Author Archives: Jay B.

Vintage VW for the Hausfrau

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Sociological Images  unearths an old VW ad that features the 1950s manufactured conflict between man and wife over what car to buy with the husband’s money.  Similar to the hen-pecked husband in this Volvo ad from the same era, the man in the photo above (who looks like he’s about to be castrated beheaded) desires the car that’s advertised. But his wife is reluctant, even hostile to the idea of driving it, so the husband must do the job of the car salesman in convincing his wife to allow him to buy the car he wants, even though he won’t be driving it.

“It looks like a bus.”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead in it.”

Do these sound familiar?  Your wife is not alone.  It is hard to convince some women what sense the VW Station Wagon makes.

Although the wife’s assumed place in the family is taxi and delivery driver, the ad implies that since she’s a woman she must be too dumb to understand the utility of a van. She only cares about how it looks.

According to the ad her duties include carting groceries, baby carriages, antique chests, tree saplings, Boy Scouts and camping supplies, all while enduring “bumper to bumper traffic on hot days.” Can’t she pick her own damn car? She’ll be picking up hubby’s dry-cleaning too, I’m sure. Dude, give your slave a break.

The kicker is the final statement, which, if there was any confusion, really puts the woman in her place:

“If these facts don’t convince her, tell her it’s only $2655 and you aren’t made of money.”

In other words, it’s really not a mutual decision with the husband making a convincing argument. He’s gonna buy her the cheap death-trap and she better get used to it.

Nowadays we know that car companies conduct focus groups with and conduct marketing campaigns for women specifically. In fact, Volvo recently created a concept car designed by and for women. “YCC”, or “Your Concept Car” included such innovations as a redesigned headrest to accomodate pony-tails and interior decor that can be swapped out depending on the season. Oh, how far we’ve come.

Always use Jack Stands

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I learned the hard way not to rely on the car’s jack to hold the brick up in the air. I needed to tighten the right rear shock and figured it wouldn’t be a problem to just leave it on the jack since I wasn’t going under the car. The combination of no parking brake, no wheel wedge, and banging on the wrench sent the car teetering forward, bending the jack and gently settling down on the brake rotor. Great.

I grabbed a couple of stands and slowly jacked the car up, notch by notch. Lesson learned.

US Studies Cellphone Risk, Then Hides Results

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Two days after their article on the dangers of cell phone use while driving, the NY Times has an article outlining how the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had studied the effects of phone use by drivers, only to bury the findings for fear of angering Congress.

The former head of the highway safety agency said he was urged to withhold the research to avoid antagonizing members of Congress who had warned the agency to stick to its mission of gathering safety data but not to lobby states.

Critics say that rationale and the failure of the Transportation Department, which oversees the highway agency, to more vigorously pursue distracted driving has cost lives and allowed to blossom a culture of behind-the-wheel multitasking.

Driving While Texting

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The NY Times has an article today about states legislating cell phone usage and texting while driving. It includes an interactive piece that demonstrates your level of distraction while texting. It’s a cool little piece, but I think it doesn’t demonstrate real-world scenarios and may be deceptive. The lane change decisions you have to make are steady, constant and rhythmic, rather than random and directed by the driver. Very often a driver can cruise in a lane for a while before needing to change lanes, but the game has changes every 5 seconds. Also, the texting doesn’t demonstrate how you might react to a real message. When asked to choose a pie from a list of options, I typed “peecan”. The message came back saying  it didn’t understand and I needed to write it again. Would a human being really not understand that  I’d like pecan pie, rather than apple?

It does demonstrate, however, that multitasking doesn’t work. Interacting with both the road and the cell-phone, you feel the stress of bouncing from one to the other. At times I just gave up on the road so I could type and spell correctly. I may have blown through a few toll-booth gates, but at least I knew I’d be getting ice cream on my pie, rather than whipped.

On the myth of multitasking, Christine Rosen writes:

For the younger generation of multitaskers, the great electronic din is an expected part of everyday life. And given what neuroscience and anecdotal evidence have shown us, this state of constant intentional self-distraction could well be of profound detriment to individual and cultural well-being. When people do their work only in the “interstices of their mind-wandering,” with crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.

The New Outback

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The Truth About Cars lays waste to the 2010 Outback, claiming it’s moved from being a cool off-road wagon into a cookie-cutter CUV. The last redesign was in 2005 and looked handsome and relatively sleek; not quite as sexy as the Legacy Wagon but still cool. Now it just looks chunky and clunky. Let’s hear what TTAC has to say:

Towering more than four inches higher than its predecessor, spanning two inches more across the beam, standing another awkward inch higher off its tires, the new Outback looks—IS huge. The super-chunk roof rails are grossly exaggerated (until you discover the trick design that allows the crossbars to disconnect and swing 90 degrees to find residence integrated in the longitudinal rails). The rear quarter view screams “Venza!”—which is like shouting “movie” in a crowded firehouse. Curiously, there wasn’t a Tribeca on the showroom floor. Cannibalism avoidance? Either that or the former “flying vagina” was hidden by the swollen Outback.

…

The Outback’s ergonomics couldn’t be further from Audi’s if they were designed by Daewoo. Every button on the Outback’s dash now requires reading glasses, a precise finger, and a map. Twin Big Gulps and a swollen armrest bin take precedence over the handbrake, which has been demoted to a tiny button buried left of the steering column amidst a myriad of other tiny, illegible, and obstructed switches for stability control, external mirrors, trunk release, and a bunch of curious blanks. To compensate, the twin steering column stalks are chunkier. Thanks. So much.

From TTAC

Studebaker Wagonaire

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This almost-a-convertible-not-quite-an-El-Camino wagon was created by Studebaker on the Lark station wagon body. The retractable roof was built into the rear to allow tall cargo to be transported upright. From the ad above, I assume this meant your fishing poles, or your daughter, but I’m sure there were other ways to get them into a converntional wagon.

Any owner of a 240 with a sunroof can guess what problems arose from the Wagonaire’s retractable roof; it leaked like a sieve. Although Studebaker fixed this problem in later years, the model was doomed to a production run of 3 years and open air rear styling for wagons never caught on.

NYT asks: What’s Become of the Wagon?

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audi-q5Lawrence Ulrich, the self described “pro-wagon” auto critic for the NY Times, spends almost a third of his Audi Q5 review today analyzing the state of the American station wagon:

There’s no longer any debate or any doubt: Americans hate station wagons. Deep down, they still love and want their S.U.V.’s, even if most of these are now marketed as crossovers, a politically soothing yet increasingly pointless distinction.

Car companies foreign and domestic have learned that the best way to stumble in this market is to design and market a station wagon, no matter how practical, sporty or affordable. (Make an exception for Subaru and its wagon fanatics.) The best way to succeed is to offer a decadent, overweight would-be S.U.V. that looks bulky and capable but is mostly used for mall reconnaissance; even a weekend trip with two parents and two children can overwhelm the cargo-carrying ability of the typical downsized, do-little luxury crossover.

He pulls out the sales figures for European wagons to prove it:

Audi sold nearly 21,000 of its big Q7 crossover in 2007, compared with barely 2,800 of its sprightly A4 Avant wagon and just 758 of the larger A6 wagon.

…the BMW X3 crossover outsold the hotter-performing, higher-mileage 3 Series wagon by better than 10 to 1.

…Even Volvo’s wagon sales were halved when it introduced its XC90 crossover.

In stating that “The Dodge Magnum and Mazda 6 wagon are two recent examples of conventional wagons that critics loved and consumers rejected,” he highlights an American phenomenon I find difficult to understand.

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