Henry and Edsel

Bennett wore a bow tie because he knew the venerability of the neck tie and was not about to offer the shortcoming of it to the other guy he was fighting with.
 
Bob Bidonde said:
This slide compares engines in The Big Three of 1931.
Click to expand...
Misleading. Plymouth was not a "Big 3" but it was 3rd in sales for 1931. The 3rd Big 3 was Chrysler - started by Walter Chrysler in 1925 out the the ashes of Maxwell. He bought Fargo Trucks and the Dodge Bros. In 1928 he launched the low cost Plymouth and mid priced DeSoto.
 
After the two Dodge brothers died, the families couldn't run the company. They sold to some investors that had no idea how to run it. Walter P was in the right place at the right time. The Dodge Brothers cars were well built and had a good customer base. The Maxwells were excellent cars but Flanders had overextended his credit and the post WWI recession busted him. This put Walter P in a very good position when he made those purchases. The Maxwell manufacturing was realigned to be the Plymouth manufacturing soon after. The Dodge Hamtramck plant was well set up and adaptable so it was a big part of the Chrysler & Dodge manufacturing. Chrysler made a few mistakes with the Airflow designs but overall, they had a well rounded group of products that wasn't far off from Alfred P Sloan's GM operation.

Ford stuck with improving the product more than offering more different styles of product so they still had a good corner on the triangle. Ford didn't offer a new line of product till 1939 with the Mercury division.
 
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