Monday 9 June 2008

UK’s motor vanity fair (3) [Bâlciul deşertăciunilor cu motor din UK]

If there’s one thing that the Brits couldn’t possibly hate about the Germans (and they still have quite a distaste with many things from that once ‘rival’ nation), well, that would be a... German automobile.

Before I’m going to disclose to you (in a future episode) which brand really left me speechless due to its overwhelming presence on Edinburgh’s streets (anyone feel free to take a guess! :-), here’s another car that the Brits like, but it seemed to me that not to the extent the Beetle is adored in other parts of the world.

Indeed, there’s at least one British fan club of this new VW Beetle, however, I didn’t see as many cars like these as in Bucharest, for instance. Is is because these people have their own Mini Cooper/One as a rival symbol to the Beetle?

Are there other reasons? Am I completely wrong, and, in reality, there are enough new Beetles relative to the size of the UK car market, therefore my unqualified opinion is incorrect? I really don’t know.

Although I feel that my comments are utterly pointless in accompanying this series which is more about images than about words, I can’t help making at least another one.

There is no doubt that the Beetle is a beautiful car, and blesssed are those who like it for what it is – a useful object –, and nothing else! On the other hand, I don’t think car clubs are necessarily something bad, as I believe most of them are about friendship between human beings, not about worshiping ‘motor idols.’

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/ Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

2 comments:

Steve Hayes said...

I think the original Mini and the original Beetle were far better vehicles. They have been replaced by cars like the Toyota Yaris, which is the nearest thing you can get to a "peoples car" today.

MunteanUK said...

Thanks for the interesting point you're making here! But do you see any likelihood of a Toyota (Yaris or whatever...) ever reaching the popularity of an original VW Beetle or Mini?

All these brands, including the Yaris, seem good cars to me (that is a fair ratio between quality + price + usefulness), but motor manufacturing history could still be ahead of great surprises, couldn't it? Let's wait for what the Indians (Tata Motors) or the Chinese (Cherry Motors) have in store for us!

I mean, for those who really care about it... I'm just an amateur 'pseudo-analyst' of the world automobile market - cars are but an object to me, I have goals reaching the real world - our Lord's Kingdom. This doesn't mean I'm completely indifferent to things of this passing world :)