"KingT- 60% of the time, it works every time" (kngt)
02/13/2019 at 09:37 • Filed to: good cars and bad cars, Savagegeese, Car industry, Auto Industry, needs vs wants
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"KingT- 60% of the time, it works every time" (kngt)
02/13/2019 at 09:37 • Filed to: good cars and bad cars, Savagegeese, Car industry, Auto Industry, needs vs wants | 1
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He goes into several aspects of this:
Customer Issues
Want vs. Need
Regulations
Revenue
Compromises
Watering Down
And to follow up, I would recommend Tom’s excellent article on what goes wrong even if someone builds good cars: !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!
Shift24
> KingT- 60% of the time, it works every time
02/13/2019 at 11:07 |
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While I whole hardily agree those are mostly the steps into making a car there are some arguments with his statements.
The main counter point, Mazda. They are the top in terms of styling, handling, and now fixing their main compromise power with the new Turbo motors .
Examples, f or the Miata, Hardtop, power pump, minor tweaks, and now OEM parts for enthusiasts for a car 30 years old. Mazda6 now with more power and seems like they are trying to get AWD to the market . CX-5 arguably the best SUV for the money, AWD, Turbo, Signature trim thats close to entry luxury, and now diesel .
So how is a scrappy company doing all of this? They already have a lineup for what people need, now they are listening to what people want.
Maybe its due to their size they can do what others cant. They dont have to listen as much to bean counters that want to water down the brand. They keep the handling, power, and add the interior “wow touches”. Its hard to find the compromises and they “focus on what they are really good at”.
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KingT- 60% of the time, it works every time
> Shift24
02/13/2019 at 11:20 |
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It’s their size like you said, IMO . They don’t have to focus on Trucks, Big SUVs, Electric cars, Hybrids (yet), Autonomous driving, latest cutting edge technology (They only just got Android Auto, Apple Carplay) . They can afford to say, we will focus like a laser on these types of vehicle and that’s it, no more R&D funding to do anything radical or large-scale.
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Shift24
> KingT- 60% of the time, it works every time
02/13/2019 at 17:20 |
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Yeah I do now recall their infotainment was pretty bad a few years ago and why it turned off some buyers. And I think you can update some of the older cars now but it requires a hardware update by Mazda. Not software.
And realizing what you pointed out that very true , that Mazda doesn’t have to worry about big or electric vehicles. They simply are no t big enough. In the end of his video I think Mazda is that car company that has been focused on what they excel at instead of “being all over the place”.