Sunday, November 13, 2005

Honda really understands their demographic

Honda Motor Company, concerned about the aging demographic of those buying its automobiles, decided to build a couple of cars aimed at young people. So they created a pumped up version of the Honda Civic, and they created the Honda Element, supposedly aimed at "the Gen-X lifestyle" (something to do with beach parties and surfboards and ski bums, I guess).

Thus far, Honda is scoring a perfect score with these new cars: 0%. The average buyer of both is 45 years old.

My mother, sixty-something years old, was looking for a new car to replace her aging Honda Civic, which was worth maybe $800 and needed $1200 worth of work (a new air conditioning compressor and a new timing belt). She found one: She just bought a Honda Element. Says she: "Sure, it looks like a Hummer and a Jeep mated and spat this out nine months later, but it's so *practical!*." She can get her entire menagerie of cats and dogs into the thing and still have plenty of room for luggage. And if they shed all over (or even poop), she can just hose it out!

Yes, Honda does indeed know its demographic: little old grey-haired cat ladies :-).

- Badtux the Amused Penguin

4 comments:

  1. Heh-heh.

    I think that the Element is seriously ugly but your Mom may have just sold me one. We have four dogs, three cats, and like to travel. The biggest reason we don't grab the canoe and head over to the family cabin in WVa for the weekend is because of the logistics with pets, people and sedans.

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  2. I have 4 regular cutomers with Elements. Only one is under 50.

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  3. I have seen older people in those! LOL

    Maybe that can be my Mom's next car!

    ;-)

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  4. Heh, I'm not yet quite 40 and I bought one two weeks ago. I like it only because I've been pining for the return of a little four cylinder utility box with four wheels and four wheel drive ever since Izusu and Mitsubishi axed their spartan, boxy troopers and montaros is favor of more plush and supposedly classy leather clad living room on wheels bigger, badder SUVs, Meh, whatever. It's a box with wheels and I dig it. I haul around various crap like bikes and camping gear to wherever I want to go and it's functional and good on gas. Much nicer than my old 4 door 4x4 Dodge Dakota. I've got kids and dogs so a little 4x4 two seater plain jane truck just isn't practical enough. It's this or some $30,000 - $40,00 crap-ladden American SUV tank and quite frankly, I'm sick of paying $50 - $80 at the pump to fill up. Nuff said. I hope more car makers start building more stuff like this and selling them here in the states. Return of the functional little shit-box cars! Rock on! BTW with all that back seat room It's gotta be great for some wardrives. Fire up the penguin lappy and some kismet, get out the yagi and crank da punk... Oi!

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