Paul Niedermeyer (2024) recently commented that the “new 1949 Chrysler Corp. line has to be seen as a failure inasmuch as Ford regained the #2 spot, and never looked back. Excellent cars, but not what the post war market was looking for.”
This is a fairly popular perspective among automotive historians — and makes a certain amount of sense. However, I would suggest that it obscures as much as it illuminates the postwar U.S. automobile industry. So let’s do a quick data dive.
Chrysler and Ford ran neck and neck from 1931-48
The graph below shows how the Chrysler Corporation and the Ford Motor Company battled it out for second place from 1932 through 1948. In 1934-36 Ford had a slight lead but from 1937 through 1940 Chrysler edged it out by narrow margins.
The only years when Chrysler had a meaningful lead over Ford was in 1941 and 1948 (this graph doesn’t include the years 1942-47 because they were impacted by World War II). For example, in 1941 Chrysler production topped one million whereas Ford only hit roughly 792,000 units.
Also see ‘Six myths about the misunderstood 1953-54 Plymouth’
A key thing to keep in mind is that from 1931-48 Ford was operating at unusually low production levels. As late as 1930 it was the top U.S. automaker, with output that reached almost 1.15 million units. Ford would not surpass that level until 1949, when production soared to 1.49 million.
If we stand back and look at the big picture, one takeaway is that the Chrysler Corporation came out of nowhere in the early-30s to join what became known as the Big Three. The automaker’s output rose from under 300,000 units in 1930 to more than one million in 1937. That was an extraordinary amount of growth, particularly during the Great Depression.
However, equally important was the Ford Motor Company’s dramatic decline. You can see from the graph below that its market share fell from 39 percent in 1930 to a low of 14 percent in 1948.
To what degree was Chrysler’s rise made possible by Ford’s decline? And when a new generation of Ford management began to modernize the automaker after WWII, how likely was it that Chrysler could have maintained its No. 2 status even if it did everything right?
These are questions that critics of the 1949-52 Chryslers would do well to engage more deeply before dismissing the cars as failures.
Ford’s postwar expansion played out on two fronts
From 1949 onward Ford pulled away from Chrysler on two fronts. Most importantly, the Ford brand rebounded to levels that it had enjoyed prior to the Great Depression. In 1924 Ford production had peaked at 1.7 million units — which was in the same ballpark as output in the banner years of 1955-56.
Also see ‘Lincoln-Zephyr was a first step in Ford surpassing Chrysler’
In addition, beginning in 1949 Mercury and Lincoln brands started to generate enough sales that they undercut the Chrysler Corporation’s traditional advantage in higher-priced fields.
The graph below shows how in the early postwar period Chevrolet and Ford brand output skyrocketed while Plymouth stayed relatively flat.
For example, in 1949 both Chevrolet and the Ford brand produced more than one million cars while Plymouth only pumped out roughly 520,000.
Meanwhile, the Mercury and Lincoln brands together generated almost 375,000 units in 1949. This was more than three times as much as their previous record in 1940, when the two brands surpassed 105,000 units.
Without the Mercury brand the Chrysler Corp. would have outproduced the Ford Motor Company in 1950-53. Yes, that’s even with the conservative styling that Niedermeyer describes as a failure.
There’s a flip side to that story. If Mercury had been around in the first half of the 1930s Ford might not have been bumped out of the No. 2 spot. The premium-priced brand wasn’t added until 1939. In addition, Lincoln only broke out of four-digit production levels in 1936 with the introduction of a junior model called the Zephyr.
The 1949-52 Chryslers were unusually space efficient
So what was all the fuss about the 1949 Chrysler lineup’s design? The Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto and Chrysler shared a basic body that — unlike some rivals — was all new rather than merely a reskinning. Yet it was still relatively tall at 65.6 inches, which was four inches higher than a Ford and 1.6 more than a Chevrolet. This was intended to allow more headroom to wear a hat.
In addition, the Plymouth four-door sedans had a 118.5-inch wheelbase, which was 3.5 inches longer than Chevrolet’s and 4.5 inches more than Ford’s. Yet the Plymouth’s length was 191.5 inches, which was roughly five inches shorter than its Big Three competition.
Wayne Whittaker of Popular Mechanics wrote that Chrysler stylists “were sure that the public is more concerned with headroom than with a low, super-swanky silhouette parked at the curb; that people like larger doors which open all the way and stay open for easy entrance and exit, and a reduced overall exterior width” (1949, p. 118).
Chrysler came up with another interesting innovation: The two-door sedan, coupe and wagon were placed on a seven-inch-shorter wheelbase than four-door sedans. This resulted in a lower weight than the equivalent Chevrolet or Ford but not the Studebaker Champion.
Yes, the Chrysler lineup’s design was problematic
I don’t say all of this to dismiss the idea that the styling of the new-for-1949 Chrysler lineup was too utilitarian for a fast-changing marketplace. At the very least, the automaker kept its basic design around at least one year too long. In 1952 Plymouth was the only low-priced big car that still had a flat windshield.
Richard M. Langworth and Jan P. Norbye are among those who have criticized the “stolid practicality” of the 1949 models, noting that the best one could say about them was “that they just managed to be as modern as their Kaiser-Frazer rivals, which by then were three years old. Even so, K-F had integral fenders fore and aft, while fenders were still separate at Chrysler Corporation” (1985, p. 137).
Also see ‘Was the 1951 Ford the end of the sensibly-sized standard American car?’
What Langworth and Norbye considered old hat Chrysler marketing presented as an advantage — much like Volkswagen did with great success in the 1960s — by arguing that more easily detachable fenders “don’t cost you a fortune to repair.”
Despite their criticisms of Chrysler design, Langworth and Norbye acknowledged that the automaker “had a fine year” in 1949 when it came to sales. And in 1950 the largely unchanged designs sold “even better” — hitting 1.27 million cars (1985, p. 141). However, the authors argued that Chrysler’s strong performance was a product of a seller’s market, and that management did not recognize how buyers were “quite willing to put up with the extra entry/exit contortions required in a car styled more like a torpedo than a tank” (1985, p. 138).
Why Chrysler’s chances of staying No. 2 were shaky
A seller’s market was undoubtedly helpful to Chrysler, but a sale was a sale — and a long-lasting, quality product likely increased the likelihood of a repeat buyer more than the highly-styled but defect-riddled 1957 Chryslers. I would suggest that the latter may have negatively impacted the corporation’s reputation more than the dowdiness of the 1949-52 models.
Also see ‘1955-56 Chryslers: Forward Look wasn’t as successful as sometimes assumed’
Be that as it may, I suspect that even if Chrysler had consistently been a style leader in the late-40s and early-50s that it still could have had a difficult time maintaining second place in industry sales. Ford arguably had more capacity to grow, both because of its larger scale as well as the extraordinary level of dysfunction that the company escaped from once Henry Ford II took the helm from his badly out-of-touch grandfather in 1945 (Nevins and Hill, 1962).
For example, in 1950 the Ford brand tallied 175 new-car registrations per dealer franchise compared to 198 for Chevrolet and only 55 for Plymouth (Edwards, 1965; p. 228). Here Chrysler looked more like an independent automaker than one of the Big Three. And while the numbers grew with the trendy 1955 and 1957 models, Plymouth didn’t appreciably close the gap with Chevrolet and Ford.
This is why I wish that automotive historians would present a more nuanced assessment about why Chrysler was overtaken by Ford in 1949. Styling may have mattered, but I would suggest not nearly as much as is commonly assumed. Even if one subscribes to the school of thought that snazzy design was the key to success in the 1950s, a whole range of other factors such as the strength of dealer networks may have been bigger factors in Chrysler falling to No. 3.
NOTES:
Production figures and specifications are from the auto editors of Consumer Guide (2006), Flory (2009), Gunnell (2002) and (Wikipedia (2022).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International; Lincolnwood, Ill.
- Edwards, Charles E.; 1965. Dynamics of the United States Automobile Industry. University of South Carolina Press.
- Flory, J. “Kelly” Jr.; 2009. American Cars, 1946-1959: Every Model, Year by Year. McFarland & Co.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Langworth, Richard M. and Jan P. Norbye; 1985. The Complete History of Chrysler Corporation 1924-1985. Publications International, Skokie, IL.
- Niedermeyer, Paul; 2024. Commentator in “Car Show Classic: 1949 Plymouth Special Deluxe – We Don’t Build Excitement.” Curbside Classic. Posted in Sept. 17 at 8:23 am.
- Nevins, Allan and Frank Ernest Hill; 1962. Ford: Decline and Rebirth 1933-1962. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, NY.
- Whittaker, Wayne; 1949. “Chrysler Family Debut.” Popular Mechanics. April issue: pp. 118-123, 270, 272.
- Wikipedia; 2022. “U.S. Automobile Production Figures.” Page last modified Jan. 26.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- oldcaradvertising.com: Chevrolet (1949); Plymouth (1949, 1951)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Chevrolet (1949); Ford (1949); Plymouth (1949)
It’s a crying shame that over the decades. Chrysler has been saddled with incompetent leadership compared to that found at the Big Two. From killers ASIS on high, boxy styling in the early 50s, to the rushed-into-production ‘57 models which were riddled with gremlins (that cost the corporation. It’s long-standing reputation for quality), to the late-50s double-dipping and invoice padding scandals of the senior leadership which led to the dismissal of Colbert and his lieutenants, to the over-tolerance of Virgil Exner’s increasingly bizarre styling culminating in the disaster that were the ‘62 models, To the fiscal shortsightedness of the Lynn Townsend years, which eventually led to Chrysler’s crashing and burning in the mid 1970s. WHY couldn’t the corporation hire or promote some competent, forward-thinking individuals who would have avoided the repeated mistakes that finally cost Chrysler its independence??
Very interesting, Steve. I love your data dives, and you;ve given us a lot to think about here.
Down here in Australia the Chrysler brands of this era were much more commonly seen in the sixties than Fords or Chevs – I say Chrysler brands because we followed the Canadian model, with minor trim differences between Plymouth, Dodge and DeSoto, all on the same shell and chassis. I’m not sure whether this is a reflection on fifties Australians’ more conservative tastes, or a reflection on the longevity of Chrysler engineering. Maybe both. I saw one early-fifties Chevrolet in my neighbourhood as a kid in the sixties, and had to read the badge to tell what it was. I saw ’49-’51 Fords in books long before I ever saw one on the road; they seemed to wear out very quickly, and anecdotally rust even quicker. But the Chrysler brands seemed much more common. To my knowledge production figures were lost when Mitsubishi bought out Chrysler in ’81 (alternative universe? Nope, just Australia!), but registration figures are probably available.
I remember seeing a ’49 Plymouth in daily use into the early eighties, until a power pole fell on the roof. Interestingly the roof wasn’t crushed much, just enough to jam the doors shut. And, much like today, a thirty-three year old car wasn’t worth the cost of repairing at that point.
The sales figures per dealer that you quote are quite revealing. Shocking is that the Plymouth dealer only sold a quarter the cars the Chevy dealer moved. That may well be a large part of the story – how long could dealers survive with sales figures so much lower than the competition? But also there must have been something about the product that motivated buyers to look elsewhere. These Plymouths somehow seemed to be proportioned more like a thirties car, rather than being a clean visual break with the past like the other two. Maybe it was the styling after all?
As far as I understand it, in the US there was virtually no such thing as a stand-alone Plymouth dealership during the classic era. At first it was a “companion” for all other Chrysler makes, and after the reorganization of dealership network in early 1960s the Plymouth brand was paired with Chrysler as a junior offering. Also don’t forget that probably the main competitor for Plymouth was Dodge, as it also offered a line of economy cars, which often were little more than re-badged Plymouths sold for just a couple bucks more. Like, Plymouth Valiant & Dodge Dart – same body shell (the Dodge version was slightly stretched until mid-70s), same engines, etc. It would be more fair to use the sales figures for Plymouth + entry level Dodge lines to compare to Ford or Chevy, IMO.
Am I understanding it correctly that Plymouth did not have a consistent pairing until the early 1960 when it was only with Chrysler? So, depending upon the location the dealership might be Chrysler/Plymouth, of Dodge/Plymouth, or DeSoto/Plymouth?
Strikes me as a possibility for a potential Plymouth buyer to have an issue with a dealership looking at them as the cheap buyer if they would not be willing to move up the ladder. Put another way, someone goes to the dealership to buy a Plymouth but all they wanted to sell them was the higher level brand.
Was the pairing of Plymouth with Chrysler a result of the DeSoto demise?
Most every Chrysler, DeSoto and Dodge dealer carried Plymouth. It was Walter P.’s strategy to get the dealers through the depression. Conventional wisdom is that it was a bad idea because Plymouth lacked dealer champions in the way Chevrolet and Ford had. My contrarian view is that it could have been an advantage if instead of dismantling it in the early 60s, the corporation had focused investment on Plymouth and minimized its investment in the other brands.
One of the most curious aspects of American automotive history has been the tendency for a lot of folks to assume that the best way for smaller automakers to have survived would have been to more slavishly copy GM. So if Chevy had lots of stand-alone dealers, surely Chrysler would have done better if Plymouth did so as well!
I question whether that was ever really true. It arguably worked for Ford, both because of its historically high volume and because it was so late in developing a lineup of more expensive brands. Chrysler was in the opposite situation — its initial strength was in the premium-priced field and needed to massively build up its scale to compete in the low-priced field.
Whatever one thinks about Chrysler’s earlier arrangement of pairing Plymouth with more expensive brands, I think the early-60s reorganization would prove to be a big mistake. By that point Chrysler arguably could no longer afford to field two dealer networks, particularly with a partially overlapping product line that resulted from Dodge being moved downmarket. That undercut Plymouth’s viability, particularly once the automaker began to depend on badge engineering to give each dealer network a full lineup.
Chrysler’s late-50s collapse in the premium-priced field was so devastating that the automaker might have benefitted from getting rid of two passenger-car brands rather than just the DeSoto. For example, what if Dodge had been pruned back to just offering trucks and the Chrysler brand had instead added smaller cars?
While I think you’re ultimately right about it being desirable to eliminate more premium brands, I also doubt it would have been politically possible within the Chrysler corporate culture to entirely eliminate Dodge passenger cars at that time. But Imperial certainly could have been folded back into Chrysler.
I get that pulling Dodge out of passenger cars would have been a much bigger deal than ditching DeSoto, so I mention it in passing. However, it should be noted that they didn’t need to kill it immediately; they could have starved the brand for product and integrated the dealer organization so that compelling products were available from other brands. For example, instead of moving Dodge downmarket in 1960 they could have stayed the course and not given the brand a compact. Sales may very well have dried up by the end of 1962, whereupon the plug could have been pulled. That’s kind of what they did with DeSoto.
There were several factors at work here – and blame can be laid at the feet of Keller.
There is nothing wrong with practical styling, but the 1949 models have hardly any flair. Practical doesn’t have to mean dowdy or dull. The 1949 models were dull. It was apparent by the eve of World War II that good design could be a selling point – one can argue that the styling efforts of Bob Gregorie and Edsel Ford had helped keep Ford afloat during the 1930s.
The 1965-68 C-bodies, and 1965-70 B-bodies, show that practical styling could be attractive. They hold up well today, and even when compared to their contemporaries. The 1949 Chrysler Corporation cars, on the other hand, still look dull and old-fashioned. And Keller kept vetoing one-piece, curved windshields as a “gimmick” until the 1953 models. That was hardly a smart move. It’s telling that Chrysler was the last of the Big Three to establish a separate styling section.
But even worse than the stodgy styling was the lack of a fully automatic transmission throughout the line until the 1954 model year. This was an unforgivable omission by a company that had prided itself on engineering leadership. GM had been selling Hydramatic since 1940, and after World War II Ford and the independents were either developing their own automatic or buying Hydramatic from GM.
Keller insisted that his cars retain a clutch for “control.” An increasing number of drivers didn’t want to mess with a clutch – they wanted a fully automatic transmission. The lack of a fully automatic transmission gave Chrysler Corporation cars a reputation for being behind the times. This especially hurt Chrysler in the medium-price class. Oldsmobile and Buick were booming during the early 1950s, while Chrysler and DeSoto fell further behind.
The failure to address how Plymouth was sold was another issue. Plymouths were sold through each of the corporation’s three dealer networks – Dodge, DeSoto and Chrysler. Plymouth was treated as a “companion make” at the dealer and corporate level. Dealers wanted to sell prospects one Plymouth – and then move them up to a more profitable Dodge, DeSoto or Chrysler. Chevrolet and Ford had their own dealer networks.
I would also note that Ford, under Henry Ford II, modernized its entire management structure. Chrysler remained largely a one-man show under Keller. The time had come for a large corporation to move beyond that type of management by the late 1940s.
Good points and also wasn’t Chrysler hit by a UAW strike in the early 1950s?
And Plymouth being treated as a “companion make” and later being hit by Dodge stepping into Plymouth territory with the full-size Dart in 1960 didn’t helped things either.
I found an interesting quote in a 1965 thesis on the Edsel by John G. Sullivan, which says:
It was common knowledge that when dealers dualed and one car had an off year, they would not “push it” and that compounded the sales problem. The dual dealer would push only the good seller, usually the lower-priced car. G. M. does not dual except in low volume areas and Chrysler has had problems in this field also. Dualing seems to be more expensive in the long run.
(This was paraphrasing a remark by Edsel sales manager J.C. Doyle in the September 1957 Fortune. Unfortunately, that’s one of the many things that’s no longer available through the Internet Archive due to the recent court debacle, so I can’t readily access the original article.)
This is a good point about “dual” dealerships, but Chrysler’s “dual” brands at the dealer level goes back to 1928 when Dillon-Read refused Walter P. Chrysler’s initial offer for Dodge, so Chrysler made other plans for Plymouth and De Soto. Chrysler launched De Soto on August 4th. Then Dillon-Read realized that Chrysler was their best offer, so relented and sold to W.P.C. on May 28th, announced on June 2nd. Chrysler launched De Soto on August 4th. Plymouth launched on July 7th. So, in terms of 1928 positioning, De Soto was priced just above Dodge and Dodge just a little above Plymouth, but the mid-priced cars were dualed with Plymouth. In the mind of K. T. Keller, “dualling” Plymouth with their De Soto and / or Dodge dealers was perfectly okay for 1928 through 1952. After all, despite the 1934-1935 Airflow kerfuffle, most of Chrysler’s dealer body survived the Depression. Tex Colbert should have reorganized Chrysler’s dealer body for 1955 or 1957, instead of waiting until 1958-1959. But, with the demise of De Soto in the fall of 1960, the easy way of thinking was two divisions: Chrysler-Plymouth and Dodge-Dodge Trucks in urban / suburban areas. As has been noted before, when Chryslers and Plymouths were in the same showroom and the 1961 Newport started at $ 2,964.00, selling a Fury must have been difficult.
The dealer body picture is complicated; Chrysler actually added almost 2,000 franchises between 1935 and 1936, but this was apparently overreaching, so they lost about a thousand of them in 1938 alone, and by 1940 they were back to the 1935 level, where they remained through 1950.
However, Doyle’s comment speaks to the relatively modest fortunes of Plymouth in the ’40s. Because Plymouth was dualed with all three senior brands, it technically had almost 50 percent more sales outlets than Ford in 1949, but sold about 35 percent fewer cars, so its average sales per franchise was less than half of Ford’s (about 53 cars/franchise versus about 120 cars/franchise). During the Depression, Plymouth gave other Chrysler Corporation dealers a useful cushion — even if nobody was buying mid-price cars, there was still something to sell — but it meant there was less incentive to push Plymouth hard, since if a salesperson could put someone in a DeSoto, Dodge, or Chrysler (as applicable), they had every reason to do that instead unless the local clientele was looking really lean.
Plymouth’s pairing with more expensive brands may have saved some dealers once the premium-priced market collapsed in the late-50s.
I wouldn’t be surprised if upselling occurred, but I suspect that it wasn’t as big of a deal as is commonly assumed. If a dealer needed to achieve a certain level of volume, it presumably would have been smart enough to prioritize those cars that would most likely help meet their targets. The DeSoto or Chrysler brand might have generated more profit per vehicle, but their markets tended to be substantially smaller than Plymouth’s.
In my opinion, this is a gross over-simplification about Ford in the 1950s: Hank the Deuce hired Tex Thornton’s “Whiz Kids” and Ernie Breech from G.M. to set up a G.M.-style corporate management structure. Plus, Ford was a privately held company until 1956. Chrysler was a public company and beholden to its bankers. The biggest problem Ford’s management had was the 1952 Jack Reith five division plan that launched the Edsel and the “super” Mercury !
This story was about Chrysler, not Ford . . . and a data dive rather than a full-fledged history. However, if one is so inclined, I’m always happy to disappoint.
Not having a fully automatic transmission by 1949 boggles the mind.
Someone might be able to defend the dull styling.
Vhysler needed outside the box thinking a V-8 and automatic in the low price field would have been a game changer in 1949.
In 1949, only GM and Packard had fully automatic transmission, and only on the more expensive brands. None of the low-price makes (including Chevrolet) yet offered automatic; Studebaker didn’t until 1950, and Ford and Mercury were a year after that. GM’s Detroit Transmission Division only started offering Hydra-Matic to outside customers starting late in the 1949 calendar year, initially to Lincoln and Hudson. The fact that Chrysler continued to drag its feet in this area would very shortly become a serious problem, but in 1949, I don’t think it was yet a catastrophic commercial handicap. That was still a transitional moment where having an automatic was an advantage, rather than the lack of one being a debit, if you see the distinction.
Didn’t Chrysler start the 1949 model year with facelifted 48s and didn’t come out with real 1949s until around January? Considering that for most of it’s history Plymouth had built in headwinds at the dealership. ” You know Mr Bierhanzel for an extra 10 dollars a month I ca put you in this deSoto”
Yes; a tooling strike meant the “real” (Second Series) Chrysler Corp models weren’t introduced until March 1949. By contrast, the 1949 Ford/Mercury/Lincoln lines were introduced early (in June 1948), so to get a complete picture of the comparative trends, it might be necessary to tally calendar-year as well as model-year totals for both.
I don’t have a comprehensive source of calendar-year data for this time period; what do you recommend?
My experience has been that production figures in this era can suffer from numerous data-integrity issues. I wish the U.S. had a historical research outfit (ideally through a university) with a repository of production and sales data built and maintained by people with both deep knowledge of the auto industry and strong quantitative skills.
I am aware Chrysler had a pre-war presence in Europe with commercial vehicles IIRC, were they however in a position to establish a presence in Europe building cars as was the case with Ford and General Motors, whether by a acquiring a stake in an existing company or starting from the ground-up?
Would like to believe a competently run Chrysler could have run Ford close for the 2nd spot and be ready to pounce on any mistakes Ford were likely to make in the post-war period.
As it was Chrysler experienced a lot of misfortunate and avoidable mistakes after WW2 up to the 1979 bailout.
Chrysler faced additional constraints in that it was outsourcing body production to Briggs while Ford had it in house and Chrysler did not invest in additional Plymouth production capacity when the demand was there.
But on the data front I believe that weakness at Chrysler in this period was particularly experienced at DeSoto and Dodge. Mercury may be part of that story, but more competitive products from Oldsmobile and Pontiac than had been the case before the War must be part of it too.
Steve,
You cite the per dealership number for Plymouth, Ford, and Chevrolet. How complete is this information for other years and for other brands?
Charles Edwards (1965) includes a data table for the years 1950 and 1955-63 (p. 228, Table 20). Only domestic automakers and brands are included. He also has tables on the number of franchises and dealers. The proportions are about what you might expect given their market share, with GM having the most, Ford the second most, etc.
Not for the Plymounth/ChryCo discussion but as we have talked at other time about Packard what their numbers look like?
I’m on the road so am not in a position to write something up but if you follow the link you can view the actual tables. It’s an interesting book.
Here is the problem with comparing post-war Ford management decisions with post-war Chrysler decisions: Ford was a private, family-held company (with government contracts) and Chrysler was a publicly held company behold to banks out east. The Ford family had wealth in 1948 that rivaled many of the eastern banks. K. T. Keller had to get his plans approved by higher authorities with a more significant veto power, while H.F.II could coral his family members over Sunday dinner at Fairlane (after Henry the First moved to the farm in the Great Beyond) to get his funding approved.
As a boy, I rode in a 1949 Ford Fordor sedan. It was not as well put together as was another friend’s mother’s 1948 Plymouth sedan. The Ford rattled and even new, leaked water in the trunk and around the doors. No wonder Ford moved from the 1949-1951 body shells to the much better engineered and built 1952-1956 bodies. While Ford’s engines were perhaps more powerful (until Chrysler’s FirePower V-8) except in the area of cooling in hot weather, Chrysler’s cars were smooth and reliable unless one left the flatheads out in wet weather (ignition / spark plug wire moisture).
Actually dualling worked both ways. It seems starting with the 57 model year Chevy and Ford, and Plymouth somewhat expanded their lines upscale. Look at the 57 Ford Ranchero and Skyliner, and the stunning 1958 Chevy Impala. The dealer’s concept of “don’t sell them a car, sell them four cars in 10 years. The Ford and Chevy dealers could now move their customers up. For Chrysler Corp Plymouth did its job, now its up to dodge and deSoto.
Not directly related to this specific topic, but tangential to it and several of the comments that resulted, I have a question worth pondering. Can you think of an automotive company that ever failed because of reasons that were NOT directly tied to poor management decisions.
There are certainly plenty of examples to look at, from the Independents of the 50s to the government bailout and subsequent repeated shuffling of ownership of Chrysler over the last 40 years, to the bankruptcy of General Motors in 2009. Ford has repeatedly dodged that bullet somehow, whether due to family ownership, deep pockets, or dumb luck. But that makes them the exception rather than the rule. (At least for the time being.)
This might be a topic for a future article: What management decisions could not be overcome that ended up killing individual automotive manufacturers?
Not failed but into deep trouble for completely unforseeable events.
The first oil crisis falls into that category and particularly hit Chrysler. There product cycle (set years in advance) put their full size cars for that time, which was exactly the wrong new product for the times. It wasn’t going to matter how good the car was or wasn’t the timing was wrong. Compounding the Chrysler situation was that they had tied the Dodge and Plymouth images to performance which died a death with the lack of gasoline compounding the rising insurance rates.
I want to comment on the assertion of Ford’s non-bankruptcy. Ford was suffering from severe financial issues from Jacque Nasser’s failed plan to purchase an assortment of premium brands. In the aftermath and unwinding of that plan, Ford mortgaged everything they could to raise cash. Remember they even mortgaged the Ford name as part of this. It just so happened that they were sitting on cash when the financial crisis hit. GM’s problem was primarily the inability to raise money from the normal sources of financdial institutions. During the time if money was available it was at exhorbidant rates. Would Ford have been in the same shape as GM if they had not already mortgaged everything they could? One can look at GM and certainly blame management for not dealing with their problems years earlier so they had good profitability.
Not cars but with Motorhomes the answer is definately yes that failures caused by outside influences and not bad management occurred. The second gas crisis did this to some of the companies. What the gas crisis didn’t do the follow on of a spike in huge interest rates did for the majority of the industry.
Before the gas crisis started in 1979 it was a banner year for motorhomes. Maximum production rates with the dealers wanting as many as they could get. But as the gas crisis happened and then did not quickly end, the dealer lots filled up with unsold units. Who wants a motorhome when they can’t be assured of getting gas for it.
The sale for a manufacturer is to the dealer, not to the retail purchaser. During this time the mfg could see that their orders were not being cancelled by the dealers but that did change. Dealers had overflowing lots and no buyers so whatever their commitments to the mfg were became meaningless – can’t afford to floorplan what they already had.
Then as that abatted there was a recession combined with interest rates that shot up. Prime was in the high teens and possibly crossed 20 as I remember it. This certainly killed the lower end motorhomes that were targeted at working families.
Was all this forseeable by management? Not really. Those that were able to survive were blessed with very strong financials. But, to what extent should a growing business in a boom time be planing for their entire market to fall off a cliff?
Here is an interesting insight to why Chrysler’s second-series 1949 cars were executed the way they were: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHvTTP3bP00
The comments on Plymouth dealer dualing is interresting, but I hardly think it was a cause of the 1949 model issue. I’m a Chrysler sales retiree; I recall an old dealer rep recounting that as late as 1965, Plymouth had 50 (!) dealers in the St. Louis metro area alone, either Chrysler duals or a number of stand alone stores. The 1959/60 franchise realignment spawned a number of modern Plymouth only stores in metro areas. The management scandals undoubtedly distracted from focus on establishing the new network. The 1960 and 61 styling issues and the 62 downsizing probably took the air out of the Plymouth stand alone store plans.
However, in 1949 the dealer network had supported a #2 Chrysler market position for quite some time. I think the problems lay elsewhere.