by Eric Goldstein

www.Olivestudio.com

In November of last year, Fiat — which owns the majority of what was once Chrysler Group LLC, which itself owned Dodge — announced that it would be separating its line-up into two separate brands: One for the popular Dodge Ram trucks and the other for the normal-sized cars. The first brand is now simply known as Ram and has kept the original ram logo, leaving the second brand, Dodge, to look for a logo of its own.

My Thoughts
They are stripping away the ram, and whittling the identity down to the bare essence of Dodge’s original spirit.
Muscle Cars. Muscle cars by association take most of us boys back to when we were kids, by defining the new mark with 2 red racing stripes.
Take away the ram – will only open up the essence of Dodge in my opinion to be a little more visceral and honest. I personally never owned a Dodge and have never aspired to own one – BUT I can relate to those who have/do. Muscle cars are cool. They are fast and you can smell the fuel consumption and never had really good handling but were great off the line and looked tough. That’s Dodge plain and simple.

Rarely does a company create a mark that has such an honest vision of themselves – and I think Dodge is actually tapping into something really “powerful” here. Look at the cars below – they have always appealed to their audience by producing their cars with racing stripes on the hood.

I think I have rented Dodge cars on business trips only by default of either pricing, the size of vehicle etc – and can say, I still wouldn’t buy a Dodge car as I experience better performance, comfort and functionality with German engineering compared to that of American – but I am hopeful that the lasting American car companies will change their intentions one day and produce, functionally, beautiful cars, with performance, comfort, energy efficient, practical and perhaps with more strategic branding (let’s face it, branding plays a part of why we buy into a company’s history) and for Dodge, I think this marks a significant incline up the respect ladder of what had been one of our most lucrative exports as a country but sadly trumped over last 20 plus years by lack of vision and not listening to consumers.

For something a little funny click here: