Plymouth Laser - End of The Line

End of The Line

The Plymouth Laser was not a major sales success. It did not sell as well as the Eagle Talon, and certainly not as well as the Mitsubishi Eclipse. Several factors influenced this. First of all, the Laser was a product of badge engineering, therefore it had to compete with two other cars that were virtually identical. To make matters worse, it faced in-house competition from the Talon, as the Eagle brand was also owned by Chrysler. Where Plymouth was generally marketed as the value-oriented/mainstream brand, Chrysler was trying to market Eagle as their performance brand. Due to this, a much heavier amount of advertising was devoted to the Talon. The fact that the Laser was far different from any other product Plymouth was selling at the time didn't help its popularity either. In the early 1990s, Plymouth's bread and butter lineup still consisted of K-car-derived cars and minivans; the Laser simply did not fit into this persona.

Due to a combination of these factors, the Laser was discontinued after a brief run of 1994 models. This failure of badge-engineering was just a preview of what would happen to the whole Plymouth marque in several years. The Laser's discontinuation coincided with the introduction of its successor, the brand new Plymouth Neon. The Neon was available as a 2-door coupe and a 4-door sedan and was a far better sales success than the Laser. The Mitsubishi Eclipse and Eagle Talon were both redesigned for 1995. The Talon became Eagle's last surviving model in 1998; the car and the Eagle marque were both dropped after that year. The Eclipse continued until the 2012 model year.