https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Motocycle_Manufacturing_Company
This tells me that the company has had many ownership changes, and is now owned by Polaris, the off road bike etc. company.
It has 50 employees, so it is more of an exotic class vehicle in sales volumes.
I wonder which make are used by police troopers, they have to be reliable, and fast.
My uncle used BSA, Matchless and Indian bikes in the 1960s, they were mostly WWII surplus.
This tells me that the company has had many ownership changes, and is now owned by Polaris, the off road bike etc. company.
It has 50 employees, so it is more of an exotic class vehicle in sales volumes.
I wonder which make are used by police troopers, they have to be reliable, and fast.
My uncle used BSA, Matchless and Indian bikes in the 1960s, they were mostly WWII surplus.
I have a compass made by Superior in NY State, WWII, and it was US Army material.
I got it as a toy in 1966.
The company, like many others involved in war production, either went belly up or was taken over, or stopped the product.
Ford stopped making Jeeps after 1945, they made the Willys Jeeps during WWII, it is a long list.
Indian also was sold by duPont after the war, and went through many changes, at one time they were selling 50 cc bikes with Honda knock-off engines, made in Taiwan.
So you can think of it as an audiophile brand, a curiosity, no more.
Now, that is acceptable if you can afford to send the thing in if it breaks, not otherwise.
Not for daily use.
And if you are curious, look up the world's largest (by volumes) motorcycle / scooter makers.
You will be surprised.
I got it as a toy in 1966.
The company, like many others involved in war production, either went belly up or was taken over, or stopped the product.
Ford stopped making Jeeps after 1945, they made the Willys Jeeps during WWII, it is a long list.
Indian also was sold by duPont after the war, and went through many changes, at one time they were selling 50 cc bikes with Honda knock-off engines, made in Taiwan.
So you can think of it as an audiophile brand, a curiosity, no more.
Now, that is acceptable if you can afford to send the thing in if it breaks, not otherwise.
Not for daily use.
And if you are curious, look up the world's largest (by volumes) motorcycle / scooter makers.
You will be surprised.
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You are wrong. It is about the context of how they failed not that they failed. The failures of Saab, the Phaeton and the possible woes of ARC all fit the same context.
OK I'll bite. SAAB never intended to make many of the convertibles. It was a something to raise the profile of the company and it worked VERY well. It was certainly not the reason SAAB was eaten by GM and then slowly died. SAAB was simply not big enough. Also SAAB owners are unlikely to buy BMWs and same the other way around. Also note that about the time of the 900 convertable launch an owner successfully sued BMW that he had a crash due to the rubbish handling of the car! SAAB started to fail 10 years later when they were no longer large enough to develop a wider range of cars and GM came along.
Nope it's more analogous to SAAB thinking they could survive by selling a rebadged Opel rather than a proper SAAB in the 90s
Again nope. You are missing the bigger picture. The VAG D3 platform was very profitable for the group. You are also missing the fact that there is a world outside of continental USA which has very nice VW dealers and the Phaeton sold quite well in europe, just not in planned numbers, but these were more than made up for by large sales of the Bentley continental GT which used much of the same technology. The only waste was the 6bn on the glass factory, but even that is still in use. Anyway mercedes punished themselves and lost their reputation for great cars due to going down market. Your theory just does not hold water.
If you want corporate hubris look at Tesla...
I'm sorry but you've come up with a conclusion and used anecdote to hammer an example in that doesn't fit the actual facts.
AM never made a tractor and are still in business albeit as a completely different company to how they started.
well talbot became simca in france and ended up as PSA. My grandfather worked for Rootes and my uncle for Talbot. British bikes were killed by Honda. this is all standard how business works. they rise and they fall.
Thanks.
The irony is that GM, in a vacuum, probably would not have bought SAAB as an investment.
I believe that GM's then management, which was basically staffed by the same kind of "Finance Department"/Non-Car-Guy clowns who later drove GM into Bankruptcy, were too much concerned with appearances and not enough with reality.
I believe GM bought SAAB because GM's management was very concerned that Ford's Acquisition Binge (of Jaguar, Land Rover, Aston Martin, Volvo, and Rover) was making GM look bad to institutional and private investors. So, just for the sake of being able to say that GM also had bought a foreign auto nameplate, GM bought SAAB.
The irony being that Alex Trotman's (Ford's Scottish-born CEO) purchase of Jaguar was a $10 Billion mistake. (That's not me talking; that's the Wall Street Journal.) In the end, all the Ford Acquisition Binge companies had to be sold off. Hubris. Groupthink.
Trotman (just like the Mercedes directors in my original article) did not want to drive around in a Mustang, or be driven in a Lincoln. Trotman wanted to own Jaguar the company, not just a car--perhaps he always had. Trotman's inability to execute on his Master Plan put Ford in the pickle it was later rescued from by Alan Mullaly, who did a stellar job.
Mullaly's performance allowed Ford to establish the lines of credit that it called upon during the 2008 Financial Crisis that put GM into Bankruptcy. Without those lending commitments, Ford would have been Bankrupt too... for certain.
So, here we are, in the Year of the Lord 2023, with a surge in major corporate Bankruptcies such as has not been seen since 2008, and the United States' credit rating is at risk because of clowns in Washington. I think it's a good time to be thinking about Corporate Governance, and to try to learn from past mistakes.
Sorry to be glum, but, I would not value Audio Research Corporation as a going business. Nobody ever died from not having a $22,000 vacuum-tube stereo amplifier with GhostMeters(tm).
As the Chinese used to say, though, "Truth will be the Daughter of Time."
jm
Rebadged vehicles have often been a very bad idea for an automotive brand. Rebadged Opel? Twice a bad idea. Here's another example of disastrous rebadging of an Opel - Cadillac took a perfectly fine Opel, made it awful, and lost reputation for it.
Yes they would. They wanted the engine management patents. The car company was something they had to get with it. SAAB was well ahead of the game with ion sensing ignition that GM needed.
Audio research has been going over 50 years, most of that time with hoofing big meters on the front of their amplifiers.
McIntosh meanwhile almost died in the 90s and was relaunched as part of the third valve renaissance (or was it 4th). Outside USA and Japan no one has really heard of them other than card carrying audio dweebs as hang around on this forum.
Subsequently improved it, stuck a 5.7L V8 under the bonnet and exported them to the USA as police cars, all part of GM's global platform sharing.
Exactly. What auto companies missed is that the differences between markets is more than superficial. It's not the first time.
Roads in Europe are different from the USA. The climate is different. The fuel costs are different. And last but not least, consumer expectations are different. Corporate eggheads are focused only on consumer expectations, it seems. Americans drive on bombed out roads caked with corrosive ice melt chemicals (salt) in the "rust belt."
The Catera ("The Caddy That Zigs") was gussied up with rims and fancy paint jobs for the American market. The suspension was softened up for American tastes. And bigger engines were installed to appease American hunger for big power. When the Catera was introduced, Americans were being weaned off of enormous land barges with gas guzzling V8s. The result of all this parts bin engineering was a vehicle that just fell apart as you drove it. It was terribly executed. A big shortcoming is that there was no adjustment for camber. Let's put a huge boat anchor in the engine compartment, soften the suspension, and cross our fingers that nobody hits those big old potholes that are everywhere in the US. The result was that finding a Catera that drives straight and didn't destroy tires was like winning the lottery. Word got around fast and it was a hard fail.
Renault rolled the dice in 1980 (give or take a year or two) when it introduced the "LeCar" into the American market. It was a good bet because the Big Three were rolling out turd bombs like the Pinto and Vega to meet market demand for small fuel efficient cars. It was way more refined than any American "economy" car of its era and did very well when first introduced. But within 5 or 6 years they had all but vanished from the roads. Why? Rust. The bottom rusted out in just a few years.
The Japanese shook the American market in the early 1970s and American manufacturers have been playing catch up ever since. To this day the nicest thing I can say about American cars vs Japanese cars is that American cars are a whimsical farce next to their Japanese competitors.
When SAAB introduced the low pressure turbo with catalyzer the exhaust fumes it produced were cleaner than the normal air in central London!
As for companies not researching the markets they branch into reminds me of WalMart trying to get into Germany.
Seemingly they did absolutely zero research into the market or the existing laws there and just behaved exactly like they did in the USA.
They introduced their ever smiling greeters at the door, banned relationships between employees, would not allow unionization of their employees and morning exercises complete with corporate slogans. Big mistakes, all of them.
The German public found the greeters creepy, it is illegal for companies in Germany to have any influence on their employees life outside working hours or to restrict unions in any way.
So consequently employees sued WalMart when they tried to stop relationships between employees and very predictably WalMart lost the case. Same thing happened with regards to union membership. Those corporate slogans caused their German employees to think WalMart was a dangerous cult masquerading as a business (akin to te experiences of the Scientologists in Germany).
After a couple or three years WalMart withdrew from Germany having lost many billions which could have been avoided by 2 days of research.
Having learned their lesson the hard way to get into the UK market WalMart simply bought supermarket chain ASDA and changed nothing.
As for companies not researching the markets they branch into reminds me of WalMart trying to get into Germany.
Seemingly they did absolutely zero research into the market or the existing laws there and just behaved exactly like they did in the USA.
They introduced their ever smiling greeters at the door, banned relationships between employees, would not allow unionization of their employees and morning exercises complete with corporate slogans. Big mistakes, all of them.
The German public found the greeters creepy, it is illegal for companies in Germany to have any influence on their employees life outside working hours or to restrict unions in any way.
So consequently employees sued WalMart when they tried to stop relationships between employees and very predictably WalMart lost the case. Same thing happened with regards to union membership. Those corporate slogans caused their German employees to think WalMart was a dangerous cult masquerading as a business (akin to te experiences of the Scientologists in Germany).
After a couple or three years WalMart withdrew from Germany having lost many billions which could have been avoided by 2 days of research.
Having learned their lesson the hard way to get into the UK market WalMart simply bought supermarket chain ASDA and changed nothing.
Aside: they imported the holden ute into the uk for about 2 years as they fiddled the company car tax. Always wanted one. basically a corvette pickup
I see you're talking about the Holden, an Australian division of GM. I'll go out on a limb and say your corporate nerds didn't screw it up like ours did.
I think you guys got a couple of cool cars that we didn't. Some of us (present company suspected) still miss the good old days of luxury and power. But government edicts limit what manufacturers do, and that's nothing new (or necessarily bad).
A Corvette pickup sounds cool. I liked the old El Caminos and Rancheros too.
I have news for you. Some Americans (myself included) find all that corporate cowtowing and fellating creepy and offensive as well. But in the US, WalMart is a bottom feeder when it comes to hiring employees. To their credit, they have always hired minorities and handicapped people when possible, but I have been there early in the morning when they're having their corporate pep talk and it was so offensive and over the top that I was embarrassed to witness it as a bystander. These people were singing the corporate song and you could tell how much they hated it. It was profoundly degrading. Quite frankly, I had to control myself from walking over there and punching the manager straight in the face.
I'm really glad you guys kicked them in the family jewels. They deserve it and so much more.
Rolls Royce thinking they could sell a car in Germany called the silver mist? (note mist means dung in german). And of course the chevvy Nova.
Holden Ute for Eddie. This one is 6 litre GM V8 and 360 odd horses. Apparantly there was a phase down under of people slapping huge superchargers on them as well.
Holden Ute for Eddie. This one is 6 litre GM V8 and 360 odd horses. Apparantly there was a phase down under of people slapping huge superchargers on them as well.