canonman
pfm Member
Yesterday, I parked my Merc estate in town. Came back to find a Defender parked next to me. My not so small car's roofline was level with the Defender's bonnet.
Dash Cam - best one?
- Thread starter madmike
- Start date
Because people feel safer in them. Women especially. 20 years ago it was Volvo estates, these days it's an SUV. "I won't put my kids in anything else, imagine what might happen otherwise!" Men like them because big car = power and importance. It's not rocket science, you really don't need to be Sigmund Freud to work it out.
There's more skewed logic applied to car buying than even hifi purchases. "Oh, it's so I can enjoy the music more". Yeah, sure it is, with your boutique mains lead and interconnects at £200 a go, it makes all the difference. "Oh, I'd run an older car but I *absolutely* can't afford to break down". What, and you think that I can? I don't see anyone on a motorway on Mondays and Fridays who is having a little jolly in the country and it doesn't really matter. As to absolutely can't afford to break down, why not? Do you drive an ambulance or a fire engine?
No it's not, it's the reassuring feeling of having lots of metal around you. An F1 driver is safer in his little cockpit than you or I ever are in an SUV but I bet it doesn't feel like it from the seat. I've had friends tell me that they feel safer in a 15 year old BMW 5 series than they would in a brand new Fiesta with all the airbags "because all that lane protection, automatic seatbelt tensioners, airbags, isn't going to mean FA when there's 2 tonnes of BMW going through it".
Again, this is down to marketing & is also status driven. Car manufacturers are very clever at creating niches, not everyone can afford an X5 or a RR but lots of people aspire to them & end up with lookalikes.
Look at Volvo, they made a big thing of their safety & marketed it really well. This opened up a gateway for other manufacturers to use such terms even though their cars were not inherently safer. Also, people are bloody selfish & manufacturers exploit this.
I don't think it is. It's a popular perception.
Absolutely. STatus and power sell.
Of course. We all want RR status and power at Fiesta money.
Rightly so, their cars were *materially* safer at a time when most cars were not very safe at all. A 1970s Volvo 164 or 240 was significantly safer than a Cortina or Victor of the time.
Hmm. The safety narrative is a big deal in modern cars, both inside and outside the cabin.
Now this is correct. You can't blame the manufacturers for giving people what they want, within the law.
It may not be a popular perception but the best marketing plans are rather clever & people don’t always know when they are being targeted. We are generally heavily suggestible, a lot of safety features are legally mandated so why not make a virtue of it?
Mercedes claim to have a 20 year marketing cycle, sounds absurd but how many prestige marques make their first impression on children? Quite a few I reckon.
It is, because intuitively it ought to make sense. Bigger is generally going to be better, all other things being equal. Yes, i know they aren't, but tat's why it's a popular perception.
Of course. Just as Volvo did in the 70s and 80s, and good luck to them. As I said earlier, Volvos genuinely were safer than the competition, and rightly enough they put it in their ads. Why wouldn't you?
Not at all. Brand management is a skill, and it occasionally falls over. Burberry were the top of the top, the Queen's tailor, for years. Then they cashed in and cheaped out with scarves and (ugh) baseball caps in the 90s. Marketing disaster. What were they thinking of?
All, one way and another. When I was a kid it was Rolls Royce and Jaguar, the German marques had not yet made an impression. Nowadays of course they have. Kids are exposed to clothes, cars, jewellery every time they turn on the TV, of course they swallow the marketing guff because children don't have a critical eye. They're told something, it becomes a fact. I well remember sitting next to my friend's son, aged about 4, as he watched TV. It hit the ads and they were advertising toys. "I want that", he said. Next ad, the same, and the one after. Everything on every ad, "I want that". "I want that." I'm sure that you do. That's the intention.
What is interesting is that the extremely expensive marques choose where they advertise. You will never see a Rolls Royce TV ad. It would be commercial suicide. Instead they advertise at yacht shows and other events that attract the staggeringly rich as opposed to merely the well-off. They want RR to sell alongside Patek, JlC and Blancpain, and absolutely not to the kind of scratters who would buy a Hugo Boss, TAG or Longines.
