Can old brands be revived?
Look at Bugatti. It's gone from being a worm-eaten cadaver to one of the world's great supercar brands, builders of the 400km/h-plus Veyron.
Then again, look at Bugatti. It's gone from being nobody's problem to a huge financial sinkhole, swallowing hundreds of millions since the first modern attempt to revive it in 1987.
Since 2000, under VW's stewardship, the resuscitated company has sold more than 200 cars at astronomical prices. But even these prices are not nearly astronomical enough to realise a profit, at present production rates, until 10 minutes before hell freezes over.
If relaunching Bugatti has proven anything, it's just how deep your pockets need to be to make such a project work. And frankly, VW still hasn't proven it can make Bugatti work.
Look at the fight to revive Saab, which isn't even dead yet. The job has gone to Holland's Spyker, a venerable automotive brand with a heritage that goes back to the start of the 20th century.
Any brand with a history that long should know something about this difficult business, shouldn't it? Well, yes, but notice the gap in the Spyker timeline? It fades out completely between the mid-1920s and 2000.
Spyker, of course, isn't really Spyker. It's yet another case of an old badge being dug up and zapped with a defibrillator on behalf of yet another new company with dreams of turning out world-beating sports cars.
Spyker has promised to preserve the "Swedishness of the Saab brand", no doubt while affirming the Dutchness of its own sports cars, which are soon to be built in England.
The original Spyker slogan was "Nulla tenaci invia est via", which is possibly Latin for "Good luck, boyo".
Packard is for sale. About $US1.5 million ($1.7 million) buys the right to revive the brand name of the late Packard car company (1899-1958) and to manufacture the modern Twelve limousine. The only potential problems are (a) few people remember Packards as anything other than 1950s barges and (b) the Twelve limousine.
Not quite sure who designed the Twelve - perhaps nobody - but this "modern rendition of a Packard ultra-luxury automobile" looks uglier than the world's ugliest person pulling an ugly face. The bulging flanks are supposed to recall pre-war elegance but bring to mind postwar flab. And the grille ... quick, somebody, dial triple-0.
There is almost no automotive badge that someone doesn't dream of resuscitating. We're told Trabant, Frazer-Nash and Detroit Electric will soon be among the undead. Piece-Arrow cars are supposedly available out of Switzerland (the reborn model looks like a Batmobile, though less restrained).
An all-new BRM electric racer was exhibited last year. A couple of years before, rumours suggested that BMW - which now seems likely to revisit the Isetta nameplate - would start building new Triumphs. Wasn't the Rover experience enough?
There is at least one Triumph success story: the motorcycle division. It split from the car company during the Great Depression and is still upright. With only a few years missing from its official chronology (plus a bankruptcy or two and some years when total production fell to a handful), the company is now building about 50,000 bikes a year.
For every story like that, there are several woeful revivals. Stutz or Duesenberg come to mind.
Now former Fiat executive Gian Mario Rossignolo, who tried to revive legendary Italian marque Isotta-Fraschini in the 1990s, is down in the cellar with Igor running electricity though the body of another deceased Italian.
This time it's De Tomaso, the brand associated with the stylish but slapdash Pantera and Mangusta coupes of the 1960s and 1970s. These were Italian built, American Iron-powered, semi-classics. Amazingly, Rossignolo now reckons he can build 8000 new De Tomasos a year. Yes, 8000. A year.
As they say at Spyker: "Nulla tenaci invia est via."
Tony Davis
Posted on February 25, 2010 6:20 PM
***the link***
http://blogs.drive.com.au/2010...ands_be_revived.html
Original Post