Reasons For Failure
Various reasons have been suggested as to why captive imports often fail. The question of exchange rates is clearly important, as a sudden shift can quickly raise prices to uncompetitive levels. Some models have been justly criticized for marginal quality, or being a bad match to the local driving environment. The commitment of domestic sales and service staffs to an unfamiliar vehicle has also often been questioned, particularly if the import is seen as reducing sales of other, more profitable vehicles in the lineup.
Others fail due to no fault of their own; the Sunbeam Tiger, for instance, an early 1960s example of the concept of an American Ford Windsor engine in a British (Sunbeam Alpine) body and chassis, enjoyed substantial success until Sunbeam became a captive import of Chrysler Corporation in North America. Chrysler could not be realistically expected to sell a car with a Ford engine, and Chrysler V8 engines all had the distributor positioned at the rear of the engine, unlike the front-mounted distributor of the Ford V8, making it impossible to fit the Chrysler engine into the Sunbeam engine bay without major and expensive revisions. Thus this niche of the automotive market was left to be filled with legendary success by the Ford engined Shelby Cobra.
There may be a deeper, structural issue at work, however. It could simply be that a domestic buyer is unlikely to want an import, and an import buyer is unlikely to enter a domestic showroom. A captive thus easily falls between two stools. This is probably why the practice of using a separate brand name, such as Merkur and General Motors' short-lived Geo, has ceased — the foreignness of the car is thus discreetly made less apparent.
Read more about this topic: Captive Import
Famous quotes containing the words reasons for, reasons and/or failure:
“Adolescents, for all their self-involvement, are emerging from the self-centeredness of childhood. Their perception of other people has more depth. They are better equipped at appreciating others’ reasons for action, or the basis of others’ emotions. But this maturity functions in a piecemeal fashion. They show more understanding of their friends, but not of their teachers.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“She has problems with separation; he has trouble with unity—problems that make themselves felt in our relationships with our children just as they do in our relations with each other. She pulls for connection; he pushes for separateness. She tends to feel shut out; he tends to feel overwhelmed and intruded upon. It’s one of the reasons why she turns so eagerly to children—especially when they’re very young.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
“The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)