Month: July 2004

Here’s a really fascinating peek inside the Movable Type machine from Mena Trott. Like a lot of inventors, she’s giving up the CEO role in favour of a more experienced operator. People usually keep schtum about this kind of thing… While I’m posting business stuff, a terrific piece from Business Week about the decline of Sun and Scott McNealy’s heroic mistakes. Incidentally, these two pieces are a good illustration of the difference between blogging (high concept) and journalism (high production values). Trott’s blog entry is an immensely valuable insight into her business and the way business is done now – from her own, properly subjective, perspective. The Business Week piece is a big budget production – written by a team. Forty Sun executives, past and present, were interviewed for the story. No blogger will ever be able to throw that kind of resource at a story. A recipe for coexistence, if you ask me…

I can’t tell you how much it cheers me up to learn that the number 2 result for ‘hummer h2‘ at Google is a marvelous bit of brand mischief called Fuck You and Your H2. So far, 845 people have taken the trouble to give the finger to a Hummer, take a photograph and upload it to FUH2. How’s that for engagement with the brand? It’s very difficult to avoid the conclusion that the H2 is the world’s stupidest car: 3,500 kilos of bog standard 4×4 wrapped in a brutalist pseudo-military suburban assault vehicle skin that resembles the original Hummer, as popularised by macho celebrities after the first Gulf War.

There’s one round the corner from our house – black with black glass, natch – sporting a set of bling bling chrome wheel rims that keep spinning even after you’ve stopped the car – perhaps the most childish aftermarket car accessory in history – “Look! My wheels keep spinning even after I’ve stopped! It looks like I’m driving along really fast even when I’m at a red light!”

Anyway, the H2 must surely represent the high water mark for the 4X4. Although it’s been a big hit and is already spawning clones from half a dozen manufacturers (and they’re assembling the damn things in Russia now), sales of the three-and-a-half tonne school run device are down by a quarter since the invasion of Iraq.

The H2 and its ilk are the contemporary equivalent of the muscle cars of the early seventies – killed off by that other oil crisis – only with less charm. Steve McQueen could drive a Mustang in Bullitt and Warren Oates a GTO in Two Lane Blacktop but only a cartoon villain (Emissions Man?) would drive a Hummer. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a lot to answer for.

Saw the two Nissan Figaros in the top pic on a forecourt round the corner – someone’s obviously developing a specialism. Why, meanwhile, in the ocean of car choice, is there so little real variation? The design vocabulary of cars is so restricted and advances so slowly. What are the keywords on the mood boards at the car designers these days: sexy, aggressive, practical, safe, sporty, flexible, successful, family, active, fun? Other designed goods have a much wider vocabulary – what’s wrong with: ‘eccentric, cheeky, brassy, edgy, funny, baroque, playful, green, chintzy, daft, alternative’? Why are clever cars like the 1991 Figaro stuck in a sort of experimental ghetto? Are we so inflexible, so blinded by decades of auto engineering convention that we can’t imagine ourselves in something new?

Ivan points out that what we actually like about cars might be different from what we tell the manufacturers in those focus groups – for instance, in the latest brilliant Peugeot 407 ad, the car I really want is the oversize wooden baby toy and not the very dull 407 itself.