Autos: Appeal to Youth

In the years from 15 to 24, young Americans begin earning their own money, form lasting buying habits, often set up their own families, and — most important to Detroit’s automakers —usually buy their first car. Detroit has always been a youth watcher, but it is now on the greatest youth kick ever.

One reason: most youngsters start off with a used car, but frequently remain loyal to the first make when they trade up to a new car. And today, with greater buying power of their own and parents who are more generous, more youngsters than ever start right in with a new car.

Hot-Rod Teaser. Ford is the most conspicuous in framing its appeal to youth. It has organized a hootenanny show that tours U.S. colleges, publishes Sunday comic strips featuring the exploits of Ford-powered racing cars in 108 papers, and offers Ford books on driving to 1,500,000 high school students by direct mail. Ford is also concentrating on a youth market that so far has been largely ignored by the other automakers: the nation’s 300,000 hot rodders. It has a five-man team that visits hot-rod exhibits and rallies around the country, exhibiting five hot rods made from standard Ford autos and sometimes displaying Ford’s biggest teaser: a three-eighths scale model of a drag racer designed by Ford stylists and called the Twister, which Ford may one day produce commercially. Soon, Ford intends to market “Cobra kits” that will enable hot rodders to modify standard Ford engines for high-performance events.

Because girls often influence a boy’s choice of an auto, Ford has set up an “airline hostess advisory panel,” which is invited to Detroit to tour Ford’s plants and styling studios and offer its opinions. Ford features pictures of the seven hostesses in its ads in such magazines as Seventeen to show that women have a word in Ford’s looks.

Twist Song. Chrysler stirs up attention among youngsters with its high-powered Plymouths and Dodges, which are the current big winners in drag racing. General Motors, though it carefully shuns racing, plans to have teen-agers drive its Chevrolets in this year’s Mobil Economy Run. One of the most successful Chevrolet television commercials runs for one minute with no words and only soft music; it simply shows a boy and girl pleasantly flirting on the beach —with a shiny Impala hardtop and a Corvette Sting Ray in the background. Ford is receiving a lift among the young from a new hit twist tune that tells about a hot rodder who took his Ford-powered Cobra out to the track to race Chevrolet Sting Rays and Jaguar XK-Es. Sings the rodder:

When the flag went down, you could hear rubber burn The Sting Ray had me going into the turn I hung a big shift and I got into high, And when I flew by the Sting Ray, I waved bye-bye . . . It may be doggerel, but it is music to the ears of Ford executives.