Question of the Day: Does Morality Figure in Your Car Buying Choices?
I prefer to buy my shopping from a company in the UK called "The Co-op." It's an ethical supermarket, which invests its profits into schemes which benefit society (says them). This got me thinking, would you NOT buy a car from a company for moral reasons? Henry Ford I was a raging anti-Semite, Toyota overwork their staff, Nissan are bullying a small company to relinquish www.nissan.com (despite Nissan computers traded as "Nissan" back when Nissan was Datsun) and Volkswagen was borne of a brutal dictatorship. Maybe you can't bear the thought of your money going to GM to fund their outrageous executive pay schemes? Or maybe there's a company who you LIKE to buy from because they support a cause you like? Do morals or some other personal belief come into your car buying habits?
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Justin Berkowitz: In all fairness, this is not the first time Menno has stirred this particular pot.
Now that we're back on track, I take exception to the statement, "Nissan are bullying a small company to relinquish www.nissan.com (despite Nissan computers traded as 'Nissan' back when Nissan was Datsun)." Maybe it was "Datsun" in the U.S., but not in the rest of the world. After all, "www" stands for World Wide web. I've read Ari Nissan's site - by mistake. Like millions of others, I stumbled upon his website when I was checking out the current inventory at my local Nissan (vehicle) dealer. The comments that people submit are hilarious: "I won't buy one of their cars because they're trying to get this URL from this guy." Yeah, whatever... Meanwhile, the owner of this small computer company is incurring charges for himself and/or his host provider by getting TONS of hits intended for Nissan the automaker. Added to this is that over 85% of adults surveyed would expect to find information on Nissan vehicles at nissan.com. I'm all for the little guy, but I miss the point of this guy's desire to stay in this pissing contest...unless he's trying to get Nissan Motor to pay an exorbitant price for the domain name, which he vehemently denies. Again, whatever...
Of course. If I'm paying more than 50K for a car, someone better have died making it. If over 100K then a good number must have.
That nissan.com thing is one of the more interesting results of the newish nature of the online economy - I wish I knew the real details about why this guy won't sell Nissan the name for a price they're willing to pay (or quit fighting the army of lawyers they've probably thrown at him). TTAC should do an in-depth interview with this guy, it would be a good read.