Originally Posted By: Spazdog
Originally Posted By: hattaresguy
The problem is the name and price point. Gen Y and X people who are the target market don't know what a Dart is, or if they do its an old muscle car their parents drove in HS.
How old do you think Gen X-ers are?
Many of us are well into our 40s. We are the smallest of the generations of working age and the least understood. Chances are pretty good that someone we knew owned a Dart, Duster, or Valiant in high school.
Gen Y? Yeah. They know all the high end cars (that they will likely never achieve) from Need For Speed, Gran Turismo...etc... but seldom know what a Dart, Falcon, or Nova is.
Im on the far tail end of Gen X. Money to spend, some friends are still DINKs with good wages in solid careers. My peers are a funny group. Grew up with records, old cars still had 8 tracks, but we grew up as the first adopters of CDs, computer savviness including in school, etc. We were teens when AOL was giving 10 hour dialup plans.
Darts are indeed a car that my father's buddy drove when they were in high school. Does that bother me much? Nope. Because impalas and malibus and F-series are all good long-term names, just like the dart.
The problem is that at this point, if we want an upscale car, we will buy a BMW, not a souped up car with an standard car name. There is lots of vanity in my gen-x group, and it only gets worse from here, going into gen-y.
To them, the golf/GTI, focus and a few others are cool. A VW is the only one we would be caught in, unless it were a commuter box.
But end of the day, a commuter box isnt a fancied up econobox.
Add to all that, the perception that Dodge/Chrysler is out of business, not a real car company the likes of GM ford or toyota (have heard that one), and there are lots of things stacked against them.
I dont have any problem with the car, just thinking out loud why it doesnt do well to folks in my generation, IME/IMO.
