Friday, March 23, 2012

I Want An Aston Martin

“Only the shrewdest, most pragmatic thinkers will qualify as successful emotion merchants.”

Ulrich Bez, CEO Aston Martin Motorcars, as quoted in the April 2012 issue of Automobile Magazine.

The engine turns over with a hollow whine and bursts into life, the intake and exhaust play in concert a raspy, sinister snarl. Yes, I am anthropomorphizing. The Zagato V12 wears a coat of bright claret paint with a black pearl. The car tears up the road, a deserted curvy two lane through snowy blue grey forest. The sky is overcast. The car sweeps across the landscape, the driver drifts it through a turn, the V12 soars and falls through its rev range, the exhaust howls. Even though the Aston Martin is far far away from any rank on my wish list, even though I am completely happy with my little Volkswagen GTI, desire stirs in me. Watching the video once is not enough. I am entranced a half dozen times.

The power of want is remarkable. Compared to a Honda Accord the Zagato is over twenty times the money, seats 2/5’s the people, gets half the fuel economy, and requires way more maintenance. With a network of about 25 dealers in the US, well, good luck if the thing craps out while you and your squeeze are road tripping it across South Dakota. Despite this, people actually buy them. Oh tut, tut, Mr. Spoilsport! Hit the replay button again. None of this really matters now does it?

While I appreciate Mr. Bez’s forthrightness about what constitutes effective leadership, his comment troubles me. We consumers apparently have signed over the satisfaction of our emotions - or some of them - to the decisions of thinkers, not feelers. And thinking has nothing to do with feeling, I think.

The thinkers are observant and methodical. They pay attention and take notes on our wants, and what it takes to get us to plunk down our cash for things we definitely do not need. It then becomes as easy as getting us to think about the peanut and we salivate. We are predictable in our aspirations, or at least I am as my response to the video indicates. And that’s what troubles me. I fancy myself a bit more complex, mysterious even. But I’m not. I’m a guy, and all it takes are a few images and sounds of a red car with a V12 ripping down a lonely back road, and they got me. Thank goodness the price of admission is beyond my means because damn it all, now I want an Aston Martin.

Gordon Bunker

Photo: Aston Martin Motorcars

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Look Out The Window

According to Automobile Magazine, one of the crown jewels of the Honda Odyssey Touring Elite (A minivan, Touring Elite?) is the DVD player. A staffer and his family recently took the Honda on a 2,552 mile road trip from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Walt Disney World in Orlando. He reports: “DVDs played: 11 “The DVD system in the Honda is unsurpassed for ease of use. It’s totally intuitive and fully controllable from the front passenger seat…””

I‘m assuming the DVDs were movies played for those in the back seat and those in the back seat were children. At an average speed of 50 mph, one movie got played every 4.5 hours and if each movie with ads and trailers lasted 2 hours this means DVDs were playing for nearly half the time the vehicle was in motion. Let me say this about that: Ugh.

No place or time is apparently beyond seizing to feed our progeny the pablum Hollywood panders to us as “entertainment.” For what, to keep the little wankers occupied and out of the grownup’s hair? Undoubtedly there is some benefit in this for said grownups, but in the mean time the kids are being fed carefully designed messages such as the popular delusion that good consistently and by means of violence triumphs over evil. And so we go on and on bringing up and misguiding the new ranks to follow in our footsteps.

And let us not forget that to be consumers is the highest calling!

What did my sister and I do in the back seat without a movie? We daydreamed and sang songs and counted Volkswagens. The rare Karman Ghia bird was (and is) a special treat. We goofed around, teased and annoyed each other and learned how to compromise and make up. We drove our parents nuts and they reciprocated. We got to know each other, and learned to get along.

I would read until I threw up until I figured out reading in the car wasn’t such a hot idea. Looking out the window was much better, for miles I watched telephone and power lines gracefully sweep up and down, and the poles loom by.

My sister and I would bicker. After listening to this for just so long, our mother would turn around, glare at us and announce, “If I hear one more peep from either of you before we get home… we’re going to stop the car!” Far as I remember we never did stop the car but nonetheless, there was no telling what might happen if we did so it was the ultimate threat. We youngins would then be very very quiet until we would look at one another and snicker and couldn’t stand it any longer and one of us would barely utter the forbidden word, “peep.” And the slightest little grin would creep across our mother’s face, and we knew we had her and then we would erupt into a cacophony of “PEEP, PEEP, PEEP!” Good natured brattishness is so endearing.

We enjoyed the freedom of unstructured, unfocused time. We wondered and thought and debated about things, all the while watching the land and the people go by. We learned about our country. Big polluted northeastern cities. Sweeping, beautiful landscapes, lakes and oceans. Hardscrabble bare dirt poverty in the rural south. And it wasn’t white folks out front of those shacks. It all bore no resemblance to the paucity of experience doled out by the entertainment industry.

Gordon Bunker