Lord Rootes understood luxury, he really had no idea regarding performance.
So the Alpine was one of the few sports cars that became LESS powerful after
the Series II. Chrysler's influence began to show in the Series V.
In addition, the car magazines had few good things to say about Sunbeam after
the early sixties.... maybe Rootes didn't spend enough advertising dollars?
Finally, regarding praise of the Mini...it has been ascertained that
BMC/Leyland, etc LOST nearly $100 per Mini! The Mini effectively destroyed
the British car industry. Why? Because with the Mini selling way below what
it cost to produce-people bought Minis instead of competitors' products (read
Imp here). BMC went from making about 30# profit on each car they sold in
1960 to making less then 10# of profit on each car by the late 1960's. The
cause of this was the money losing Mini. When the Imp was introduced in the
US selling for $1,495.. the Mini was selling for under $1,300 !!! Why buy and
Imp when a Mini was so cheap? This was all outlined in the Spring 2001 issue
of "Melodies", the newsletter of the "Brotherhood of the Three Spires".
Jan Eyerman
"Ian Spencer" <SpenceIC@Healthall.com> wrote:
Jay,
It seems to me that Rootes was more concerned with luxary than anything else.
I've noticed that all the road test cars were GT's and loaded with options.
They obviously wanted to showcase the best.
Ian Spencer
Client Services
University Hospital
Health Alliance of Greater Cincinnati
(513) 584-0365
>>> <Jay_Laifman@countrywide.com> 08/09/01 10:08AM >>>
I recently got a 1963 Car and Driver magazine. It has a review of the
Alpine S3 GT. Geeze zooks. They really put the car down in the
performance category. And, I think just about every sentence of praise
that was followed by a negative sentence. The bummer is that they had the
detuned 80hp GT with the 3.89 rear end. Maybe it was in response to this
that the 4.22 came out on more cars! I have to say it seemed like a
mistake on the Rootes marketing department to send a detuned car to a
performance oriented magazine for review (assuming it came from Rootes,
another new car reviewed in the magazine was from a private owner). Sure
the added GT trim and quietness is worth something to a lot of people, but
not these types of magazines. Of course it continues today with BMW
constantly at the top of the heap.
On the other hand, there was a nice comment elsewhere in the magazine about
Imps (once you get through the part about the MG):
"The Best-Designed Car of the Year would have to be the MG 1100. It is a
mechanical package that makes so much sense that it should embarrass other
small car designers. ... Hopefully, BMC will plow some of the Mini-Minor
and MG/Morris 1100 profits back into engineering and come up with an engine
like that of the Imp or the Cortina."
Be 'beaming you,
Jay
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