Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 10:28:49 -0400
Reply-To: Jim Akiba <syncrolist@BOSTIG.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Jim Akiba <syncrolist@BOSTIG.COM>
Subject: Re: Going towards a new era...
In-Reply-To: <BAY103-F27ED0EFC6F91241ECE887BA4A0@phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
BTW I was ranting about that the other day.. wasn't the original point of VW
to be affordable, efficiently mass-produced, practical vehicles for the
"volks"? Now with their new marketing it's almost an admission of "We went
so off track to the point where now, having 3 VWs that are actually almost
affordable is a big deal... woohoo"
There's nothing quite like your own marketing dept pointing out serious
fault in upper management by accident.
I still dream. My dreams are of either a Chinese company that decides to
build the vanagon chassis again, or a small American startup non-profit car
company(which would be a first also) that makes a competitive, practical,
flexible, efficient, and utilitarian vehicle for people that want them. It
might fail like every other small auto manufacturer that has come and gone,
but we still all know what a delorean is for instance.
Jim
-----Original Message-----
From: joe trussell [mailto:vanagongl@HOTMAIL.COM]
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 9:00 AM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Going towards a new era...
I dunno, they are advertizing the new Rabbit, Jetta, and Beetle for under
$17k, which relatively isn't bad. The tradeoff is that the fit and finish
of the new Jetta is not nearly as nice as the last version.
>From: Geza Polony <gezapolony@SBCGLOBAL.NET>
>Reply-To: Geza Polony <gezapolony@SBCGLOBAL.NET>
>To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
>Subject: Re: Going towards a new era...
>Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:41:18 -0400
>
>Remember that marketing is not about selling a product but selling an
> >idea or vision.
>
>Absolutely. It's just that the concept VW was founded on is "cheap,"
>"basic," "casual," "informal," "fun"--all good ideas, but not something
>that appeals to people with huge amounts of money to blow. That's why VW so
>clearly dissociates itself now from its past. Looking at the new Jetta,
>you'd never dream the same company once produced 40 hp air-cooled
>Beetles...
>Any marketing plan to attract affluent buyers would have to take the
>hippy-bus image (which I and a lot of others here like, of course) into
>account, and either update it or do the same dissociative work VW has done.
>
>
>To find
> >$1400 busses with good bodies, etc., and turn them around for $6000 for
> >coachwork - who knows if it's possible.
>
>Ben would...
>
>What would your retail price point be? You're not talking about $6,000,
>right?
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