Weekend Head Scratcher: Fantasy Car Maker

Cammy Corrigan
by Cammy Corrigan

This week’s “Weekend Head Scratcher” is a little different. It’ll require quite a bit of thought, so pay attention! This week we’re going to play a little game I created. It’s called “Fantasy Car Maker”!


Here’s the scenario: You are the CEO of a car company. You have been picked by the United Nations as the recipient to unlimited amounts of non-refundable “infrastructure aid.” You have unlimited money that comes with on small string attached: You must invest it NOW. You have to choose car brands from around the world to form your car company. You need to report the brands you choose and the reasons why you chose them for the particular segment. Now here are the rules:

Your car company must consist of all of the following:

One “Value Brand”, one “Mainstream” Brand, one “Luxury” Brand, and one “Frivolous” Brand.

The Frivolous Brand segment can only be one of the following:


i) A Super Luxury Car Maker (i.e Bentley, Rolls-Royce, etc)


ii) A Super car maker (i.e Ferrari, Lamborghini, etc)


iii) A performance division (i.e BMW’s M-series, Mercedes-Benz’s AMG, etc)

Let me give you an example of how I expect the answer to be. I’ll give you my answers.


Value Brand: Skoda. They’re cheap, they’re reliable, Volkswagen are scared by them and they’ve shaken their “Eastern European” label off, so now you can drive one without people cracking jokes.

Mainstream Brand: Toyota: It’s global, they make reliable cars and they’ll appeal to most people.

Luxury Brand: Lexus. As far as I’m concerned the most “total” mainstream luxury marque out there. They’re incredibly reliable, there cars aren’t offensive and they’re relatively cheap to fix.

Frivolous Brand: For this segment, I’m going to choose Aston Martin. It’s recognisable, people want it and, above all, it’s achingly cool. However, a close second choice, was GM’s V-series tuning house. After all, who wouldn’t want a luxury car that’s as phenomenally reliable as a Lexus and goes like a Cadillac CTS-V…?

There’s no prize for this game (life’s tough, get over it) but you do get the chance for TTAC’s Best and Brightest to look at your choices and utterly maul them. Get thinking, people!

Cammy Corrigan
Cammy Corrigan

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  • Tbp0701 Tbp0701 on Oct 09, 2010

    Value Brand - Scion, but turning loose the people at my frivolous choice on it. Toyota tried to get the younger market without much success for a long time, but Scion seems to have done well. If I can't get away with that, I'll also go with Suzuki. Mainstream - Honda. But I'd tell them to go back to about 2000 or so and stay with the fun / man-over-machine track. I'm tempted to go with Ford, but there's still a lot of baggage there, and I'm not convinced they can stay as sharp without Volvo and Mazda helping develop cars. I think there's still a lot of brilliance at Honda, even though they've become more like old Toyota. I also think it likely that Honda will play a major part in developing whatever the post-gasoline vehicle will be. Luxury - That's tough. Mercedes-Benz. Even though they spent a couple of decades lost in a weird laurel-resting, shoddy-reliability, plasticladen purgatory, they somehow managed to survive on the strength of the brand. If they can get back to making cars that really will last 30 years of hard driving, all while making people drool, then there's not much reason to pick anyone else. Frivolous - Ariel. Because they're pure and awesome, and I say that without ever even seeing one in real life, much less driving it. Besides, what would the Ariel people do with a Scion, a resurrected Prelude or a 190E?

  • Roamer Roamer on Oct 09, 2010

    Just because I insist on making things tougher for myself, I decided my choices needed to include the following: The major brands each had to be in a different market (Asia,Europe,Americas) Each had to have a good focus on what kind of cars they make; Each had to have a good portfolio of IP (Intellectual properties) to offer; Each had to have a history of racing - and would race in one major area; Each had to have strong, acknowledged leaders; Clear delineation between the positioning (pricing) of each brand; Brands recognized for their value by consumers and enthusiasts So: Type Area Brand Leader Racing type Value Asia Suzuki Osamu Suzuki Motorcycle Mainstream Americas Ford Allen Mulally Rallying / NASCAR Luxury Europe BMW Norbert Reithofer Sports car / Touring car Frivolous ---- McLaren Ron Dennis F1 / Open Wheel Why these picks? Suzuki is the #1 maker in India, and has a strong presence in eastern Europe as well. Their involvement in motorcycles gives them expertise in lightweight powertrains, which I suspect will be directly applicable to mini-cars as composites become more available. Suzuki remains primarily focused on motorcycle racing, which provides a path for talent to migrate from bikes to cars. Ford is restoring it's brand by focusing on what they stand for and eliminating what they don't. Heavily reducing the numbers of models makes factories and equipment available to build other members of the group locally. As a bonus, Lincoln will be easy to ressurect once the Ford brand is fully reestablished. BMW is the luxury brand that has best maintained their sense of self. The M-B quality issues of the last two decades and the recent brand dilution of Porsche erode their quality to consumers. Audi is too firmly enmeshed in VM. And the M group can provide a model for the creation of a more lightweight performace arm at Suzuki. McLaren may be frivolous, but it brings tremendous depth of design, engineering, and engineering manangement expertise - McLaren gets the best. They can teach the rest.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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