[s-cars] Truth vs. Joy

[JC]

Wylie thanks much for this interesting read.

I agree with a lot of it but disagree with the authors final conclusion in
that I fear Audi following the BMW track as we speak.

it's the curse of success - when you find yourself crushingly dominating in
one segment after a while, hubris sets in, you think you can do anything and
everything for everybody.  the only place to go is up and out and they turn
to the 'seductive' (what Auto execs get seduced by I guess) idea of ruling
in the mass market.

then the next multiplying error is that apparently in the auto industry this
means you require focus-group designed products. welcome to the ocean of
mediocrity. while listening to the customer is critical, focus group product
design has lots of problems and is usually done the WRONG way in the auto
industry and that's what leads these companies down the path.  the best
analogy is "would you ever ask Joe off the street what ingredients to put in
a 5-star gourmet entrée?"  well if you did you'd never get the brilliant and
mind-blowing creations of the worlds best chefs, you'd get the same crap
that Joe has had before... he's not a freakin chef and car owners are not
designers or stylists.   iconic and compelling design needs to stretch
people's ideas - we are impressed by things that surprise us, not things
that fall into our dumb comfor zone.

back to AoA - while a lot of the current cars are still pretty great (love
my wife's new A3 yes I know it's a golf platform) and it's nice that we
continue get some S cars (surprised we were allowed the S5 for instance)...
it's things like the disappearance of manual transmissions, and restriction
of quattro availability and the bloat of curb weight and size across the
range (an A4 now is massive compared to the little nimble car it started out
as) that looks EXACTLY to me like AoA going down the BMW path...

> -----Original Message-----
> From: s-car-list-bounces at audifans.com
> [mailto:s-car-list-bounces at audifans.com] On Behalf Of W. Bean
> Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2010 10:29 PM
> To: s-car-list at audifans.com; quattro at audifans.com;
> urq at audifans.com; 20v at lists.20v.org
> Subject: [s-cars] Truth vs. Joy
>
>
> http://www.autoextremist.com/current/2010/3/16/the-autoextremist.html
>
>
> --
> Wylie Bean
> TheRingmeister at triad.rr.com
> 90 cq
> 91 90q20v sport
> 92 UrS4
> 08 Q7 3.6
>
>
>
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