Chevrolet Sports Car
At some time in between this picture and today, the American car industry stopped feeling this way.
How? I’m not sure, but it might make sense to take a slice of time from 1953 and figure out what was going on when the Corvette launched:
Speed demanded simplicity: Did you know that the Corvette went from auto show debut to rolling off the assembly line in only six months? After a strong debut at Motorama in 1953 in New York City, the company realized they had a winner and moved heaven and earth to get it built. Because GM knew the workers would have such a task on their hand just getting the thing built, they simplified each build. And I mean really simplified it: each car was exactly the same, from the “polo white” exterior, red interior, Delco radio, 6.7 x 15 whitewalls and tachometer. All the same, no options. (Current company analog: 37signals)
No matter the critics, we’ll keep at it: The reality of the first year of Corvettes? They weren’t really good. In fact they were pretty awful as complete cars. But for all the complaints, they were still doing a lot of things well. Importantly, even with a six-cylinder engine, the thing felt fast. Something about it was right. I can just imagine some of those test drivers and engineers (probably wearing a scratchy wool sweater and beanie hat like above): “It ain’t perfect, but there’s something there, Bob! I hope they don’t kill this thing before we figure it out.” They didn’t kill it. They were working through the prototype live in public. (Current company analog: Twitter)
We’ll let it out to play: You can read a lot of smart things by a lot of smart people who say you should “find a market, figure out what they want, then sell it to them.” However, most people don’t think like that. Waking up in the middle of the night reveals ideas about specific things, not market needs (unless you’re Shane Mahoney, although he probably does both). The Corvette was a good example of middle-of-the-night thinking. Then, once people started to love it, it would have been easy for someone to decide what it was and what it wasn’t. But that’s when the Corvette started exploring what it wanted to become. It went racing. It got new engines. It got new designs. It had a new boss (a rather interesting one, mind you). It figured out its core identity by way of exploration. It defined itself by really moving, figuring out the edges, playing. (Current company analog: ESPN)
It’s hard to do anything when you have to ask the government for money to stay alive. But when they come out the other side of this, it would be great if we could talk about a 2009 product and use some of the same descriptions as above. I’d love to be able to say the current company analogs are GM, Ford, Chrysler.
