Date:         Tue, 24 Apr 2007 10:16:30 -0700
Reply-To:     Robert Fisher <refisher@MCHSI.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Robert Fisher <refisher@MCHSI.COM>
Subject:      Re: Going towards a new era...
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
              reply-type=original

This was basically the thinking behind the question I asked a few weeks ago
about which features from the Vanagon folks would like to see in a new
vehicle to replace it- and I was thinking that if you could get the
chassis/body produced, you could take a page from Delorean and use 'off the
shelf' stuff to put in it, sort of like Dell did with computers. People
replace everything from the engine to the dash in these things, so if you
designed your chassis with all your favorite Vanagon features around
currently produced innards (everything from the engine to the dash) you
wouldn't actually have to go through the whole R&D bit like you would have
to do if you built something from the ground up.
Whether it can actually be done from a practical and legal standpoint and
work as a business is another matter, of course.

Cya,
Robert

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Akiba" <syncrolist@BOSTIG.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 7:28 AM
Subject: Re: Going towards a new era...


> 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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