Category: Business

Proper Fake

Drive Time, Marketing / Advertising

Last week I slammed the idiots who are seduced by marketing into paying exorbitant sums of money for ordinary products like vodka (Grey Goose) and guns (Heckler Und Koch).

Then yesterday I bitched about modern cars and their electronic gizmos that cost too much (in every sense of the word) and which at some point are going to be taken away from you;  and added that I’d really prefer to drive an older car without all that nonsense.

I thought that it might be kinda fun to combine those two concepts into a single buying experience.  Here’s how I figured it out.

First, we have a car company whose products command premium prices (i.e. you pay through the nose) for their old cars, but whose cars of that era were frankly just not very good, performance-wise.

Step forward the 1950s-era Porsche 356, and here’s a good example thereof:

Now let’s be honest, here.  The old 356 may have been very reliable (compared to its competitors) for that time, but if you’ve ever driven an original, you would have been horribly disappointed (as I most certainly was).  The engine is seriously underpowered, it doesn’t handle or brake that well on those skinny tires and drum brakes, although it does give tremendous driving fun because you always feel connected to the road.  But it’s the engine sound which really disappoints.  It sounds pretty much like a VW Beetle engine of the same vintage:  a kind of whiny clatter.  My take:  the original 356 isn’t worth as much as they’re being charged for.  Frankly, the premium prices are a function of restoration “to original” state.  Once you get past the Concours Set, the prices become more “reasonable” because restorers install modern switchgear, better wiring materials and nicer exhaust systems, for instance:

My thing about the 356 is that I just like its looks.  It’s quirky, a little ugly (“a lot ugly” — New Wife) but above all it has character.  Nothing else is quite like it.

But if you strip away all the Porsche stuff and just go with what it looks like, you get one of these:

Looks like a 356 museum, dunnit?  But all those 356s are replicas (gasp!):  fiberglass bodies attached to a shortened ’71 VW Beetle chassis, powered by a 2.3-liter VW engine, which pushes out 125 hp (compared to the original 356’s 90-odd hp).  Plenty power for that little body, and they come with a proper exhaust system which makes them sound more modern Porsche than old Beetle.  Modern tires, too.

Price?  Between $60,000 and $72,000.

Still too much?  I don’t think so, because this isn’t one of those DIY garage fiberglass kit cars.  If you order one from this particular manufacturer, you could wait up to two years for your order to get fulfilled.  Me, I’d just get one of the existing stock ones, as in the pic.

But hey, not everyone likes the 356.  However, everybody loves the Ferrari 250 Spyder, right?

Whoa.

Trouble is that these puppies sell for well over a million — or more — and now you’re in a lot more silliness than a $30 bottle of vodka.

Except that the model above sells for $105,000.  How so?  Well, it’s not a “pure Ferrari”.  Like the Vintage Motors replica of the Porsche 356 above, this is a fiberglass bodied Ferrari lookalike with a… 6.9-liter Ford V8 under the hood.  (Take that, Ferrari!)

Okay:  is this going to handle anything like a Ferrari (any Ferrari)?  Most definitely not.  Does it matter?  No.

Because you’re not going to track this car (unless you’re an idiot), you’re going to drive around in a little beauty, at 10% of the cost of the original, with an AC Cobra-like thunder coming out of the exhaust.

It’s all very well being a badge “purist”.  The problem is that the owners of the badges have made their products so expensive that the cars are all being bought by essentially the same 100 people, leaving the rest of us plebs out of the picture.

The thing is that to those 100 guys, the “proper” badges are either purchased for bragging rights (i.e. dick comps) or as investments, no different from a condo in Monaco or a 25-carat diamond (don’t get me started on De Beers or we’ll be here all day).

Just in passing, I wonder how many miles Bill Gates has put on his Porsche 959?  (And if that story doesn’t make you grit your teeth in frustrated fury — for so many reasons — we can’t be friends.)

But there are guys who love the cars not for their “collector value” or any of that bollocks, but for their exquisite beauty and perhaps to a lesser degree, for their performance.  Guys like me.

And I have to tell you that if I won the lottery and some guy had put together a proper fiberglass Dino 246 shell on, say, a Porsche Boxster-type frame and engine…


…hold me back.

So I guess my question for y’all would be:  what quality (but inexpensive) replica would float your boat if you saw one?

About Damn Time

Corporate Fuckery, The Gun Thing

I see that CitiBank may have seen the light:

We will update our employee Code of Conduct and our customer-facing Global Financial Access Policy to clearly state that we do not discriminate on the basis of political affiliation in the same way we are clear that we do not discriminate on the basis of other traits such as race and religion. This will codify what we’ve long practiced, and we will continue to conduct trainings to ensure compliance.

We also will no longer have a specific policy as it relates to firearms. Our U.S. Commercial Firearms Policy was implemented in 2018 and pertained to sale of firearms by our retail clients and partners. The policy was intended to promote the adoption of best sales practices as prudent risk management and didn’t address the manufacturing of firearms. Many retailers have been following these best practices, and we hope communities and lawmakers will continue to seek out ways to prevent the tragic consequences of gun violence.

Yeah, whatever.  Just to make myself clear:

I have absolutely no problem with “gun violence”, provided it’s of the kind where potential victims ventilate the goblins who are trying to harm them and/or take away their possessions violently and unlawfully.

And it was people like me who by extension would have run afoul of Citi’s so-called “Commercial Firearms Policy”.

So I’m glad they’ve had a change of heart — no doubt brought on by the Trump Administration’s overt hostility towards corporate fuckery of this nature — but even so, fuck ’em, the chiseling Shylocks.

I finally managed to pay off my credit card balance from Bank of America — the first and most public of the anti-gun banks — and closed the account.  My CitiAA card is next on the chopping list. It may take some time because the balance is still quite high — air tickets for New Wife’s various family visits to Australia and Seffrica, hello — but pay it down I will, make no mistake.  and then it’s bye bye, too.

Boondoggle Over

Business, Gummint, Subsidies

I see it suggested that Elon Musk’s apparent disapproval of Trump’s budget (the Big Beautiful Bill — ugh, FFS) may stem from the fact that included in the suggested budget cuts are federal subsidies for EV purchases.

If this is the case, then Musk’s ire may be understandable… but not excusable.

Sorry, dude:  the whole climate-change-is-gonna-kill-us-therefore-we-must-all-buy-EVs bullshit is one of the more egregious examples of governmental waste and budgetary irresponsibility.  You’ve ridden the gravy train because if Gummint is going to throw money your way then why not take it — say your shareholders — but that time is over, so suck it up and spend more time on other pursuits, those which don’t rely on government subsidies to survive or turn a profit.

Like I said, I don’t know if this is the reason for Elon’s peevishness, but if it is, then it’s just silly.  The gravy train was bound to end sooner or later, and from a taxpayer’s perspective, sooner is better, although said taxpayers who were going to buy a Tesla may not see it the same way, of course.

Too bad.

Connectivity Assholes

Corporate Fuckery, Drive Time, Two-Minute Hate

Normally I reserve the above epithet for people who have their phones surgically attached to their hands, or bosses who insist that employees Stay.In.Touch.At.All.Times., yeah even unto night time, weekends, and vacations.  (Just because you’re attending your sister’s wedding or mother’s funeral — requiring use of paid time off [PTO] instead of compassionate leave, FFS — doesn’t mean that your boss shouldn’t be able to demand your time to attend to That Pressing Corporate Need.)

No, the connectivity assholes I refer to here are “services” like GM’s OnStar, Hyundai’s Blue Link, NissanConnect, AcuraLink and Toyota Connect.  Via Insty, I see the following is happening (from the annals of Corporate Automotive Bastardy):

Connected services is a catch-all term for everything your car can send and receive over the internet. It includes features such as automatic 911 call-outs after an accident, roadside assistance after a breakdown, over-the-air (OTA) software updates, vehicle health reports which can be sent to your dealer, wi-fi hot spots in the vehicle, and phone apps that allow you to connect to and even control some of your car’s functions.

They’re also big business. Most connected services require a paid subscription once the free trail (usually three months to a year) runs out. As more and more of them are added to your dashboard, automakers hope to make billions of dollars annually just on subscriptions. That doesn’t mean older vehicles will be supported forever, though.

Anyone who’s ever touched a device with a computer chip in it knows that device will eventually be obsolete. Cellphones, even if they still work fine, will eventually stop receiving software updates. Right or wrong, this is the way of the world. The average American, though, keeps their car for much longer than they keep their phone, and the average age of a vehicle in America is nearly 13 years old. Meaning, a lot of people could potentially be affected if other automakers follow Acura’s lead in cutting off cars newer than the average. And that’s not to mention those who own used examples of older models.

While it’s arguably bad customer service, there’s no law or contractual obligation requiring automakers like Acura to continue supporting older models with outdated hardware and software. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Yeah, click HERE to accept the (300 pages of) Terms & Conditions Of Service.  (Wait;  you all do read those before clicking, right?)

Somebody tell me how many times I’ve ranted on these pages about people handing over their privacy and freedom of action in the name of “conveeeeenience”, because I can’t be bothered to look it up.

This is why, in all my lottery dreams, I am convinced that I would never buy a modern car, but would pay a premium (in service / maintenance costs etc.) just to own a car that is completely and utterly under my personal control.  I have actually come to the point where I would buy any car — in reasonable working condition — that has an ordinary key to start it, whose operating system contains not a single chip and does not send my usage data to just anyone who wants to see it, for whatever reason — which includes insurance companies, the police, the State, the advertising industry and all the other forms of bureaucratic bastardy that have infested our personal lives like some creeping fucking cancer.

A pox on all of them.

Fooling The Gullible

Marketing / Advertising

As a longtime marketing guy, I’m still fascinated by how easy it is to hoodwink people by making them think that a higher price equates to better quality.

The genius move, however, is to build on another perception of quality, e.g. “German engineering” or “French luxury” as a support for that higher price.

The “German engineering” ethos has been leveraged countless times, most notably with Mercedes cars — although in this case, it was a reputation very well earned, back in the 1960s and -70s. (In the recent past:  not so much, as anyone who’s driven a Merc of said vintage will tell you.)  As gunnies, we all know of the Heckler & Koch example, which has enabled this bunch of WWII-era retreads to make oodles of cash out of their not-especially noteworthy handguns and cheekbone-crushing G3/PTR-91 automatic rifles.

It’s why I always roll my eyes at the extreme HK fanbois, because I’m positive that most of their fanaticism stems from a need to justify their paying a premium price for what is really a pretty ordinary product.

As for “French luxury”, here’s one example of the trope:  Grey Goose vodka, which is a case history for the ages.  (Watch it;  it’s 10 minutes of your time well spent.)

I happen to know quite a bit about vodka manufacturing, as it happens, having worked with the South African retail arm of Gilbey’s.  As I’ve recounted on these pages before, part of my education occurred when the Gilbey’s guys took me on a tour of their production facility, where an engineer taught me how to make cheap liquor:  take a clear distilled spirit (from any source:  potatoes, sugar cane, barley, wheat, apples, all mixed together, whatever) and pass it through a series of charcoal filters to make vodka, or add a few drops of diesel fuel(!) to make gin, and so on.

The genius of marketing, in the Grey Goose example, was not the manufacture of the vodka or the quality of its raw material, therefore — French wheat is no different from any other wheat — but utilizing the aura of French luxury brands (Louis Vuitton, Chanel etc.) to imply that GG was an exceptional product, made all the more so by creating an artificial bottleneck on supply, and most telling of all, selling the product at a premium price to the International Status-Hungry Parvenu Set.  Good grief:  $30 per bottle for vodka?  When it first came out, I tried it at a hotel bar somewhere — I think it was at Claridges in London, while on a business trip — and while I’m no expert on vodka, I have drunk a woeful amount of the foul stuff.  I could discern little difference between Grey Goose, Stolichnaya and Smirnoff.  (The bartender obliged me by setting up a blind taste test of the three brands — the mark of a good bartender, by the way.)  I identified Smirnoff immediately (see above for reasons), but GG and Stoli?  No chance.  And Stolichnaya, by the way, is a product that trades on the Russian ethos for vodka quality, go figure.

But what all the above illustrates is how easy it can be to dupe people into buying expensive products as part of an aspirational desire to be part of a specific set — most notably, what used to be described as the “jet set” (now, the private jet set), which contains elements of society such as professional footballers, pop stars, supermodels, Russian oligarchs, Hollywood actors, software billionaires and other such scum.

And never has the old adage been so verified that a fool and his money are soon parted.

Don’t Care

Corporate Fuckery, Retailing

Of course we saw this coming:

Walmart is warning it plans to raise prices due to tariffs, despite the fact April’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) showing President Donald Trump’s tariffs did not affect consumer prices.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon issued the update during an earnings call on Thursday, stating that they will try to keep prices “low as possible,” but the reality is, they are unable to absorb all of the costs due to tariffs.

“But given the magnitude of the tariffs, even at the reduced levels announced this week, we aren’t able to absorb all the pressure given the reality of narrow retail margins,” McMillon stated, adding, “The higher tariffs will result in higher prices.” 

Utter bullshit.  As far as I can see, the tariffs may have affected the price of Chinese goods, but if anything, the goods made in places like Thailand, Taiwan and Pakistan should be reduced with all those other countries getting lower or non-existent tariffs.  So yeah, some of Walmart’s prices on Chinese merchandise should go up, but what they’ll do is raise all their prices to minimize the much-higher Chinese prices.  It’s called “spreading the load” in retail-speak.

Don’t care, because I’ll just stop buying non-foods at Walmart until things quieten down, and buy only the foodstuffs there that I absolutely cannot get anywhere else.  Last time I looked, that’s only one product, and amazingly, it’s made in the U.S.A. anyway.

Besides, if Walmart were truly committed to keeping prices lower, they’d improve their efficiency by ditching their fucking ultra-woke DEI practices — which would never have been instituted in the first place had Sam Walton still been around.  But they’re not going to do that, are they?

Feel free to do what you think is proper in your own circumstances.

But for me?  Toodle-oo, WallyWorld.