Marketing Cars

1/17/06

I think the NPR commentator got it wrong today when opining about the switch car makers are making from using evocative names for their vehicles to numerical monikers such as the Ford Explorer will now be called the MX 540 or some such enumeration. He felt that we are switching to names that sound more techno, or even Europpean to keep up with trends, but no where did he make the connection that the MX sounds a lot more macho and military than the outdoors-y Explorer. Anything with MX infront of it sounds to me like the latest version of some weapons delivery system and aren't we now living in a war era? If we're not actually fighting in the fields of Iraq or Afghanistan we're sneaking around fighting terrorism abroad and at home in our neighborhood libraries, on your mulah's cell phone and your teen daughter's blog. As we physically and intellectually flabbier, doesn't it feel good to drive around in some powerful symbol of strength and world domination? How ironic that the more of these we drive the more power we cede to those nations who fuel this pseudo sense of security. I say, get a bicycle and flip off Haliburton, oil sheiks and our petrol dependent auto industry.

Yesterday I saw a legless, armless man whizzing by in his motorized wheelchair with a grin on his face, wind whipping around his head like an aviator's scarf. A young kid ran along side and hopped on for a ride as the rest of his group ran after them.