The RX at Portishead
It was with genuine surprise that I received a Twitter dm (direct message for the uninitiated) from the ever-friendly @Valvo at Toyota PR asking if I wanted to have a Lexus RX 450 h for a week. Having never experienced a hybrid and having not experienced a Lexus on the road since a mate’s father’s LS400 back in – ooooh – 1990, I leapt at the opportunity. Here was a chance to trial the luxury brand that, to some eyes, changed everything and the drivetrain technology that some believe still will. Read the rest of this entry »
Working in Germany I was thrown in the deep end of perceived quality research, taking more macro shots of headlamps, instrument panels and door cards than I care to remember. Yet I’m happy to come right out and say it: perceived quality fascinates me.
Gear shifter from the new Audi A8 (click to enlarge with caution, you might wet yourself...)
The way the tricks we use – from the amazingly detailed design of touch zones in a car interior to a superbly detailed tail lamp enclosure – coalesce to convince consumers that a product that feels good must be good, no matter the integrity of the engineering underneath the skin is a delightful thing. Take a look at the gear shift above and you might get an inkling of what I’m talking about.
Perceived quality’s a psychological game played by designers and engineers that reaps massive rewards for the companies that do it right. Just ask VW, who started on a head-long rush to improve the improve feel-good factor of everyday cars with a couple of otherwise unremarkable vehicles in ’96-’97. Read the rest of this entry »
There was a time when Mercedes-Benz built the ultimate premium (not luxury, old Mercs could never be considered luxurious) cars. They were engineered to a standard and the price was set accordingly.
My client’s neighbour is the proud owner of an early 90s 500E, a performance saloon (again, old Mercs, no matter how powerful, were never sports cars) produced at the peak in Mercedes’ unwavering dedication to excellence in the automotive art.
The price of entry was a staggering DM134,000, or around €100,000 today, taking into account inflation. Yet because of the design and engineering integrity that all that cash purchased , after more than 20 years and 300,000 kilometres the only major work that needs doing is a reconditioning of the gearbox.
That Mercedes’ determination to build the world’s best cars was so dogged that it lead them to the brink of bankruptcy cannot be ignored. Yet the subsequent, wholesale dilution of their core value of integrity in the chase for bigger margins exacted a heavy toll on their brand image.
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