I work in an audit office. Suffice to say, jokes aren’t our strong point. I heard a couple of good ones on TV last night and thought I’d better record them for posterity. I’m sure they could be useful in the future.
#1
A sweet young girl, around 8 years old, walks into a pet shop. She walks up to counter and asks the owner “Please sir, I’d like to buy a bunny rabbit.”
The shopkeeper looks over the counter to the girl, smiles and asks “Would you like a white rabbit or a brown rabbit, young lady?”
The girl thinks for a moment, then says “I really don’t think my python will give a $#%!”
and #2
You can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter.
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And that leads me nicely to Cadillac, the GM luxury division that’s had its plans to build a truly luxurious car based on the Ciel concept car, cancelled.
Autoextremist, Peter De Lorenzo, is always happy to sink the boots in when it comes to GM’s upper management. The monotony of it all gets quite boring, to be honest. But he’s right on the money here.
He quotes former GM head Alfred P Sloan – The business of business is business.
Well, kinda. When you’re in the business of selling an emotive product, the business involves building something that truly moves the emotional needle. Cars done in half-measures don’t do that and companies like Alfa Romeo, Saab, Peugeot, Citroen and countless others over the last few decades have learned that the hard way.
Car companies need scale, for sure. But if they’re not chasing the bottom of the market then they also need to have a worthwhile story to tell and a product that backs that story up.
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A quick visual scan of the automotive sales results for both Germany and the US should give you an idea as to how the North American and European markets/economies are doing.
Don’t worry about reading the numbers. Just look at the respective amounts of red vs green.
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You know that a car is reaching mainstream acceptance when it’s mocked this way.
Hopefully that’s a wrap that can be removed from this Tesla Model S, and the wheels might be loaners.
Spotted at The Truth About Cars
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There were sighs of disappointment at geeky desktops around the world this week when fans of cheap, thrashable cars found out that the model proposed to re-launch the Datsun brand was something other than the 510 or the 260Z.
In fact, it’ll be this:
Yes, you could put pretty much any automotive company’s badge on that and no-one would know the difference (which is quite possibly the biggest crime a vehicle designer for a known brand could commit, IMHO).
I guess it’s to be expected, but it’s still a little disappointing.
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I mentioned in a previous post that we were thinking of building a new house. Complications with the land we were looking at have led the deal to fall through. Uncertainty about some employment factors means the whole idea is on hold for what I think will turn out to be quite a while.
Result – car shopping is back on the agenda!!
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