Old man's car
An old man's car is a stereotype of a car that appeals to older buyers rather than to younger ones. This stereotype is prevalent in the United States, and mostly involves full-size American sedans. It is widely known in the American automobile industry that such cars are difficult to sell for the younger demographic. Several automobile manufacturers have taken steps to shake the perception that their cars are intended for an older generation because it tarnishes the brand's image in the eyes of younger buyers.
Market focus
Two automobile company executives are associated with the adage that "You can sell a young man's car to an old man, but you cannot sell an old man's car to a young man": Lynn A. Townsend, who became president of Chrysler in 1961, and Semon Knudsen who became General Manager of Pontiac in July 1956. Knudsen espoused this philosophy during the changes that he made to Pontiac from 1957 to 1959, which began with the release of the Bonneville, intended to be a high-profile announcement to the U.S. public that Pontiac was "no longer an old man's car company". Townsend had two teenage sons, who, according to Hoover, when Townsend took on the position of president, "made it known to dad straightaway that this stuff was nowhere. He was highly sensitive to the fact that the product line was nowhere out there with the young people." Townsend used this rationale in his directive to change the image of the product line in October 1961.Advertising
Ford employed this adage in its advertising for the Ford Focus in the United States. One advertisement showed a group of youths climbing out of the rear of the car after having pulled into a parking space too narrow for them to open the side doors. Another showed a similar group of youths nervously holding coffee cups as the car passed over a series of railway tracks. Mueller observes that Ford "could just as easily have demonstrated the ease of entry or exit for a cane user or a number of other features especially useful for drivers with limitations due to age or disability", but chose not to because that would be attempting to sell features that appeal to older people to young people, whereas the campaign that Ford went with actually sold features that appeal to younger people to both younger and older people.Similarly, while most buyers of Honda cars are in the 40 to 60 age range, the advertising for the cars "portrays youthful activities and targets a youth mindset".
Oldsmobile automobiles had, by the 1990s, long been branded as "old man's cars" and "Buick clones". John Rock became the chief executive in 1992, and by January 1993 was implementing a strategy to bring in younger buyers that comprised "throw out old brands and creat new ones" and becoming more "Saturn-like". One part of doing so was an advertising campaign aimed at shedding the old man's car preconception, involving the slogan "This is not your father's Oldsmobile." Kassof states that the advertising campaign was a flop, and further opines that it may indeed have backfired, reinforcing and even introducing the old man's car preconception in the minds of those people who had not previously thought of Oldsmobile vehicles as being such. GM eventually successfully courted younger buyers with the Buick brand, following the phaseout of Oldsmobile in 2004 and the phaseout of Saturn and Pontiac in 2010 after GM's bankruptcy.