The first 10 years of assembly operations could be described as “The Plymouth Years”. Already in 1949, the first year of assembly, 66 Plymouth vehicles rolled off the assembly line in Schinznach-Bad. By 1959, 7177 different models and generations of Plymouth vehicles had been built. From the “P21” (Cranbrook) to the Fury to the Belvedere, Switzerland produced these land yachts. The 42 Chryslers produced in 1951, the 252 DeSotos assembled between 1954 and 1956 and the Dodges assembled between 1955 and 1959 played a relatively small role. However, these figures need to be taken with a pinch of salt, as current research has shown that the Chrysler Windsor was also built in 1957, which until now has not appeared in any statistics.
At the beginning of the 1960s, production of large Plymouth land yachts came to a halt as demand shifted to smaller vehicles (e.g. A-bodies). In 1967, the assembly of Plymouth vehicles resumed, and a total of 216 Plymouth Barracudas were assembled. In 1969, the last Barracuda assembled in Switzerland rolled off the assembly line.
“The American automobile business has entered a new era. The cars have become longer, wider and more expensive, and customers first need to get used to them ... These attractive and fast cars don’t sell themselves automatically. The tendency of today’s prospective customers to sacrifice the comfort they desire to buy a vehicle that is smaller than the large current American models needs to be overcome.” (It might be attributable to Hans Stanek.)
