Re: Throughly modern light line

["Bill Thebert" <bthebert@domain.elided>]

>Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 22:07:25 -0600
>From: bearbvd@domain.elided (Greg Hermann)
>Subject: Re: Throughly modern light line
>
>I am more inclined to think that the IHC light line (and the Scout) were
>more the victims of the DOT , the EPA, OPEC,  Jimmy Carter  and of
>the damage that the
>feds did to the agricultural economy than they were of poor marketing.


Greg:

I'm gonna go out on a limb and disagree with you here.

Ford is going to sell 800,000 of their 1999 pickups;  and Chevy will sell
900,000 of theirs. (Maybe it's vice versa.) That's 1.7 MILLION trucks in a
single year -- or something like 40 TIMES the best year IH ever had with the
Scout II.  It took IH 20 years to sell 523,000 "Scouts" of various vintages.

Who's buying all these trucks (and SUV's, even though I didn't include SUV's
in the figures above)?  People who see and appreciate IH-like quality and
really *need* such a vehicle?  No way.  It's your basic urban-cowboy
wannabe.  Soccer-Moms & grocery-getters.

If the guy selling Scouts does so as a "sideline" to his combine & tractor
sales business, what does he care if you want to trade in a Ford Fairlane?
And are you even gonna SEE the IH offerings when you go cruise the strip of
auto dealerships in your home town?  Probably not -- because IH Dealers were
all at the truck plazas along the interstate highways, as well as wherever
fine ag-implements were sold.  Heck, most Scout & IH Pickup dealers weren't
even LISTED in the phone book  under "Automobile - Dealers".

IH was pretty good at marketing to "fleet" and "corporate" consumers, and
acceptably mediocre at marketing to their incredibly loyal "agricultural"
customer base.  But they were unspeakably lousy at mass-marketing to a wider
pool of modern consumers -- those motivated by annual styling changes,
convenience features, creative financing and the like.

>When a fair portion of the farm and ranch people who
>appreciated IHC quality went belly up, so did IHC sales. These folks were
>the HEART of IHC sales,

Even if every one of these folks were to buy and drive an IH passenger
vehicle today, I nevertheless contend it would be a drop in the bucket
compared to the kinds of sales that other manufacturers are seeing by
appealing to the folks who don't really NEED a truck or SUV.

CAFE fuel economy regulations, 21-percent interest rates on borrowed cash in
the early 1980's, labor agreements that severly limited IHC's
competitiveness, etc. all contributed to it's inability to continue in the
Light-Line business.  But LOUSY marketing was a significant variable in the
equation as well, in my view.

Bill Thebert
The Binder Bulletin