New renderings: Alfa 159, Chrysler 300C

This rendering assumes that the new Alfa Romeo 159 will be based on the LC Challenger/200C chassis.

This 300C is based on the clay seen in a photo of the design studio:

Behind the “new dealership” post

On March 1, a news-like story appeared on Allpar’s weblog, accompanied by a photo labelled “February 1939.”

The story was written on a whim, based the photo:

• To be vaguely believable, I had to think up some good points of the old dealerships – like being cozy.
• Because the dealership had a Dodge/ Plymouth sign, the story had to explain the re-appearance of Plymouth and lack of Chrysler. That was easy. I’ve written before about the tainted Chrysler name.
• Since it was black and white, I had to mention that cars were to be sold only in shades of gray (“One color is good enough for Steve Jobs and Sergio Marchionne.”) Henry Ford, of course, did quite well with black (and with Dodge Brothers components).
• Ram had to be written out, because it  wasn’t invented until 2010, and was based on a nameplate that didn’t appear until decades after all dealerships were in color.

I called the new dealerhip plan Project Deuteronomy, but I should have used Leviticus. Nobody would ever really associate car dealers with Leviticus. (“Before you can operate your dealership, you have to follow thousands of arcane rules that require you to go to a place that no longer exists and sacrifice one tenth of your dealer stock. Oh, and these are the times when your vehicles are unclean and must be washed according to ritual BN-040542 with Special Tool PN32123455.”)

The article was quickly distributed across numerous forums outside of allpar (and at allpar). The allpar forum thread resulted in some changes, including the list of new car colors (“Extremely Dark White” was my idea, the others were more subtle) and the disclaimer at the bottom.

Most postings seemed very sincere. People really wanted to know if it was true, and most of them wanted it to be true. (I’d like parts to be true, too.) Few of those who posted it thought it could be a joke, and around half or more just thought Allpar’d gotten its wires crossed. Some bitter, nasty people who responded apparently felt that way, sneering “you can’t trust Allpar,” which in this case was valid but unfair. (Our track record is better than most, and our errors are often the result of Chrysler’s own press releases being inaccurate).

Most of the comments, though, focused on the content of the story. Usually it just took a few replies to get to the truth of the matter, but discussions still focused mainly on the return of Plymouth, mostly with favor. Some critiqued or praised the new dealership plan and marketing. None seemed to approve of the choice of colors. Also, nobody pointed out the photo caption.

I don’t know what this says about Chrysler’s image. Given the boycotts against the company and the level of ignorance of many car buyers, renaming Chrysler to Plymouth would probably increase sales, but it’s pretty unlikely, even if Plymouth does have more commonly, positively remembered nameplates. Personally I’d love it, and not just for convenience – people would always know when I was writing about the company vs the brand.

The dark brick dealerships … I’m not so sure. I like the retro look but the cars in the picture were pushing it. Though if they were available today in nice colors…

I learned a few things.

• Next time, I’ll wait until April 1. To me it was five minutes of fun, but I’m afraid I got a lot of hopes up.
• Chrysler guys, if you’re listening, now might be a good time to think about Plymouth again — and to try harder to get the message across — you’re alive and planning to stay that way, you’re not majority-owned by the government or by Fiat, and you’re not run by the UAW (though I don’t know why that makes people angry). Oh, and you’re going to pay back the loans. People need to know that.
• I should be more careful with the microphone, like Johnny Fever telling Cincinatti residents to dump their trash on the City Hall lawn. Oops.
• This was a reflection on today’s world — a weblog here can be posted to lots of forums elsewhere for comment. (I have to make our own forums more popular, don’t I?) But why didn’t anyone just ask me if it was true? I would have answered, really!

Mainly, I saw a lot of love for Plymouth, some hatred, true, but mainly love and hope and people still trying to hang onto what’s left. Oh, and a lot of people who had fun with it… once they realized what it was.

Egads, now what am I going to do on April 1?