I steered the Jensen into the slow lane of the M4, and began to read the route signs welcoming me to the outer London suburbs. Ashford, Staines, Hillingdon - impossible destinations that featured only on the mental maps of desperate marketing men. Beyond Heathrow lay the empires of consumerism, and the mystery that obsessed me until the day I walked out of my agency for the last time. How to rouse a dormant people who had everything, who had bought the dreams that money can buy and knew they had found a bargain? (J.G. Ballard, Kingdom Come 1)
If you've ever wondered (as I did in my girlish naivety) whether a "Jensen" is a real existing car and not another technological chimera from Ballard's eutopic suburbias, today's Spiegel has a whole photo series of the "Jensen Interceptor III."
Just enjoy the pictures and don't read the text (and don't - DON'T - think about fuel efficiency). According to the comments (I only ever read the comments, really), it's full of unforgiveable mistakes about the intricate inspirational conduits of international auto design.
The sociology of the Chinese elite, read through German automobiles at the Wall Street Journal:
According to Yang Jian, managing editor of Automotive News China, a trade magazine based in Shanghai, BMW consumers are “typically young business people — entrepreneurs who have made a lot of money.”
Sounds obvious, until you compare to the brand’s competition: BMW is the No. 2 luxury-car brand in China — it sold 102,916 units in the first 10 months of the year, according to data from market-research firm J.D. Power & Associates. The top brand is Audi, with 172,180 units sold through October. The Audi demographic consists mostly of government officials, the leading consumers of luxury cars in China. The third most-popular brand in China? Mercedes-Benz, which sold 90,306 units from January to October — its models are the preferred choice of older businessmen and government officials in higher positions.
As if summoned from a novel by J.G. Ballard: "China traffic jam stretches 'nine days, 100km'"
The title of this post comes from a 1979 Penthouseinterview with Ballard on the prescience of science fiction in which he observed:
I suspect it will also turn out to have been extremely accurate in the way in which it is now predicting or anticipating the peculiar affectless quality of life in the 1980s and 90s.
Penthouse: What kind of things?
Ballard: Well, for example the way in which the traditional togetherness of the village is giving way to the inbuilt loneliness of the new high rises, or the peculiar fact that people nowadays like to be together not in the old-fashioned way of, say, mingling on the piazza of an Italian Renaissance city, but, instead, huddled together in traffic jams, bus queues, on escalators and so on. It's a new kind of togetherness which may seem totally alien, but it's the togetherness of modern technology, and the science fiction writers of the 40s, 50s and 60s picked it out unerringly as being a dominant feature of the future - often without realising what they were doing.
Not that that togetherness is all that cozy, at least going by the Chinese example:
The drivers have complained that locals are over-charging them for food and drink while they are stuck.
Clearly, our Chinese friends have that capitalism thing down pat. Yet, the real traffic jam seems to nevertheless lack, how shall we say, the rampant psychosexual perversion of the Ballardian original.
Something encountered whilst looking for something else:
Mr. Churchill Sued
Reading Official Papers When Car Collided.
Having given evidence in the King’s Bench Division in defence of an action arising out of a motor-car accident, Mr. Winston Churchill, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had the satisfaction of hearing the jury return a verdict in his favour. The case, it transpired, was defended by an insurance company, and later in the day Mr. Churchill intimated to their solicitor that he was unwilling that plaintiff should suffer out-of-pocket loss for an accident in which he was concerned, and he was ready to make an ex-gratia payment to him of £25, provided it could be arranged that he received the money himself.
The action was brought by Mr. Arthur B. Crew, fishmonger, of Biggin Hill, who alleged that there was negligence on the part of Mr. Churchill’s chauffeur, which resulted in a collision between his car and plaintiff’s van. The accident occurred on the Chancellor’s journey to London from his house near Westerham, and it was contended on behalf of Mr. Crew that Mr. Churchill’s car was travelling at a great speed. Mr. Crew had two ribs broken, an ear split, and an arm badly bruised.
Mr. Churchill, in the witness-box, observed that just before the accident he was reading official papers from his document box, which was open beside him. Two maidservants sat in the front by the side of the chauffeur, and a plainclothes officer was in the closed part with him. He noticed nothing unusual about the pace of the car, and certainly would have noticed if the car was going at a tremendous speed, as suggested. He did notice that the brakes were violently applied, but when the cars collided there was no violent impact. He was not thrown out of his seat or propelled forward in any way.
Mr. Roland Oliver, K.C., cross-examining:
Do you make a habit of allowing yourself a certain time to get from your home to Downing-street?— Yes.
How much do you allow?—About one hour and 10 minutes.
Do you sometimes do it in less?—Yes. It depends on the state of the traffic.
Sir Patrick Hastings, K.C., the defence, pointed out that the distance of the run was 23 miles. The jury returned a verdict for Mr. Churchill, and Mr. Justice Horridge directed that a sum of money paid into court should be handed Mr. Crew.
News of the World, 27 March 1927, p. 5
One wonders whether more attention should perhaps have been given to any possible role in the accident played by the 'two maidservants' sitting next to the chauffeur.
But if nothing else, I've been pleased to have another opportunity to use the word 'fishmonger'.
As a child I was thoroughly indoctrinated by German Fear-TV, which is why to this day I'm unnaturally suspicious of things and situations other people merely find odd.
Example: This here camper van, which has been parked on the same spot on the lot of our local supermarket for weeks now. Day and night, night and day. We walk by it every time we go grocery shopping:
Thanks to the enduring influence of "Ganoven Ede" (rogue Ed), Eduard Zimmermann, whose serene voice and tales of murder and rapine haunted my childhood, I am convinced that this vehicle has not been dumped by the owner out of spite for not being granted the Abwrackprämie, but is likely to have been accessory in a crime. Either it contains robbery-ready tools or it is full of rotting body parts (start at 6:55 for gruesome footage) packed tightly in blue bin liners.
But that's not really the point I was going to make. Rather, I wanted to talk about the ... interesting name that car maker VW gave this particular model of holiday home. You can actually see it in the picture: "Carthago Malibu".
Savour it: "Carthago Malibu".
Car-tha-go Ma-li-bu.
I admit that I find this combination of terror and frivolousness slightly disturbing. Of course, "Carthago" sounds enticingly exotic, Carthage being in what is today Tunisia, but heck - don't these gearheads know that the city is no more and hasn't been for a long, long time? It was destroyed twice: by the Romans after the Third Punic War (before Brian) and then again in the wake of the Muslim conquest at the end of the seventh century c.e.
Carthage is, essentially, ruins.
What a creative, inspirational - and utterly stupid - moniker for a motor vehicle, especially one promising tourist adventure. Perhaps, though, the name is a bit better than your average Prius or Escort (though the latter at least has a certain alluring ambiguity). In fact, so intrigued have I been by this name, that it has generated the idea for another fabulous new party game.
The rules are simple: Combine the name of a site of bloodthirsty slaughter and total destruction with one that evokes fun, fun, fun in the sun, sun, sun. I'll start you off with a few suggestions:
As a proud (or at least satisfied) owner of a French car, I found this story at Wired of an outpost of Francophile Fahrvergnügen in North America to be quite entertaining.
Sixteen miles off the coast of Newfoundland and just 800 miles from Boston lie the tiny islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, the last vestiges of the colonial empire of New France. Though these islands are 3,000 miles from Paris, they're French in every way. Residents celebrate Bastille Day, vote in French elections and pay for everything in Euros.
And, of course, drive French cars. That makes the Territorial Collectivity of St. Pierre and Miquelon, which has just 70 miles of paved road, the only place north of the Rio Grande River where you can still find Peugeot and Renault dealers.
The great news that Citroën is to launch a new version of the legendary Citroën DS in 2010 (yes, ok -- we should probably wait until the first studies are released before we get overexcited) put me in the mind of this:
In this heady pre-ballot phase, hardly a day passes without my favourite American expat in Germany voicing his surprise whenever Europeans, whether in the media or in person, express their bewilderment about the possibility that the McCain and Palin nightmare-team might have a serious chance of winning the US-election. "Europeans just don't get America", he mutters, in the face of our all too optimistic expectation that a November triumph for this charming Mr Obama is inevitable.
Well, things also work the other way round: Americans don't get Europe. Because if they did, somebody would have told US car manufacturer Dodge that promising Germans a cheap deal on a new car will not make them have more babies.
Dodge, you see, is seriously worried about the declining birthrate in Germany, as Der Spiegel can reveal. The 1,37 Kinder produced per Frau, a recent company press release points out, make this country bottom of the league in Europe, nay the world. Whether this is actually true, is another question - some figures lead to a slightly different conclusion. But let's not be finicky.
In any case, in an act of corporate concern and generosity, Dodge has come up with a (pro-)creative solution, promoted via the ad-campaign Helden zeugen. The slogan, admittedly, is a cute little pun, meaning both "heroes reproduce" and "produce heroes". That's about as funny as it gets. Customers mad enough to want to buy a grotesque gas-guzzling Dodge monstrosity will have the leasing rates deferred for nine months (clever joke, eh?) if they are able to present a positive pregnancy test.
You can just imagine it, can't you? Hundreds of German couples storming their nearest Dodge-dealers, waving little plastic DIY pregnancy kits like magic wands and screaming: "Look: two stripes!"
Behind this smutty nudge-nudge, wink-wink campaign (for more untranslatable punning see the Spiegel article) is of course the fact that Dodge itself is at the bottom of a league table, albeit a different one: sales of cars in Germany.
I suppose one must wish Dodge luck for their daring - and, I presume, doomed, project. For whether it comes to birth rates or sales rates, I suspect that they won't succeed.
I was born and spent a good part of my life in a place with a stupid name. The kind of name that features in silly party games and causes spontaneous, hysterical laughter in those who hear it for the first time ("You are from ... [splutter, splutter] wheeeere? [splutter, splutter, heee .... heee]").
That is not fair. The place where I come from is quite a nice place (though, hell, am I happy to be able to say that I've already spent more time of my life anywhere but there). It brought forth the German B-poet, translator and orientalist Friedrich Rückert, yours truly and, as Der Spiegel kindly informs us, the Smart avant la lettre.
It seems that some real change is afoot, as David Leonhardt points out in the New York Times, in comments on the declining sales of the F-series pickup in the US:
For more than two decades, Ford’s F-series pickup trucks have been the most popular line of vehicles in the country, selling more every year than any sedan, station wagon or S.U.V., foreign or domestic. But F-series sales have dropped more than 30 percent since last spring.
Last month, according to the new sales numbers released on Tuesday, the Toyota Corolla and Camry and the Honda Civic and Accord all surged past the F-series. It was the first month since December 1992 that a car — not a truck — was the country’s top-selling vehicle. The world doesn’t seem to have come to an end as a result.
Leonhardt looks at the mid-term comparative costs of buying and operating different vehicles across five-years, emphasising how much concentrating on fuel efficiency can save you:
While the F-250 costs $100,000 and a fully loaded F-150 — the better-known, smaller Ford pickup — costs about $70,000, a Ford Focus still costs less than $40,000 over five years. A Honda Civic Hybrid does, too. A Toyota Prius costs only a little more. A Subaru Outback station wagon runs $50,000 or so.
To put this in perspective, the difference between a Focus and an F-250 over five years is $60,000. The annual pretax income of a typical family in this country is also about $60,000. So choosing a F-250 over a Focus is like volunteering for a 20 percent pay cut. The relative resale values might cushion the blow a little, but not much.
The primary beneficiaries of this shift seem to be Toyota and Honda, who, I think, have pretty much dominated the small car market in the US for decades.
I wonder: is there an opportunity here for European car makers to also expand in the US?
Even...dare one say it...the French? Even if previous efforts in this direction (think 'Le Car', better known to European readers as the Renault 5) have been less than successful.
This was despite the excellent ad campaign for 'Le Car'. (Link leads to an extraordinary ad, on which embedding has sadly been disabled. But take a look. You'll be glad you did.)
I mean, how could Americans have resisted back in 1981?
In the mid-90s, a grad-school roommate had one of these, in the classic yellow colour with 'Le Car' written on the side, as I recall. It was, by that point, about 15 years old, I think, and he continued driving it for about 4 months even after the clutch went out.
(Some American readers may no longer know what a 'clutch' is. Explanation here.)
When I mention to Americans what make of car we have, most seem to think I'm suffering from some kind of speech impediment when I respond.
For a change, I don't think that's a result of my poor French pronunciation. (I've been told by one friend that I now have a German accent when I speak French, which is apparently quite comical.) Rather, Citroën stopped selling cars in America in the 1970s.
Interestingly enough, they are now promoting themselves in Britain by pretending to be German.
(I, actually, find the C5 to be sort of dull: the C4 is much more interesting.)
