Understanding the car

“’I don’t believe that young buyers don’t care about owning a car,’ says John McFarland, GM’s 31-year-old manager of global strategic marketing. ‘We just think nobody truly understands them yet.’(Does he mean no one understands a car, or a millennial?)

…

“All of these strategies share a few key assumptions: that demand for cars within the Millennial generation is just waiting to be unlocked; that as the economy slowly recovers, today’s young people will eventually want to buy cars as much as their parents and grandparents did; that a finer-tuned appeal to Millennial values can coax them into dealerships.

“Perhaps. But what if these assumptions are simply wrong? What if Millennials’ aversion to car-buying isn’t a temporary side effect of the recession, but part of a permanent generational shift in tastes and spending habits?”

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/09/the-cheapest-generation/309060/

Ah, yes. There’s the rub. What if Millennials are different from you and me? What if they don’t want to drive, see no reason to drive? Northeasterners, maybe. And Chicagoans. Maybe some citified Wisconites and more than a few DCers. Southerners and Westerners? Midwesterners? Californians? They are going to drive. Any place that has space, people will own and drive cars. Maybe the car companies are looking in the wrong places for owners of tiny cars.

Link at maggiesfarm.