Just found this, from (apparently) 1998. Could things really have been this predictable? If so, how sad.
1998 01 07
FORD, GM SEEK NEXT BIG THING
Ann Arbor: The US automakers, still riding the crest of the light truck wave, are already beginning to cast about for the next major vehicle category. Few in the industry will claim to have foreseen the popularity of small pickup trucks, built on an automobile chassis; and fewer still would assert that building what are essentially four-wheel- drive station wagons on heavy pickup frames was a rational, logically- arrived-at marketing strategy. Instead, most analysts see the industry as taking a "products happen" approach -- people want "safe" because they've allowed themselves to be sold on the need to procreate while still working time and a half with both hands, just to make the payments on a 4500 square foot esthetic nightmare, built in what was a cornfield until twenty minutes ago -- so they carry a big wad of guilt around concerning their parenting skills -- hell, they even invented the word "parenting" to describe what they're being told they ain't got -- and so they're susceptible to a sales pitch about safety on the road. Jeep, stuck with a low-quality, retro-looking lump that mostly appealed to the flannel-shirt and deer rifle segment of the pasty-white- male market category, decided to invent a reputation for reliability and flog it to the wrong-way-down-Ashley set -- the sub-segment of the minivan or deeply confused grouping who not only drive around with fourteen children and a basset hound in the car but who worry about "safety" while they're doing it. Voila, le sport-futility vehicle.
Next, the economy stumbles into good times and gas prices are still low, so the sport-ute buyers allow themselves to be sold "big." Safe and big. So the automakers stumble onto the tactic of recreating the Chevy Suburban with leather seats and cup holders. Like the German Navy after Fisher unveiled the Dreadnought, other drivers, in self - defense, are forced to follow suit or be run off the road by people sitting so high up, they're suffering from hypoxia. Your neighbor's 1997 defense budget includes two "Indefatigable"-class battlecruiser - size Cadillac Life Activity Vehicles, so you lobby your Reichstag for Ford's dee-luxe "Enterprise" offspring carrier and a squadron of Chrysler's new Somali Warlord Signature Technicals (remember technicals? Pickup trucks with pintle-mounted light automatic weapons in the back?) for the kids to kommute to kommunity kollege in.
Oops. But what about the small but well-heeled segment of society whose members don't actually need to (or have been able to stick the wife and/or nanny with) toting around the yard apes? What about the mature gentleman with the hair plugs? What about all those post- thirty guys who are making a mint marketing Rosa Parks collectibles or running internet porn sites? Relax, boys. Detroit has you covered, too. This year's big in-car accessory is -- yes, you guessed it -- a humidor. Now let's see -- that's one hand to use the cell phone, one to work the cigar cutter, one eye on the Windows CE-based real-time portfolio management system ... got a good estate lawyer?
Right. As you can see, all of this is evolutionary, not revolutionary (the new VW Beetle to the contrary -- it looks like a slightly squashed Neon and sports a built-in flower vase. Venceramos!) What Detroit needs is some really breakthrough marketing ideas before one of them sneaky third-world outfits -- Japan or one of them -- eats our Big Mac again. Well, fear not. We hear that the big three have actually agreed to form a joint brain trust. In our relentless pursuit of something we can pass off as truth, we've managed to obtain the following time lines, presented earlier this week to top Ford and GM management.
1999 model year: Ford announces new line of touring motorcycles, based on the F-150. GM goes after a World Superbike win with Carl Fogarty riding an inline-four-powered machine, built up on a Catera frame, split lengthwise with a Sawzall (the frame, not Fogarty). Chrysler adds more cup holders to the Dodge Ram.
2000: Ford debuts the Millenium Falcon, a retro-styled economy car to appeal to aging boomers (based on the Escort chassis) with built-in hash pipe holders. GM rolls out the Akwarius, a Chevy Citation with special flower and paisley interior and exterior treatment and in-dash, aroma-tight "humidor." Chrysler adds under-seat air bags to its minivan lineup.
2001: Ford re-launches the Thunderbird as a retro-styled two-seater with 6.5 liter v-10 engine, available full-time four wheel drive, and burled walnut in-dash handgun holder (based on the F-150). GM announces acquisition of Perot Systems. Chrysler announces layoffs.
2002: Ford, GM announce joint acquisition of Chrysler, Jeeps to be built in UK Jaguar plants, Dodge Ram to be re-engineered onto the Catera chassis. Hyundai announces acquisition of Ford, GM.
--
The Wood-Charles Auto Industry Alert is brought to you by your caring, servicing, selling hall-of-fame master tavern, the Odd Town, proud to be doing business in the magnificent community of Ann Arbor, Michigan, where we can show you more drunks in half an hour than you'd see in a week of shopping other taverns. So come on down, bring your wallet, name your poison, and we'll make you a deal you'll be happy to stumble away with or from.
-30-
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Monday, May 14, 2007
How to Waste Time
So I have some time on my hands, as you can imagine. If you should find yourself in similar straights, I can heartily recommend the "50 Movie Pack" series shown below, as outstanding examples of what I believe Ed Vielmetti used to call shovel ware. There are more genres than just the two shown here, and the price-performance ratio is astounding, as long as your only requirement is "entertain me while I stare mindlessly at the TV."
To see the whole, sordid collection, do a search on
50 Movie Pack on Amazon, and marvel at the amount of content a few bucks will buy you.
The urban dictionary reference for shovel ware is incomplete, by the way, since the original usage was applied to those paperback "guides to the internet" that you used to see. Someone should submit an update.
To see the whole, sordid collection, do a search on
50 Movie Pack on Amazon, and marvel at the amount of content a few bucks will buy you.
The urban dictionary reference for shovel ware is incomplete, by the way, since the original usage was applied to those paperback "guides to the internet" that you used to see. Someone should submit an update.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Lots of UK News This Period
What with Blair calling it quits and the Queen visiting the US, this old WCA article seemed like a natural to resurrect. It appears to be from sometime in 1998.
WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE ENGLAND TO KICK AROUND
Ann Arbor: Ok, look; I know some of you think I'm soft on Clinton, and the Dexter Chapter of Hell's Dentists has issued death threats in retaliation for my scorning of Harley's Motorclothing Booteek. And I realize that occasionally my critical review of jurisprudence in the Detroit Suburbs ("Prosecutor Donates Brain to Science: 'I never use it anyway,' says Patterson" WCA News, March 12, 1994) may appear harsh. But I'm really not all that much of an extremist. For example, I've never (publically) suggested that the world's oldest continually-running musical comedy -- I mean, democracy might be in need of a lube and oil job. I (usually) refrain from taking shots at the British Government, per se, because:
* a) Its individual members are so much funnier than the body politic in general.
* b) Most of WCAs readership consists of Amerikun geeks, a group notoriously unconcerned with foreign affairs other than the giant sucking sound caused by US web page owners farming out development work to starving Bosnian COBOL programmers.
* c) Our own gummint has enough of its own little ways to occupy three or four of me (what a frightening thought that is).
However (you could see that word coming a mile off, couldn't you?), I'm not above straight reportage when Her Majesty's Finest start tweaking things. And so (really, I couldn't make this up), I bring you the news that Blair's Labour Government is seriously talking about bringing to an end the current algorithm for being a member of the House of Lords (which approximates P(LsubS) where L is your antecedent who sucked up succesfully to a deceased monarch and S is you, whether you are clinically conscious or not). Instead, "The Independent" tells us, under a story datelined April First, the plan is to replace heriditary peerages with randomly-selected, rotating "People's Lords."
The story cites "leaked" documents that say, in part, that "The committee looks forward to the Lords eventually becoming "a statistically perfect and genuinely inclusive sample" of the British population. It will then function as 'the ideal national focus group for test-bedding new legislative initiatives'."
It also reports on opposition to the change, including a claim that Blair "... has been spending too much time on the phone to Clinton ...", and a warning from Professor Pamella Benlott that "The British constitution is fragile. Hereditary peers have centuries of in-breeding in their blood. The fact that many Lords are congenital idiots is a subtle and unique part of the constitutional settlement with which Tony will tinker at his peril." It quotes a peer, The 27th Earl of Thanet, as threatening violence in the form of a mass uprising of the landed gentry and their "supporters" if the measure is adopted.
Is the date of the story significant? Who knows? But if not, if this plan is really under consideration, then it represents an exciting departure from hidebound convention, and one that we here in the colonies should consider very carefully. How'd you like to be, say, the Senator from North Carolina for a day?
--
The WCA News Service is brought to you by the House of Drunks at the Odd Town Tavern where "peerage" is usually taken to mean the act of peering closely at your plate, trying to identify the ingredients of your tempeh burger.
-- 30 --
WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE ENGLAND TO KICK AROUND
Ann Arbor: Ok, look; I know some of you think I'm soft on Clinton, and the Dexter Chapter of Hell's Dentists has issued death threats in retaliation for my scorning of Harley's Motorclothing Booteek. And I realize that occasionally my critical review of jurisprudence in the Detroit Suburbs ("Prosecutor Donates Brain to Science: 'I never use it anyway,' says Patterson" WCA News, March 12, 1994) may appear harsh. But I'm really not all that much of an extremist. For example, I've never (publically) suggested that the world's oldest continually-running musical comedy -- I mean, democracy might be in need of a lube and oil job. I (usually) refrain from taking shots at the British Government, per se, because:
* a) Its individual members are so much funnier than the body politic in general.
* b) Most of WCAs readership consists of Amerikun geeks, a group notoriously unconcerned with foreign affairs other than the giant sucking sound caused by US web page owners farming out development work to starving Bosnian COBOL programmers.
* c) Our own gummint has enough of its own little ways to occupy three or four of me (what a frightening thought that is).
However (you could see that word coming a mile off, couldn't you?), I'm not above straight reportage when Her Majesty's Finest start tweaking things. And so (really, I couldn't make this up), I bring you the news that Blair's Labour Government is seriously talking about bringing to an end the current algorithm for being a member of the House of Lords (which approximates P(LsubS) where L is your antecedent who sucked up succesfully to a deceased monarch and S is you, whether you are clinically conscious or not). Instead, "The Independent" tells us, under a story datelined April First, the plan is to replace heriditary peerages with randomly-selected, rotating "People's Lords."
The story cites "leaked" documents that say, in part, that "The committee looks forward to the Lords eventually becoming "a statistically perfect and genuinely inclusive sample" of the British population. It will then function as 'the ideal national focus group for test-bedding new legislative initiatives'."
It also reports on opposition to the change, including a claim that Blair "... has been spending too much time on the phone to Clinton ...", and a warning from Professor Pamella Benlott that "The British constitution is fragile. Hereditary peers have centuries of in-breeding in their blood. The fact that many Lords are congenital idiots is a subtle and unique part of the constitutional settlement with which Tony will tinker at his peril." It quotes a peer, The 27th Earl of Thanet, as threatening violence in the form of a mass uprising of the landed gentry and their "supporters" if the measure is adopted.
Is the date of the story significant? Who knows? But if not, if this plan is really under consideration, then it represents an exciting departure from hidebound convention, and one that we here in the colonies should consider very carefully. How'd you like to be, say, the Senator from North Carolina for a day?
--
The WCA News Service is brought to you by the House of Drunks at the Odd Town Tavern where "peerage" is usually taken to mean the act of peering closely at your plate, trying to identify the ingredients of your tempeh burger.
-- 30 --
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