Originally Posted by
Nardi Riviera
Somehow over the years I have picked up that Lockheed was good on on design, but must have had a lousy marketing dept (i.e. honest - couldn't even lie about no of testing cycles, like DC did in order to win the race by a hairwidth, if that is the term).
Old adage : The ideal US airliner would be :-
Designed by Lockheed
Built by Boeing
Sales & Marketing by McDonnell Douglas.
So there we are. Incidentally back in the prop days things may have been a bit different. the Boeing Stratocruiser disappeared instantly the jets came along, and the Lockheed Constellation was not long after, whereas the DC-6 soldiered on for a good while (not the DC-7 though, bad engines in comparison).