Must Watch this AutoLine After hours

[mettech]

AutoLine After hours #32

 

Automotive Industry Hall-of-Fame Hal Sperlich is the guest. Ford Motor Company's Product Planning Chief during the 1964 1st generation Mustang's development and launch. Mr. Sperlich was a key member in Lee Iacocca's Fairlane Committee that won approval for the 1964 Mustang.

 

Not only was he involve with the Mustang but also the Mini Van and many other Ford products.

 

The panel talk about current products, Mustang UAW, gas tax, imports, domestic and many other items. At the 1:12 mark, (after the live show) they discuss Lincoln and at the 1:23 mark, the Crown Vic.

 

Excellent show. :happy feet:

Edited November 13, 2009 by mettech

[Ford Jellymoulds]

Thanks for posting the Autoline progamme we don't any many car programes like this in the UK very interesting to watch.

 

Hal was talking a lot of sense, it's all about product more than anything GM had over 50% market share Ford had 20% back in the 1960s.

Ford was was building vanilla only cars and just by introducing the Mustang which he was part of, and just a few other cars that were exciting changed the US buyers perception of Ford entirely which helped lift Fords market share they draw folk into the Ford showrooms. We had the Capri, Cortina & Escort that done the same thing in Europe for Ford in the late 1960's, it worked here Ford wiped BL of the car making map.

 

Hal went on to say trouble with the big 3 cars American car makers today the big problem where they are going wrong, is they are trying to hard to be another Toyota, he said even if big 3 car quality was 10% higher rated the Toyota folk still would not want to buy them. Only way to beat them is stop emulating Toyota and start being American by creating exciting shaped cars that rock again with the Toyota quality inbuilt.

 

Gotta say l agree with him 100%. Fiesta was always regarded as a car for grandad in the UK when it was introduced that did not interest me one bit in 1976 when it was introduced but it has gone 180 degrees the other way and become exciting rather than bland & dull and it has 100% universal appeal today in Europe and certainly got me back into a Ford showroom a place l have not visited in over a decade (never got to see a Ford GT in our area), l also pay my first ever visit to a UK GM showroom just to have a look at the new Camaro soon, and you tend to look at every thing else why you are there. Nothing wrong with vanilla cars just add a few exciting cars as well like Hal says to act as a Halo to draw folk into the showroom get folk interested in cars again, rather bore them to death with generic bland dull carbon copies of Toyota's and becoming car hating environmental greenies wanting to see every car banned off the streets of Europe like most youngsters do at G7 G20 protests what ever.