Why did Phaeton fail?
Prospective buyers struggled to find a reason to choose the model over other, more enticing, vehicles available at the time. As a result, the Phaeton did not build a large enough customer base, and sales figures were low. What Piech failed to anticipate was that despite the all-round brilliance, the Phaeton couldn’t overcome the world’s badge snobbery. Few people wanted to buy a money-no-object luxury car wearing a Volkswagen badge on the nose. The Phaeton turned out to be the best engineered failure in motoring history.What was Volkswagen’s marketing mistake when they launched the Phaeton? Volkswagen’s competitors had already released several luxury – model cars, so the 2 0 0 6 market was flooded and sales were diluted. Volkswagen initially limited sales to Germany, so global markets were shut out at the time of the release.The Phaeton has arguably been at its most successful as an engineering benchmark for other Volkswagen (and, indeed, VW Group) vehicles. As enthusiasts, we find that makes the Phaeton a damnably hard car to dislike.
Why did Phaeton fall?
Phaethon, upon learning that his grandfather is the Sun, put his chariot to bad use, and scorched the Earth, turning the Indians black in the process. He was struck by a thunderbolt, and fell dead on the river Eridanus. Zeus, the king of the gods, was called to intervene. He hurled a thunderbolt at the chariot, sending it in a fiery plunge to earth. The nymphs who recovered Phaeton’s body were so bereft that they became trees and wept over him. Their tears became amber, the fossilized resin of trees.
What did a Phaeton look like?
A phaeton (also phaéton) is a form of sporty open carriage popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Drawn by one or two horses, a phaeton typically features a minimal very lightly sprung body atop four extravagantly large wheels. It contained one or two seats, usually had a folding, or falling, top, and was owner-driven (i.