The Future Of Car Brands: Scooters

Edward Niedermeyer
by Edward Niedermeyer

If you exist outside the fast-paced world of the automotive branding community, you might believe that the point of car brands is to sell cars. Needless to say, you’d be wrong. The big buzzword around car brands, particularly the more niche and eco-friendly brands is “mobility.” As in “we must leverage our brand values to provide a broad-based mobility strategy for the cities of the future.” Or, to put it into layman’s terms, “screw cars, we gotta start building scooters.”

We’d heard that Smart was headed in this direction, and given that Mercedes is moving into its traditional brand space with ever-smaller, cheaper FWD cars, we reckoned scooters were as logical a direction for the brand as any other. But MINI? Granted, BMW is cannibalizing its small car sub-brand with as much abandon as Mercedes, but MINIs are cars. Not Chinese Vespa knock-offs with MINI branding. If this trend isn’t nipped on the bud quick-smart, the Aston Martin Cygnet is going to end up being the most prophetic car of the decade. [via Autocar]




Edward Niedermeyer
Edward Niedermeyer

More by Edward Niedermeyer

Comments
Join the conversation
2 of 14 comments
  • Dimwit Dimwit on Sep 10, 2010

    One of the best branding ads I've ever seen was Honda's with all their products being used by a couple. Very impressive and I've always wondered why they are almost the only manufacturer that seems to extend their brand to logical ends, no patio furniture, no mortgages!

  • Stingray Stingray on Sep 10, 2010

    Peugeot also manufactures scooters. This mobility thing reminds me the "change" of oil companies to energy companies.

  • 3SpeedAutomatic R&T could have killed the story before it was released.Now, by pulling it after the fact, they look like idiots!! What's new??
  • Master Baiter "That said, the Inflation Reduction Act apparently does run afoul of WTO rules..."Pfft. The Biden administration doesn't care about rules. The Supreme Court said they couldn't forgive student load debt; they did it anyway. Decorum and tradition says you don't prosecute former presidents; they are doing it anyway. They made the CDC suspend evictions though they had no constitutional authority to do so.
  • 1995 SC Good. To misquote Sheryl Crow "If it makes them unhappy, it can't be that bad"
  • 1995 SC The letters on the hatch aren't big enough. hard pass
  • Ajla Those letters look like they are from AutoZone.
Next