Three Hot Tips For Designing Cars!

My appologies for doing two straight articles on cars, but while researching yesterday's article, I came across news that Cosmopolitan has designed a car for women. And I can't let something like that go by without comment.

Not surprisingly, it's a big pile of stereotypes, emphasizing the car as a place for "gossip sessions" and noting that the headlights are "eyeliner shape." But this is a surprise for some, as Cosmo is currently trying to revitalize its image, becoming more than just the supplier of an apparently endless list of sex tips. I had no idea; I'd lost track of the cultural positioning of that magazine when my grocery store introduced self-checkouts. But whatever they're trying to do as a magazine, their car is just a pretty ordinary subcompact.  It comes in a bold shade of purple, which is unusual in our monochromatic auto market. The interior is pleasant, but hardly the height of style or practicality. It's not too different from a Fiat 500.

This is the hardly the first time anyone has tried making a car for women.  Automotive historians will remember the Dodge La Femme, a 1950's attempt to crack the female car market. Of course it was a monstrosity of male preconceptions, with flowery seats and a palette of colours directly from a tampon ad. So that was kind of a non-starter.  Since then, car companies have slowly realized they need female customers, but they've mostly responded through marketing, rather than making cars specifically for women.  Yes, seriously, for the last thirty years, car ads have been made by people who know they're supposed to be marketing to women.

In the early 2000's, Volvo took a stab at a woman's car, though only as a concept car. Being in a more enlightened time and a more enlightened country, they actually assembled a team of female engineers to design it. The YCC (Your Concept Car) was a modern-looking, seemingly pretty nice car. A lot of interesting ideas went into it, though I'm not convinced it's the perfect women's car. Their central thesis was that women demand more out of their cars than men, so the YCC was loaded with lots of features your average car doesn't have, from run-flat tires to a dirt-resistant body.

And that's why the project stuck in my mind: I had to ask whether that thesis is correct.  I don't really think it is.  I mean, I'm sure that women would appreciate a car with all those features, but then so would I.  The question is, would women be any more willing to pay for them.

As a thought experiment, there used to be a person in my apartment building who drove a BMW SUV.  Of course, that's a very nice, expensive car, but I was still surprised to see it in my parking garage.  Sure, I'd love to be able to afford such a vehicle, but if I could afford it, I'd move someplace nicer.  Apparently, this person had different spending priorities to me, since they bought a nice car rather than find nicer lodgings as I would have. So I'd invite you to think of the men and women you know, and think about the cars they drive and the places they live. This is totally unscientific, but in general, the women I know have more basic transportation and nice houses, while the men I know are more likely to have nicer cars, even if they have to stretch their finances. So I'm skeptical that women would want an expensive but feature-laden car.

Who Ought To Be In Pictures

What's the deal with these posters featuring Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Humphrey Bogart?  A local diner has several, as they seem to see them as the way to get their 50's vibe on. (That previous sentence involved a collision of the slang from at least three decades, I apologise for it.) I thought maybe it was one artist with a weird fixation, but I've found at least two artists making them.

You can get them playing poker, singing karaoke, even working on an anachronistic stock car. Which is at least less morbid than Dean with the car he died in.  And perhaps most famously, you get get them replacing the original subjects of Edward Hopper's classic Nighthawks.

But I have to wonder, why them?  If you want to evoke the fifties, there are plenty of other choices. Even if you specifically wanted to show bitter-sweet heroes embodying America's lost innocence, you could have used, say, Buddy Holly.  The page I linked to at the start of this post also included a number of suggestions.  I'm guessing that the reason is that descendants of celebrities may have a problem with how they are depicted, and perhaps these four have less legal problems.

I also wonder what people other decades might turn into poster stars.  I need to know for when I go into business with my retro 80's fast food joint.  Michael Jackson is an obvious choice.  Madonna and Prince have probably stayed around too long to represent the era. Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon would work as an 80's symbol, but is probably not well-known enough as an individual. Who else? How about:

• Michael J. Fox
• Boy George
• Corey Haim
• Molly Ringwald
• Cindy Lauper
• Mr. T
• Brooke Shields
• Pee Wee Herman
• Max Headroom

Those are my suggestions. Painters, get to it; I'll be by in a few years to pick up my painting of four of the above playing Trivial Pursuit.