Progressives punish conservative customers
11/21/2023
Car manufacturers don't have it easy. In the pursuit of aerodynamically optimized and stylistically convincing (all a matter of taste) solutions, vehicles are launched on the market that are not always accepted by their own regular customers.
Mercedes-Benz is currently having to recognize this, as the EQS and EQE models are currently selling significantly less well than planned. Apparently, customers are annoyed by the design, which is not typical of the brand, and the compromises that have to be made when getting into the back.
However, Mercedes-Benz is not the only car manufacturer to experience such dissonance. In the 1930s, for example, Chrysler (pictured above) was hit by the Airflow model, which looked extremely streamlined for the time and was a commercial failure. Obviously, Chrysler's customers were (also) rather conservative.
This does not necessarily mean that innovatively designed and forward-looking cars cannot meet with healthy demand, as demonstrated by the Peugeot 402 or the Citroën DS, for example. But you just have to have the right customers ...
We have taken a closer look at some aerodynamic milestones in the forthcoming Zwischengas annual magazine 2024 .
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