Royce limo butt? Four square lathered in cheap tinsel is one reason why the Big 3 sales fell apart in these years.
'80-83 Imperials volume is not at all bad for an exclusive, limited production, top shelf ultra-luxury coupe.
mercedes sold 9K SLs in '82, reached 15K by '84, slid to 4K by '93, and struggles to move 2K now.
• Imperial had begun to be 'sucked back into the fold' when it was downgraded to a Chrysler chassis, and Corporate failed to put hardly any effort into styling (tho the interiors were quite loaded). Just watched a modern video review of a '69, and the exterior is mind-numbingly bland. ChryCo turned the tap off. Sales dropping from the mean were inevitable. The earlier years were quite awesome tho.
• Solid axles excelled in ride isolation. In order to get an IRS to match a live axle, a lot of tech & engineering went into them specifically toward that goal. This finding was held by numerous engineers who had tried many different systems, including from Rolls, Maserati & Opel. Cadillac echoed that finding when developing the Seville. IRS is of course better suited to high-end handling, but this was not the Imperial's (or the s-class's) mission.• s-class bumpers were only 'tucked in' (as much as the Imperial's were) on the Euro-spec models. In the USDM, s-class bumpers were bookshelves. Meanwhile, the Imperial was pretty early in transitioning to body-colored bumpers (yes; the center horizontal was chrome but the valance was body-color). And the whole assembly was integrated into the front fascia, not a dangling, bolted-on chrome bar with huge rubber end caps. Looking at pics of '80 S's, instead of engineering a bumper that fit, they added thick chrome bars below the headlights to attempt to fill the yawning gap there. Mercedes really didn't become product-competitive until the '90s (when they excelled).
mercedes also had terrible interiors in this period (70s-80s), cheap plastic consoles, bad plastics in & out, exposed fasteners all over, and those giant black rubber steering wheels that must've been overstocks from the truck division. Often times it was the only black thing in the interior. -
Ahh yes; the domestic sales bugaboo. It's (comparatively) cheap/American, therefore it must have towering volume. With domestics, it's always about the volume.
Mercedes, with numerous models, selling a mere 45,000 in 1978 (like 11% of Cadillac's volume)? WHO CARES, right? Who ever even talks about mercedes' volume being grotesquely deficient / uncompetitive?
Question : what numbers for Imperial would be desirable/acceptable? I mean; to ChryCo, of COURSE they'd love to sell 223K Imperials. Cadillac might love to sell 1 million Caddys.But WE'RE on the 'other side of the fence' as consumers/enthusiasts. If Cadillac was selling 223K and Lincoln 38K in '69, and Imperial moved 22K.... what would people like to see?
Let's pick a random number; 75K. Where were those other 53K units going to come from? Not from mercedes; Imperial buyers weren't interested and mercedes/bmw didn't have competing product nor sufficient volume. Maybe some could be pulled up from the next tier down, but an Electra 225 sedan was $4611, and an Imperial Crown was $6411- a huge price jump.
I guess the only logical answer would be pulling sales from Cadillac, except the juggernaut of Cadillac sales from '65-79 seems to have been impenetrable. Lincoln didn't make any progress stealing from Cadillac, they were just floating higher in the water. Lincoln went from 13K in '60 to 25K in '61, and Cadillac sales only wavered downward by 4K units (and I strongly believe it was the redesign, not Lincoln snatching buyers).
Consumer-driven markets are never going to result in 'volume equality' among competing brands. Look at modern day audi vs. mercedes' numbers.
Yes, eventually OEMs kill off what's not glowing golden on the balance sheet, but it's a damn shame in too many instances.If ChryCo had a crystal ball and could see the annual sales starting in '59 and reaching forward to the end, and turned to each other in '58 and just pulled the plug, we'd never have had Chrysler's unique and interesting take on top tier luxury. Electro-luminescent, stainless-steeled, squared-wheeled, tail-finned, chrome-eagled futurism, unrealized.
I'm a car enthusiast. The long-running narrative that many domestic models are •crap• or at the very least 'a Major Problem' merely because they didn't sell XXX thousand units is, to me, like going to the shore and only staring down at the sand all day. SO MUCH more going on than the sales chart.
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They're not supposed to be high-volume models. There's a lot more to evaluating their validity than merely volume.
I think the vehicle some of you are talking about came a little bit later- the production '80s 5th Avenue. That was a much smaller class than the typical Imperial, and it made a solid impression.Of course, Niedermeyer has already found a completely worn out & beat 5th Avenue and bullied it mercellessly, branding it a 'deadly sin' based on merely his own opinions.
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25 minutes ago, 58L-Y8 said:
Colbert and Exner had made their best efforts for 1955-’63 to make Imperial distinctive with mostly disappointing results.
How so??
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I agree that very high production is at odds with a luxury product. Cadillac sold 383K in 1979, about where Mercedes has been parked (37xK in '15-17). Cadillac's share percentage was much larger (and with a much smaller catalog). But given that we agree on excessive volume, I further that with; Cadillac should not be at 350K or thereabouts now either (despite a larger overall market), and a contraction of those levels, even in a bigger market, is a positive move, not a 'failure'. Can't have it both ways; can't say 'they built too many' AND say 'they failed because they don't build enough'. This gets right back to my earlier post RE consumers don't care how many are sold, and as long as the brand is operating at a healthy profit, it's pretty much all good. And volume ALWAYS fluctuates for a variety of factors.
The brand is on target for about 155K units in '19, right where they were in the early 60s. A nice, tidy luxury volume, IMO. I'd just like to see the 'product ceiling' punched up a lot more. New Escalade is supposed to be 'up there' as a product.
Cadillac's reputation tarnishing can absolutely be tied to the diesel, the V8-6-4, and the 4100. Too much of too important a criteria, in a short time period. The brand had 500 CI in '76, and 250 CI in '82. Then the Downsizing 2.0 in the mid-80s.
But the '76-79 Seville only elevated Cadillac, not tarnished it. The Olds block never was an issue with the Seville, which was built exceeding volume expectations and rose '76>'77>'78 (don't have '79's numbers handy). -
34 minutes ago, Pfeil said:
Re read what I said.
"they share a partial floor and trunk area" and the 'subframe, which allows fine tuning of steering & suspension & brakes'.
I got that. The structural subframe is shared. However, there was extensive engineering done with every single component (the couple things shared and everything else).But "absolutely an example of GM's parts bin engineering"? A subframe, some flat panel stampings and the door hinges? Is that all we're talking about?
Let's put it this way; if the Seville had a slightly different trunk pan stamping, a slightly different floor pan stamping, slightly different door hinges.... would it suddenly be transformed into a 'success' against the euro offerings? Maybe the stiffening ribs in the Seville's trunk pan could've been stamped at a diagonal instead. Has anyone in the history of either consumer shopping or journalistic hands-on inspection ever examined these things? Does the Nova somehow have a known grossly deficient trunk pan? (OK, it could be flatter).
16-month program allowed no time for a brand new Cadillac engine. 500 CI would not physically fit. Olds block was a fine choice there.
GM has been sharing the THM400 since '64 - is that also 'parts bin engineering'? Should Cadillac have only ever used a proprietary transmission?I'm struggling to see how a handful of invisible components make the Seville a 'gussied up Nova'.
Actually; I'm struggling to see how anyone would proclaim that with any seriousness.It's a wildly off-base claim, not supported by facts. It needs to die like any other unsupported conspiracy theory.
And back to the 'baby Imp'- it seems impossible, given the opinion of some folk, to remotely consider a Plymouth or Dodge body intermediate with a face lift to be the course of action. On one hand we're damning the Seville, while on the other 'Imperializing' a Coronet. ChryCo didn't have the money to keep the Imperial unique/special by '69, so a 100% unique 'baby Imp' in the early '70s would never have even reached the memo stage. Sure, it's fun to do a 'what if', but in that vein shouldn't it be 100% unique, and not parts bin engineered?
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2 hours ago, Pfeil said:
NO they do not share the same windshield and No they don't share the same OUTSIDE sheet metal, but they share a partial floor and trunk area and most importantly they share since they are a SEMI UNIT body the SUBFRAME with the F and X bodies which allows the fine tuning of sway bar diameter, steering boxes, spring assy's. spindle rotors and calipers, insulation hardware etc.
So; nothing remotely of consequence in either the frequency of interchange or the interchange component itself (floor pans, or a subframe).
Yet there's still 'truth about cars' op-eds perpetuating a hard erroneous narrative. Well; it's a domestic, so you 'gotta hate it', I guess.
Seville, a first-ever, much smaller domestic luxury car, outsold the entire Mercedes U.S. line in '77 ( or '78) with a single model. It was a crushing success.
But there was a latent demand for such a car from Cadillac. The question is, were any Imperial-potentials looking for the same thing? -
1 hour ago, Mahoning63 said:
There's a Curbside Classic article about GM's deadly sins and strategic change to FWD, planning of which began around 1975. Either the guy who wrote the article or one of the comments explained it.
Saw that piece; a bit slanted, didn't you think?
Cadillac initially intended for the Seville to be FWD, but the factory was at capacity producing FWD transaxles for the E-Bodies.
But Cadillac looked at FWD engineering programs at least as early as '59, and of course the Eldo went FWD for '67. Then, it was of course a luxury feature. -
11 hours ago, Mahoning63 said:
Something doesn't add up here. Seville came out in May '75 so its development had to have started well before OPEC.
There were a pair of styling concepts prior to, the La Scala was one, I believe the other was (again) named LaSalle. Tho the Seville did pull styling influence from them, they weren't initially part of the Seville Program. That took 16 months, so it was greenlit in Jan of 1974.
Seville was Cadillac's answer not so much to the gas crisis as it was to increasing requests by women for a smaller Cadillac.10 hours ago, padgett said:Seville was a gussied up NOVA and Cimmeron was a similar Cavalier. Cheap.
Yeah; not. Know what a 'gussied up Nova' was? A Nova Concours. Still not a Seville.
Seville and Nova share 0 sheetmetal, 0 in the interior. I believe the only glass that's the same is the windshield.
So they share wheel spindles, the trunk floor stamping and door hinges. Might have the same wiper blades, too.It's not remotely the same car.
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8 hours ago, bryankazmer said:
whether you view it as good or bad, others besides the bean counters do care about volume. Sales, production, purchasing do. R&D does because it funds more development. There is "bad volume" certainly. We turned down some business because it was only marginally profitable, but it generally depends on how full your plant is.
A key to your Ferrari vs Chevy question (a good one) is that Ferrari is the sales leader in their segment. I don't believe Chevy is any longer a leader in any of theirs.
• I'm aware of those points, but this thread was started from a product, or 'public' side of the equation. The consumer evaluating a 'baby Imperial' in 1972 didn't know or care about sales volume or profit margin- that's corporate-level / internal business.
• Ferrari is a much easier analysis because it's only in a single segment (high dollar sports cars). Mercedes as a brand goes from sub-median priced entry level to well into the 6-figure range. In other words, it's a full-line brand. As is Chevy.8 minutes ago, Pfeil said:Cadillac Seville
Below, The X car that the above car came from;
Seville is a K-Body, on a K-chassis. Initial engineering was begun with X-Body specs, but too much was redesigned to keep the same designation. It's the prime reason the Seville ballooned from it's projected $8K MSRP, to the $12K it was sold at- that's how far Cadillac pushed the Seville's development.
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1 hour ago, bryankazmer said:
A corporation's mission is to make money - and somebody always cares how much.
Of course, but usually thats just stockholders and the corporate accountants. My charge is no one (other than corporate accountants) care about volume. Would be interesting to learn the profit of -say- Chevrolet vs. ferrari.
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As Packard was dead by ‘58, it was actually Studebaker that mercedes was paired with for years at the dealership. At the time, the pairing was actually quite fitting, IMO; a 240D and a Scotsman were pretty comparable.
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14 minutes ago, bryankazmer said:
While I agree that the 57-68 Imperials are superior in several respects, they were getting killed in the market place by Cadillac, and secondarily Lincoln.
This is exactly what I was talking about. Sales volume only seems to be important when domestic brands are losing it, or foreign brands are surpassing it (which again is a commentary on domestics). Should sales volume really be a primary criteria for a true luxury brand? As long as an Imperial was meeting it’s mission statement of being an exclusive luxury product (at a profit), should anyone really care how many were sold?
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• Cadillac most certainly is profitably- that's without question. GM made $10.8 billion profit in 2018, whereas MB made $7.6 (euro).
The luxury market target has shifted over time, and all players are building 'sports sedans', with new players shoehorning into the arena (genesis, volvo, etc). BMW, for example, made their image on building sports sedans that were Chevette-level in amenities and equipment. How did they get to the 7-series of today, unless they were benchmarking leading brand's SOP?? Why did Mercedes introduce such amenities as A/C & power steering & automatic transmissions & heated seats years & years after Cadillac did? Should not mercedes still be building well-assembled yet austere sedans with plain interiors and low-power engines, like the mainstream 240 always was?"Matching" other segment players is called competing. There is no such thing as 'natural automotive evolution'.
• Cadillac (and if it were still here; likely Imperial) are held to quite different standards; those of huge volume / comparatively low price; the hallmark (in general) of American brands. Cadillac is NOT General Motors by itself and has traditionally/during it's heydays sold at the levels it does today, despite many many more players. Meanwhile, off-shore brands' volumes over time (BMW, MB) is ignored... except when it surpasses the domestic brands.
• 450SE / 450 SEL volumes still have to be in a minority vs. 240 / 300 sales in this period. At the time, there were very very few willing to 'pay more for less + better handling'. Again; that would change over time. -
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M-B sold 35,000 cars in 1971
As strictly opposed to the one (physical) model Imperial, MB has long been a full-line brand, and a majority of that 35K weren't remotely in the Imperial's arena. The American-esque big displacement 450 SEL 6.9 only sold 1,816 units in the U.S. in it's 5 years here - a mere 360 cars per year. While it was much higher priced than Imperial, that would have been the competing model in all other aspects. Imperial was still 'cushier' but this class of buyer THEN (early '70s) was still shopping for isolation and highway aplomb, not handling.Of course, that would gradually change. Cadillac went with those changes and has built some exemplary automobiles. Imperial did not (and does not). But a 'tweener Imperial appropriating mercedes' competence on a mid-size chassis' would be doing exactly what you claim Cadillac has 'failed' doing. Meanwhile, ChryCo allowed the Imperial to whither from it's robust & highly unique heyday (IMO; '57-68).
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3 hours ago, 8E45E said:
This 2006 concept was an interesting one: https://www.motor1.com/news/314264/chrysler-imperial-concept-we-forgot/
Interesting... but hugely bloated.
None of the mercedes sedans had any 'verve, athletic proportions', so not seeing why that would be the direction here.
If Imperial were to field a model aimed specifically at mercedes, it still would best be a all-new proprietary coupe with trimmer dimensions. -
Some unique viewpoints in this thread, esp RE Cadillac. Can't say I see some of them the same way at all.
RE a Plymouth-derived Imperial 'mercedes competitor'... not seeing it being successful. The busy jumble of period mercedes design aside, the Coronet lacks the detail & refinement to 'graduate' to the luxury class, even with some front & rear fascia tweaking. ChryCo had the ammunition to stay ahead of mercedes with the only albatross being excessive size. Of course, mercedes spent considerable monies enlarging and puffing up their offers to better fit the USDM; the brand really wasn't competitive until the 1980s. And by that I mean product-wise; luxury brands should never chase volume, it's an antithesis to the definition of a luxury product.
A fresh 'baby Imperial' could've had some potential, but certainly it should have been an Imperial exclusive and not a rework of a bottom tier model. -
Not to crow...
but have had very good luck with my '40 Ford. From P.O. stories, it had a '63 municipal plate on it, and was bought by the pre-P.O. in '77. I don't believe it was registered since at least then (who knows). I bought it in '03, running but needing a lot of 'go-thru' / no wiring other than to the motor. Fasteners that certainly looking like they were last attached in 1940 came apart willingly. It's a simple machine, never garaged / quite rusty, but it has been fairly joyful to work on. -
I agree with those that said the '50s :
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1970s Mercedes-Benz 450SE versus... mid-sized Imperial?
in General Discussion
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GM dealerships have seen all sorts of pairings, both likely and unlikely. I have probably the most extensive list of Pontiac dealers anywhere, currently about 7500 listings, and 'it's all been done before'. 'Pontiac-Chevrolet-AMC-John Deere'? Check. There were plenty of stores that had both Cadillac-Buick, and Cadillac-Olds. It was not an issue, having a Cadillac-esque roof on either an Olds or Buick was a Good Thing for them, but they were still not a Cadillac.