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Comments
Funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq-OBmIWbeQ&feature=player_embedded
2nd one seems a bit silly.
Hyundai is supposed to market this one more. The old one never got much marketing support.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrvg33vkdFI&noredirect=1
At first it seems like that Prius commercial with all the people in it. Saw it yesterday for the first time, and I was like, huh?
For those who don't recall the book, it was pro-environment. I guess Mazda is pitching the SkyActiv angle.
Azera will be a smooth comfortable car, if not a little overstyled...seems to be the trend now, different for the sake of it.
Greenie ads don't get me, every time I drive the fintail I think how many smug Prius I cancel out :shades:
I also like the Camaro ad when the older driver and his older date suddenly lose thirty years as soon as they climb inside the Camaro.
I remember the early '70's Subarus our Pontiac dealer took on (then later dropped). Frameless door glass on thin doors, tiny-tiny wheels and tires, and plastic inside that felt like it'd snap off in your hands. And they rusted out, just like the guilty American subcompacts of the period.
Yesterday I was leaving a big parking lot that I thought I knew. It was heavily overcast, snowing and misting out and I didn't wipe off the raindrops off the driver's side glass. Instead of going the half block to the end of the aisle, I cut through by the light pole where I thought there was a road cut.
Nope, was a snow berm about 4' wide. Only about a foot or so deep. I got halfway through and realized that something wasn't quite right. :shades: The Subie (with its new shoes) just scrunched right through. That gave me a lot warmer and fuzzier feeling than having to dig a high centered sedan out. Bad enough clearing the snow out of the lower part of the grill and foglights when I got home.
So, that is a good scenario for a Subaru commercial to appeal to "adults" and possible customers in the snow belt. Practical, makes sense, rather than an Infiniti driver having kids throw snowballs at a BMW driver.
Subaru had a light-hearted cute commercial for young folks with a recently married couple going on a camping trip and then getting caught in rain in their tent.
The minivan would have gotten about 18 inches in, bogged down, and I'd been stuck. Of course I wouldn't have been so casual about the shortcut in the van in the first place.
Why put up with it. Just go to a nice more open area, maybe somewhere in Bucks County. Get a big lot, big house with 4-car garage, enough space to park a Buick, Cadillac, Lexus and a big riding mower. You and wife could be in next Christmas Lexus commercial.
I think the Subaru of today is as related to the Subaru of 1973 as my fintail is to an SLR
2020 Acura RDX tech SH-AWD, 2023 Maverick hybrid Lariat luxury package.
I guess I'm glad that I was born when I was. If you weren't around for the glorious era of new-car introductions each fall, I'm sad for you! I mean that. It was incredible fun. And the choices...
Plus, today the manufacturers ought to know where the money is--not with you younger slackers
In my hometown of Greenville, PA (current pop. just under 6,000), townsfolks are now dealing with the bombed-out-Beirut-looking area left behind by Trinity Industries, after 80 years of railcar production ended there shortly after NAFTA passed. It absolutely makes me sick to see it now. There is a hometown Facebook page with over 1,400 members that are trying to contribute ideas, world-wide, to help the town deal with the mess Trinity left. That many members, who live all around the U.S. and even in Europe, confirmed to me that the warm, intimate feelings I had about growing up there in Greenville weren't mine alone.
Actually alive and well in Dallas as well as Pittsburgh and yes - Mexico.
If cars were only aimed at oldsters, you'd see more commercials for Venzas and Avalons. Someone has to buy Imprezas, and it is generally the under 50 set.
After the boomers retire en masse and collapse the system with insane public sector benefits and other expenses, nobody but our beloved hardworking ethical honest responsible 1% will be buying new cars :shades: :sick:
I regret that the domestics took on the imports' way of offering product...minimal colors, body styles, and colors. As little as 25 years ago--maybe less--one never saw an exact duplicate of a car. Options were individual. I liked it that way. Now I see the identical car...I mean identical...parked next to its twin on a new car lot. How boring.
There was nothing like picking from 16 or 18 exterior colors and five or six or seven interior colors. Ahhhhh.
There's also less intentional obsolescence today, which is a good thing. A 1952 car in 1962 looked positively ancient. A 2002 car in 2012 often looks modern and the average non-enthusiast probably has no idea it isn't newer.
The color ideal is a valid point, powertrains and bodystyles too. Look at how many variants you could derive from an Impala or Galaxie in the mid 60s. You can still get lots of different color options - but only in highline cars. I will also say this when looking at my cars - the modern car has near supercar performance, is quiet at speed, smooth, reliable, needs no special maintenance, gets better mileage than the old car, and has a lot of cosseting features. But the old car is still more fun to drive and interesting to look at.
Lots of people hate SUV's, but it just crushed it's way through the snow on the unplowed lane on the interstate.
I was going maybe 40 max, but I was not going to sit behind cars that were 20 to 25 mph.
It was the first time i had driven it in snow, so until I got out the owner's manual for another reason, I forgot it had a 'snow mode'.
The ~9" of ground clearance helps a lot though. We want to drive the van south in a couple of days and the tires on it are about done. Have to go ~4 hours before getting out of the snow, so it'll be a leisurely start to the drive.
http://youtu.be/FOesAN18EIA
Not for the Subaru, but for the old "first car", which appears to be a relatively rare 87-88 Ciera coupe.
They built big coupes just when everyone wanted sedans.
Ford laughed all the way to the bank with their Taurus.
CR just ranked it their top pick among small cars, elevating Subaru to the top among brands.
Enthusiasts may roll their eyes, but even we know the marketing value of this is huge. Of course you can't mention CR by name so expect to see a lot of ads with "according to a leading consumer magazine" in the near future.
Actually, hopefully not. Stick to their guns and keep doing the touchy-feely thing.
The larger coupes were Monte Carlo/Regal/Cutlass/GP. The latter were updated for 1988 (and sold relatively well, I think) and the old Monte soon dropped.
Taurus had all the thunder in the 86-onward time for sure, huge mass market appeal.
Ahhhh, the days of choice.
Actually, even I think having Pontiac, Olds, and Buick as 'middle' divisions was excessive. But then, I bought Chevys. I think they could've gotten away with one 'middle' division.
Speaking of badge engineering, I don't see too much about Lincoln's Fusion. It's as similar to a Fusion as a Cimarron was to a Cavalier.
Nobody buys Lincoln's Fusion. I wouldn't be surprised if GM actually conned more into buying Cimarrons.
Watching what happened to Oldsmobile is a study of GM at its worst. They had confusing focus all around and lost all concept of what an Olds should be. Then, as a parting screw up, they did that bit where they decided Olds was going to be their import fighter will all the new designs (which to my eye were actually quite attractive and still hold up today) with the same mechanicals underneath. The import folks weren't biting and there was nothing left for the traditional Oldsmobile buyer to relate to. It was sad to see that happen.
That said, I agree with uplander that one mid-level brand is enough. Certainly no one else had more than one after the grand Edsel experiment. Chrysler had their own middle brands but by the late 50s DeSoto was functionally dead and completely so shortly thereafter and Dodge was just a rebadged Plymouth.
Also, very inefficient with space. The back seat was tiny.
Those were Grand Am clones, right? IIRC.
Remember the odd ball Cutless Supreme convertible? Those were pretty rare. They had that style bar like the VW Cabrio had.
I preferred the boxy Regal T-Top. Her other friend had one of those and we drove it to the beach once. Then again it may just be the nostalgia of a fun trip with 4 cute girls (me being the only guy). LOL
Yeah, that model really struggled. It looked way too much like the Fusion it was based on. Not to mention the Milan that it shared a showroom with at first.
Then all the name confusion - Zephyr, Mark Z, ...
The new one nearly caught fire at NAIAS last month, not a good start. :sick:
The Regal/Supreme class of cars were worlds better than the smaller models.