Selling Dodges
Marketing a car successfully is integral to its sales success and no one pioneered this art more successfully than Dodge, Chrysler's middle-market brand. Ben Klemenzson takes a look back throughthe archives of the brand's press ads and uncovers some real jewels...
Founded in 1900 as the Dodge Brothers Company to supply parts and assemblies for Detroit's growing auto industry, Dodge began making its own complete vehicles in 1914. Its initial offering, the four-cylinder Dodge Model 30/35 touring car, was marketed as a slightly more upscale competitor to the ubiquitous Ford Model T. It pioneered many features later taken for granted, like all-steel body construction; at a time when the vast majority of cars worldwide still used wood-framing under steel panels, Dodge made steel construction standard.
Likewise, 12-volt electrics were standard, while most cars were still making do with six volts well into the Fifties. Once the Dodge brothers had started producing their own vehicles, John Dodge was quoted as saying: "Someday, people who own a Ford are going to want an automobile."
As a result of the brothers' well-earned reputation for the highest quality, Dodge Brothers cars were ranked second place for US sales as early as 1916.
The brand was sold to Chrysler Corporation in 1928 and it found its niche as the middle drawer offering of the Chrysler family; posher than a Plymouth, but plainer than a Chrysler or a top-of-the-tree Imperial. It competed with Ford's mid-market offering Mercury and GM's Pontiac, or the lower echelons of Oldsmobile. This slightly 'in-between' image made for a bit of a marketing conundrum for the folks at Dodge. Initially their cars were marketed as being reliable and blessed with advanced engineering (there can be little doubt they were when compared with Fords of the time) but as time passed a new marketing ploy emerged: this was the transport of the 'Great Outdoorsman' ... the Twenties version of today's SUV buyer, if you like.
As the Twenties gave way to the Thirties, vaguely glamorous, glitzy ad campaigns suggested Dodges were almost pseudo-luxury cars, so much so that as they entered the Forties they were being described as 'Luxury Liners', aping the luxurious liners which plied the cross-Atlantic travel routes between New York and Southampton. You might not be able to afford a ticket on one of those, but your Dodge dealer could help you into a four-wheeled version ... And with Dodge's new » credit purchase plan, why not?!