[motorhead]

Originally Posted by McRat

Odd. Then why is the Prius a big seller? It is perhaps the slowest car in it's segment. It isn't even the most economical.

And the F-body (Camaro/Firebird) died in 2002 due to lagging sales, even though they were much quicker than the Mustangs which survived.

And Ford once again pulled the plug on a flagship performance car.

No, it's not as simple as true performance. It's PERCEPTION that drives fashion sales. Ouch. Yes, Camaros, Mustangs, Challengers, Corvettes, Vipers, Porsches, etc, are mostly purchased by people who want possess an image of what a certain automobile is perceived as. It's Fashion.

Fashion sense in the auto world is the hardest thing to change. More cars were killed due to fashion than engineers ever destroyed.

I think the Fashion Winner of the 21st century has to have been Cadillac. It was about to be shut down, and somehow, what was considered an overpriced, overweight, underperforming, land yacht for the Geritol crowd became Hip-Slick-N-Cool.

One of the famous losers was Pontiac. While the Firebird was at the peak of it's game performance wise, and most of it's products were well engineered, they just could not invited to party. Stood up on Prom Night.

Dodge is still struggling with Fashion. Only time will tell if they can get to hang out with the cool kids again. It certainly does not help that Fiat's rep in the US is poor. Yes, Fiat is not shiit anymore, but it's hard to kill a perception.

Very good point indeed. As I said above, I do believe Dodge will not be in fashion until they loose the AL Bundy Dodge Dart stigma. I think the hellcat will help that as long as it has some time to shine. GM and Ford will probably trump it pretty quickly if history is reliable.