Walking in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

The causation is explicit, like, companies exist to make money, moving towards higher margin vehicles isn't an accident, or luck, it's the explicit intentional goal of every corporation.

The "steady decline" isn't consumer choice, it's an intentional strategy by the auto industry.

The model discontinuations are indeed an industry decision. But they are a consequence of consumer preferences: if not enough people buy Tauruses or Fusions, Ford is not going to spend the millions needed to design the next generation of cars. And the sales numbers dropped steadily, for vast majority of sedans, as people chose to buy SUVs or (mostly) crossovers instead.

Our car is a hatchback, not a crossover or an SUV. But I have followed automotive industry for the past two-plus decades, and the change in consumer preferences is real. Just as people switched from station wagons to minivans in the 80s/90s, and manufacturers discontinued wagons as their sales dried up. Small sports cars (from MGB to Miata) went out of style and new there are few left. Muscle car era ended, and there are few sold today. Sales didn't go to zero in any of these examples, but low enough that designing, building and selling such models no longer made economic sense for them. You can make money building less expensive cars, too, but building low-volume models is very expensive.

There are still companies that focus on low-cost cars (such as Dacia, for example) but even their sales are mostly crossovers now. Do you really think that most people today would prefer driving a sedan?

As I've said several times now, I think what most people want is dictated in large part based on what they see and experience. For example, seeing people living the kind of life people want for themselves, doing the same thing 20-100 times per day. That's the whole point. Advertising is driving this.

If the auto industry in Canada and the US spent the last 20 years running advertising showing positive images of interesting people doing interesting things in small efficient sedans, Canada would look more like Europe. Instead we've had the past two decades of toxic auto advertising pushing the most aggressive most angry most problematic vehicles and vehicle drivers around, and that isn't without effect.

Even leaving aside the vehicles that are on our roads...it also affects how people drive them. When they see people speeding through an empty city, it plants a subconscious expectation that's what it should be like, then they're angry when that isn't the case....and when it is, they're reckless.

Like I said, it is shocking just how much of our culture is dominated (determined) by advertising.

I couldn't really find good numbers on the numbers of ads people actually see on a daily basis...the common number thrown around is between 3,000 and 10,000. Some have questioned this, a google glass study found 250 advertisements were in view in a 90 minute period just walking around London UK. But leaving aside some...frankly, questionable low ball suggestions, the number would clearly be in the 1000s...

You think that seeing some media 1000s of times every single day doesn't affect us?