what's so hard?

[Pottree@domain.elided]

In a message dated 9/20/2002 3:33:59 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
owner-alfa-digest@domain.elided writes:


> The thought that comes up to my mind is that USA is a world by itself,
> got its own cars, own system, own everything. Sayonara! If it's so
> complex selling cars up there, let's go selling somewhere else!!!!
> 

It's not that it's so complex -- if it was hard do you think ANY of the 
Detroit makers could have survived?  It is just basically EXPENSIVE.  

There are PLENTY of people in Italy especially who are world masters at what 
it takes to create and sell an upscale brand.  They just don't (won't?) work 
for FIAT.  But look at so many other industries, especially clothing.  Also, 
furniture, plumbing fixtures, eyeglasses, cosmetics, musical instruments, the 
list is almost endless.  

Personally, I think that until now (can't say at the present time or what the 
future holds, of course) the ship of the Italian car industry was captained 
by autocrats (pun intended) who never got over the economic devastation of 
the war and a seismic shift from making something as cheap and crappy as 
possible for a struggling local popular market and something else entirely 
for the price-no-object nobility.  I feel that the history shows an industry 
that at root considered mass market cars "just good enough" for a mass market 
would sell because there was nothing else easily available that appealed to 
what they remembered the main buyer motivation was after the war: low initial 
price and high fuel economy.  

When the world outgrew that reality, their instincts did not.  So, while the 
engineers made the mass produced cars get better, there was never a serious 
(e.g., USA level) parallel ramping up of their marketing support, and 
eventually they drowned in the reality of having an unsupported and 
noncompetitive product.  Why?  Because there was no one to persuade qualified 
buyers to buy a 164 instead of a Lexus or Ford and no sane reason for buyers 
to do so.  Making bad worse, they underpriced the cars, still hoping that 
people would be motivated by low cost (which is relative: it was no longer 
truly low), convincing people of their worst fears: it was cheap junk.    

The low price (or value) strategy was doomed from the get-go, at least here 
in the USA where it was seen as dumping. 

What this country needs maybe a good five cent cigar, but what it WANTS is 
any cigar nervy enough to ask for $29.95. 

Charlie
LA, CA, USA
Another country heard from
--
to be removed from alfa, see /bin/digest-subs.cgi
or email "unsubscribe alfa" to majordomo@domain.elided