Why we aren’t always buying the best cars and why that’s not a bad thing

“They are buying the wrong cars”, or “they are buying our worst cars”.! I don’t really want this to sound like clickbait, but it is true that many engineers are now saying that while they work very hard to put together the most technologically forward vehicles, some models of some brands that aren’t exactly their best just continue to sell.

Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing either. You may not want or need all the bells and whistles that are sometimes built into cars. A lot of us love the idea of sunroofs but never use them. In truth it was explained to me one time that the reason we have so many cars with sunroofs is because they are part of a package that sells coming out of China, and because the Chinese all smoke in their cars. But those are all little things that will get sorted out eventually. What things really comes down to is that we aren’t always looking for the newest stuff, or the most forward thinking technology. We don’t want our audio systems tied so far into our cars that a speaker problem causes a driving issue. We’re all very tired of having check engine lights come on that we can’t figure out. We don’t like the fact that so many cars need so many sensors that we have to take entire engines and transmissions apart just to find out that the answer is something else.

The reason that there are a lot of new independent maintenance and repair centers is because a lot of brands have just fallen by the wayside in terms of actually taking care of their clients. We’ve even heard stories of having someone told by a brand that they should just contact this email address in China to get this part they needed. Which they did and it was sent to them free of charge and that was all fine except the car wasn’t a Chinese brand.

Let’s go a little bit deeper into this. There are and will be tremendous logistical advantages to having cars coming out of China because things can be so much quicker. Speaking with MG Philippines President Felix Jiang, we were given timelines of two weeks for complete cars and major parts even quicker, if they weren’t already here. What was telling here was that this wasn’t a figurehead talking but rather someone who actually knew the nuts and bolts of the business and what they had to do to get things done.

But this doesn’t mean that every company coming out of China, no matter how big or small they are, will be doing the same thing. It really comes down to how much they care about their client. What says a lot is that there is a truck company in the US called SLATE that is building a bare bones electric vehicle. It will have all the modern safety systems but if you want navigation you can buy a bracket for your phone or your iPad. If you want a better stereo you can plug one in. Electric windows and locks? add-ons! And I think this is great. We keep the important technology separate from the unimportant technology.

So while it is true that we aren’t always buying the latest most technologically forward vehicles that doesn’t mean we are buying wrong. I think with everything going on now and all the complication we are seeing it is to our advantage to figure out exactly what we want and go for it.

Which brings us back to those trucks and SUVs. For a very long time companies didn’t have to put that much technology into them because they would sell anyway. Some award-winning globe-conquering crossover vehicles would languish in the Philippines because people would instead buy a larger, less efficient, harsh-riding pickup-based “SUV”. and if you think those vehicles were immune to the same sort of modern electrical gremlins, they weren’t.

Note that we are not being anti-technology. Modern cars are by far safer and more efficient than they ever have been. And it really comes down to saving lives which they do very well. But let us go back to those engineers who would say that they design modern vehicles to be more efficient and more safe and more comfortable. And sometimes they don’t just do as well as they should.