EDITORIAL EMINENCE

Cupholders and Character
Posted by Martin on Thursday, 6 November 1997, at 6:57 p.m.

I want to say a few words about the confusing options list, the lousy cupholders, the inaccurate speedometer and all the rest.

We live in a world that's getting more and more efficient, more and more standardized, more and more perfect. The family store is replaced by the mall, the quaint restaurant got pushed out by the franchise operation, the family doctor works for a medical conglomerate, the beautiful black and white photograph is a pixel image on a computer screen. The same forces are affecting the automobile industry too. Jaguar and Saab got swallowed by bigger firms and the product improved. Improved yes, but a little bit of the character was lost. Next year will bring a little more improvement and a little less character still. Life goes on and change is inevitable. Alfa Romeo and a lot of other neat cars aren't sold in the States at all anymore. Those were great makes but they couldn't compete. The options were too odd. They had terrible cupholders.

Terrible cupholders but lots of character. Character's mostly about imperfections anyway. When a face gets a few lines and wrinkles we say it has character. I love my Lexus but it doesn't have as much character as a Porsche. It's too perfect. It has wonderful cupholders.

I read that when Porsche designed the Boxster they hired some experts to help them use Japanese production methods. I'm glad they did that but I hope the efficiency experts leave the options list alone. It's not efficient to offer so many options or to cover a whole car with leather inside. It's not efficient to make only 35,000 cars a year. With so many options and so much engineering and so few cars imperfections creep in. Maybe the speedometer's off a few percent. Maybe the cupholders don't work. Maybe the car has character.

I don't like imperfection and I don't want to live in the past. I love my computer. I love my Lexus. But I also miss the corner store they used to have here. Its prices were high and you never knew what it would stock. It didn't sell cupholders. But it did have character. That store's gone now but I'm glad Porsche is still around. Very glad they're still around. Dinky cupholders and all.

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