Talk:Triumph Mayflower

What's the point of saying "This is in a different market from that"?

Were I the kind of person to disrupt Wikipedia to make a point, I would change the following text:

The 1250cc, 914kg Mayflower was in a different market from the same year's 803cc, 775kg much less well equipped and more aggressively priced Morris Minor advertised at £382.

to read as follows:

The 1250cc, 914kg Mayflower did not have a market, unlike the same year's 803cc, 775kg less well equipped and more aggressively priced Morris Minor advertised at £382.

However, I try to have all my edits be constructive and will merely point out that the stated source probably does not mention the Mayflower's capacity, weight, or market, or that there don't seem to be any spaces between the numbers and the units. Also, while the version that existed before the "different market" statement showed that customers had at least one less expensive alternative to motor around with a driver and three passengers, the current version of that passage doesn't really say anything useful.

I therefore look forward to one of two resolutions to this; either (1) that someone with greater skill and better resources edit this into something more informative and less ugly, or (2) have consensus determine that the sentence, as it is, says nothing relevant about the subject of the article and have the sentence be deleted altogether.

Sincerely, SamBlob (talk) 03:01, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Back in the 1950s/60s the British magazines Motor and Autocar, in their road tests, used to include simple comparative data for the car tested along with four (as far as I remember) others which they regarded as competitors. The three (seriously) simplistic things covers were, I think, top speed / 0-50 mph acceleration time and / mpg (I guess overall "test mpg" as measured during a road test): manufacturer's recommended list price was also included, though I don't know how many buyers, even then, paid precisely the manufacturer's "asking" price. More to skip the waiting list and less to get a good price, I suspect.

I would guess that the person contributing this para originally (no, it wasn't me, though it easily might have been) wanted to give an indication of how the Mayflower fitted in with its competitors as defined by the road testers of that time. I do not have a copy of the Motor road test of the time, so this is only speculative. But I imagine that the conclusion which screamed out of the comparison, as it appeared in the road test, was that if you take five small family cars, the Triumph is more much expensive than the market leader, but maybe the performance differences and/or the fact that it looked like a miniature Bentley make that worthwhile. The verdict of the market place seems to have been that buyers of small family cars wouldn't (or couldn't) pay the extra for a Triumph Mayflower in preference over a Morris Minor or a Ford Anglia or ... I don't know. There were far fewer different car models to choose from when "major" nationally based manufacturer's each offered only one or two models, and before we rediscovered the virtues of freeer trade and started reducing import tarriffs a bit.

As it stands, I think the para is a bit half-hearted as a para on contemporary comparison, and somewhat tangential to the theme of the wiki entry if simply left indefinitely as it is. If there is someone out there able to get hold of the relevant copy of Motor - sorry, that's maybe still "The Motor" back then - from whenever it was, I suspect that it may contain comparison data that can usefully expand the wiki-paragraph in question to back up what the entry says (and / or what the reader is able to infer) about how the Mayflower compared with the other small family cars on offer in Britain at that time

Success Charles01 (talk) 08:09, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Loneliness

A particular editor might find this link helpful. Eddaido (talk) 07:42, 5 October 2014 (UTC)