“1927 Chevrolet Truck 2” by I, Lglswe www.wikipedia.org

Henry Ford was notorious for forcing his idea of what a car should be onto the public. “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black,” he bragged. This left the door open for GM President and CEO, Alfred P. Sloan, to perform some marketing magic and change the way consumers thought and behaved. Sloan felt that consumers would choose different options if given the choice. Not only would Chevrolet offer consumers choices, they would use changing fashions as a sales trend to create artificial obsolescence. General Motors adopted the principle of a yearly styling change as the introduction to preplanned obsolescence.

Sloan ushered in a new standard in buying new cars leading up to the 1927 sales year. Installment purchases accounted for more than two-thirds of all new car sales. A practice that Ford was thoroughly against. While Ford was willing to sacrifice luxuries like electric starters, Sloan and General Motors pioneered the idea of using social status as a means of selling cars. To help the process along, between 1927 and 1930, Chevrolet purchased and destroyed 650,000 used cars in an effort to prop up the market for new vehicles.

1927 Chevrolet Capital AA Touring Car. Photo from www.wikipedia.org

As a result of these practices, consumers were buying three and four year old used cars rather than a new Model T because they perceived the used cars as better value, with more features. The Model T’s sales in 1927 were a third of the sales in 1926. Ford relented by acknowledging that the Model T was obsolete, shutting down the factory to re-tool for the Model A .

Chevrolet sold more than 650,000 Capitol-series cars during 1927, a year in which the three-millionth Chevy rolled off the line. This beat Ford by a wide margin. General Motors sold over a million cars total in 1927.