Over the last few weeks I’ve bought a new car. I was very surprised at how bad the experience was. I wondered if my experience was common – or was it just me.
The brochure
For the sorts of cars I was interested in, you cannot just pick up a brochure at the garage. Car manufacturers have moved with the times – the brochures are now online and you have to download a PDF. I wondered if the sales and marketing teams for the motor manufacturers ever used their own products.
Trying to look at a brochure on my mobile phone was impractical. Using a tablet was a bit better, but the quality of the image was not good enough to be able to read the small print. “Is the size 38 or 36 cm?” I could not tell as the quality of the image was not good enough.
The brochure contents
Someone once said to me “for every presentation there are two aspects. One is what information you as the speaker want to present, the other aspect is what the audience wants to hear”. For example for a talk on Greece, I would go along expecting to hear about Archimedes and the dawn of science, but the speaker might want to show us photographs of the beaches (and bars) when he went to on holiday.
In a similar way, I want to get useful information about the car. Having pictures of the Scottish highlands, or driving through a city with no traffic. I’ve seen these places before (and how often do you drive through a city when there is no other cars in sight). Perhaps there is a subtle message. People who drive these cars have this life style. If so, the message was lost on me.
My first question was which brand of car to buy, the second was having decided on a brand, which model with brand do I want
I created a spread sheet of my requirements, “nice to have”s, and other factors. Then I tried to extract the information from each brochure in a format so it can be compared with other cars.
My requirements included
- Fuel type petrol
- Height under 2.2 meters. If the height is more than this you have to pay more to take it onto a ferry
- Length and width
- Size of boot. This is usually given in litres. Today when we go on holiday we can easily stack our cases in the boot. Can we do this – or is the boot a different shape?
- Electric windows, air con, CD player or equivalent.
- 6 speed gear box.
For my existing car, there were no online brochures, so I had to get my tape measure and collect the size information myself.
I eliminated brands of cars, then I had to decide which models met my criteria. My old car had a 1.4 l engine, and had listed that as a minimum engine size requirement. I test drove a car with a 1.0 l engine size – and that felt like it had more power.
I got down to a choice of three cars. The deciding factor was the older car where you needed to put a key in the ignition – rather than keyless starting. This was a surprise to me, as it was not one of the factors I had listed!
It would have been great if I could enter details of my current (old) car, and ones I was interested in, and get a table of cars and their interesting ( to me) facilities.
It was also interesting how my views different from the sales person. I was told that to change the interior temperature, I bring up “car settings” on the screen, and swipe with my finger to make it hotter or cooler. My comment, was “So I have to look down at the screen and tap and swipe. So that means I need to look down for about 2 seconds. I prefer a knob I can touch, with no more than a glance, and can rotate it”. The sales person said I had a valid point.
Now I have my new car how does it work?
The instruction book has 178 pages – and covers all models. It covers 3 models of audio system – two of which look identical, I do not know how to tell them apart. The book covers how to start the engine with the key and without the key (for those cars with the technology). It has instructions like push that knob and pull that lever to engage the parking brake – except I do not have the knob.
What would be good (and bring the technology up to date) to be able to go to the manufacturer’s web site, enter the Vehicle Identification Number (which uniquely identifies the car) and you are given a list of web page instructions for the features that were installed in the factory. This would allow me to quickly skip the pages telling my why an electric car is good for the environment (but my car is petrol), and how to install a child seat (which I do not want).
What is your relationship with your car?
I remember doing a survey on the car I had, and cars I might buy in the future. There were questions like
- Q:”What is your relationship with your car?”. A:”What!? – it is a car, I do not have a relationship with it”
- Q:”Does your can have a name?” A:”No!”
- Q:”What sort of people drive a xxxxx (a top range sports car)” A:”Bad drivers, who drive without due care and consideration for other people”.
Perhaps I am the strange one after all.
ColinPaice 