What Isn't Wrong With This Video?
Published: February 27th, 2009
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Take some deep breaths, Mr Jarvis, and check out what Gordon Murray Design is up to over at Autocar. It’s like open-source, and innovative and stuff. Man. Actually it is a pretty radical vision for such a traditional industry. And it’s being done by folks who know things about cars. Oh yeah, and it’s nothing like Google.
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Oh, and I didn't watch the video, but looked again at the banner photo ... from the background, it looks as tho this guy has been locked away in the book annex corner of the store room...
The concept of mass customization is a little different. Ford, as people note here, seems to think that it means offering a million different configurations. That's not really it. Mass customization means providing a customized product at a mass production price. A suit, for example, that is custom-tailored to your measurements and material choice but at an off-the-rack price. For cars, many people call mass customization "build to order." I've heard that it's popular in Germany, with about half of cars being specially ordered. But it's not particularly popular here in the United States. There are a lot of advantages to mass customization for car buyers, dealers and makers. I don't see it happening, though, in our current carmaking crisis.
Back to the future. In the great era of Classic cars, you would buy a chassis from Rolls Royce or Dusenberg or Talbot, and have them send it to a carrosserie (custom coachbuilder), who would attach the body. Some really beautiful cars were made that way, but they were also very expensive. The practice ended after WWII in the US, and in the 1950s at Rolls Royce.
I expected a lot more agreement with this idea. It's a sound concept, especially the "why don't you LISTEN to the people giving you their money?" idea. I bet everyone who has rented a Cobalt had the same thought as me as soon as he sat down: "Why in the f**k do I have an oil life monitor, but not an iPod jack? That's REALLY what your focus groups said they wanted?" There's a lot to be said for customization without the requirement that you buy all the OEM crap first. Scion was getting close to this concept, with a few dozen options available for picking-and-choosing. Sadly, now that the base cars are completely unloveable, this isn't doing so well. (another case for revamping the consumer channels of communication) Although: Kia is picking up the process with the Soul, as part of their campaign to exactly follow the Gen 1 xB's business plan.