Let’s say you want to buy a new car - not just any new car but a car that sells itself on its great handling and sparkling performance. You walk into the showroom and are greeted by the “up” sales guy. He shakes hands while qualifying you, “So what do you do for a living?”
After spinning some numbers mentally to figure out what you can afford, he starts the pitch, “OK, here’s a hot little item that’ll look great on a sport like you.” If you in turn show the required amount of interest, he’ll suggest a test drive. It’s at this point a certain measure of disconnect begins to set in. A quick once-around-the-block with a nervous or impatient sales guy won’t give you any idea of just how well the car you’re lusting after really performs.
The truth is a Lamborgini Muircielago won’t get through city traffic all that much quicker than a Kia Spectra. Yet it costs about $220K more. Buying a performance car in this part of the world requires a willing suspension of disbelief that you’re actually getting something that will perform in your hands. Chances are you already have some idea what a car like that can do in the hands of a “professional driver on a closed circuit”. But how do you find out what you can make it do? After all, you just can’t give a 300hp car its head on a public road without jeopardizing your license; or much worse.
DaimlerChrysler Canada’s marketing brain trust therefore decided what was needed was a totally new approach to marketing its cars. Pretty girls and snappy jingles only go so far. And what with video and movie special effects everywhere today, the average 25 – 45 year old (the target demographic for anybody selling expensive toys) has largely become inured to car commercials featuring things like slow-mo and full-opposite-lock four-wheel drifts.
To get the point across that it’s selling cars that are great performers as well as great looking, DaimlerChrysler created the "Gold Medal Tour." Something like this has been done a few times in the US I’m told, but to my knowledge this is the first time it’s been tried in Canada. The tour started in Halifax, on Canada’s east coast, and has come right across the country, stopping along the way in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Edmonton. It came to Vancouver recently where your intrepid reviewer picked it up.
The organizers look for a local racetrack or little-used municipal airport near – but not too near – a major population center. Fifty or more of the top Chrysler car and light truck models are then trucked in. The master-stroke is to allow whoever shows up (with a valid driver’s licence) to get behind the wheel of whatever model they want. They’re turned loose on a closed track and told to have a blast – hard on the gas, hard on the brakes, crank the wheel, whatever. Does that sound like fun or what? But wait till you hear what the car choices were.
DaimlerChrysler brought along about 10 Hemi-engine Chrysler 300Cs; about the same number of Hemi-engine Dodge Magnum wagons; some turbo-engine PT Cruiser convertibles; several Crossfire convertibles and coupes; five or six race-car serious 500hp SVT-10 Dodge Vipers; four or five scary-fast Dodge Ram 500hp SVT-10 pick-ups; three or four Neon-based SVT-4s; and a whole bunch of Jeeps (Liberty, Grand Cherokee and Wranglers) which took over an off-road course created especially for the event. In addition, there were lots of new Grand Caravan Stow ‘n Go minivans and some Dodge Durango Hemi-engine SUVs. There were even a couple of the new Euro-style diesel-powered Dodge Sprinter city delivery vans.
The media and later the general public were invited to crawl all over the vehicles, then take them out on the track (or the off-road trail) and beat the living daylights out of them. We were told in the short pre-drive briefing to test the handling limits of these vehicles. We were actually encouraged to attempt spinning out.
The purpose of the Gold Medal Tour is, of course, to sell Jeep, Dodge and Chrysler products. Will it work? Nobody knows for sure yet. But the betting is it going to succeed beyond anyone’s wildest dreams – except perhaps those of recently appointed DaimlerChrysler Canada vp of marketing Ron Smith, who put the whole thing in motion. Smith’s been on the job maybe five or six months. Yet he still managed to talk Mark Norman, the new president of DaimlerChrysler Canada (a guy who looks about 25) into doing something like this, which is totally new. Well, new for Canada anyway. How’s that for an impact guy!
The betting here is the sales and marketing people from DaimlerChrysler USA will want to be in on this action. So you folks in the US keep your eyes peeled for the announcement. Believe me, you’ll have a blast.
