Motoring and Religion...

Faith is a wonderful thing. It has kept religions alive for centuries. It is said that as long as you have faith, you can accomplish anything. It seems a shame then, that this rule does not seem to apply for the members of the car manufacturing industry, who, it would appear, are all aetheist.

Now if this is getting a bit too philosophical for you, let me get straight to the point. go back fifteen or even twenty years, to the late 80's, and you would definately not see the same sorts of cars you see today. No, back then they were all exciting and exhuberant. The Italians had provided us with the Lamborghini Countasch, and Ford had just tested the first version of its brand new Ford GT, the GT40. The newspapers were literally inundated with page after page of adverts, features claiming exctiting new models, and original ideas. And my point here is simple, nearly all of the ideas that were put forward for testing, those same ideas that appeared on television and in the paper. well, they all got made.

Now leap back into the present. Notice anything different? We still see the same adverts in magazines and newspapers, for the new models and for the original ideas, the only difference is that nobody is making them anymore, none of the manufacturers, those same car makers who, in years gone by, gave us some real triumphs. But why? Now don't take this the wrong way, but the answer may be that its all our own fault.

You see, in the past, people were much easier to please. as long as the car had four doors and a motor of some kind, the masses were happy. But as time went on, motorists got used to a certain standard of car, and any model that failed to meet the mark, well, it just wasn't bought, by anyone. A prime example of this was the Zastava Yugo. Never heard of it? I'm not suprised. In the ’80s the Yugo was marketed as a car that would fit everyone’s life. It was supposed to be the secondary car that everyone had to have; a winter beater or just a daily driver that was fuel efficient and easy on the road. One of the marketing slogans was "Everybody needs a Yugo sometimes.” Everybody needs a trip to the doctor sometimes, but that doesn’t mean we enjoy it. And driving the Yugo was hardly enjoyable. It failed to meet the benchmark of the modern motorist, and because of that, it tumbled slowly out of existence.

Now people are so difficult to please, that unless a car is both well made and fast, and above all affordable, they rarely sell. And thats made the car makers a bit edgy. You see, it costs thousands to put a new car into production, and why waste all that time and money if at the end of it all you can't sell the thing? So now they don't bother. All we end up seeing is a kind of "watered down" version of the original idea. What we need is for a single manufacturer to bring us something genuine, something new. What we need is for the makers to stop being so timid, and have the faith to present us with something revoolutionary. And i'm not just alking about a refined version of an existing car, i'm talking about an entirely new idea. Now until we see that, until we see the manufacturers crawl out from under their rocks and present us with some new material, we're going to be stuck in a rut of old models and zero originality.

So tonight i have two simple words for the car designers of the world, those original thinkers who right now may be on the verge of a gargantuan breakthough, but are just too scared to take it to the boss. Two simple words guys: have faith.