Autocade turns 12 today, as it’s now March 8 here in New Zealand. From zero models to 4,093 (the Hyundai Avante XD is the latest); and as I write this sentence, itâs netted 18,683,611 page views. Just four years ago this month, it had only managed eight million.
Just this week, I added two public notes of thanks to Carfolio, with whom weâve done a bit of an information swap, on the site. Admittedly that swap has been in our favour. The first fruits of that were four Toyota models. It shows that we motorheads have been able to find each other and work on a spirit of cooperation, to make the web more informative and useful.
Itâs a far cry from those early days when the site got its first few models; it took four months to get to 500. The timing wasn’t great, considering the Global Financial Crisis was beginning to happen around us, and more people were being sucked in to Facebook. As a hobby, I carried on, because it was a satisfying use of my time.
Iâll leave a stats’ breakdown when we get to 19 million views, and no doubt Iâll do another post when we get to 4,100 models.
Stuart Cowley, who shot the first Autocade video with me fronting it, has a few more up his sleeve that heâll edit in due course. Iâm open to seeing what the future will bring for the brand.
Having one independent web publication thatâs survived 22 years and counting, and another thatâs now 12, is perhaps quite rare these days.
Since I began writing this post, Autocade has gained another 73 page views.
Iâm grateful for all the support out thereâthank you for all your views, feedback, generosity, information, and your shared love of cars.
Of course, this leaves PSA to do the inevitable: launch Opel as a brand in this part of the world.
Opel CEO Michael Lohscheller said as much when PSA bought the firm, and while his eyes were probably on China, they could apply equally here.
I realize Opel flopped in Australia when an attempt was made a few years ago, but unlike Australia, Opel has a reasonable history here, with its Kadett GSis and a full line of Vectra As sold in the 1980s and 1990s. Kiwis know that the Opel Vectra and Holden Vectra are part of the same lineage. And I have to wonder if the brand, with its German heritage, would do well here.
Imagine the scenario where Opel launches here in 2022 with not just Astra and Insignia (because Kiwis love their D-segment wagons, unlike the UK), but with the Crossland X and Grandland X as well.
Theyâd have the goodwill of the Astra name (just as GM predicted), and there may be enough Kiwis who have positive impressions of their Vectra As. Even our family one sold recently to a South Islander after my friend, who bought it off me, decided to part ways with it. Mechanics still think highly of the Family II units those cars had.
And somehow, I think being independent of GM is a good thing in this caseâno conflict of interest, no wondering whether Mokka might cannibalize Trax, resulting in stunted marketing.
The new design language is looking sharp and I think it would find favour among New Zealanders who are currently buying Volkswagens and Ć kodas. Theyâd also be a darn sight more reliable, too.
If youâre thinking the market is too crowded, remember VW didnât think so when it determined SEAT could have another crack in the late 2010s.
I canât be alone in thinking thisâcertainly Australian media were speculating if Inchcape could bring Opel in to their country this time last year. Whoâll take it on?
Some of you will have noticed that Po.st went out of business, so all the Po.st sharing links disappeared from our websites.
The replacement: addtoany.com offers a similar service without the hassle of header codes. Just customize at their website, grab the code, and insert it where you want it. Itâs now on the main Lucire website, Autocade (at least on the desktop version), and this blog (desktop as well). Strangely, the plug-in for Wordpress didn’t work for us, and the HTML code with Javascript is far more practical.
There are fewer customization options but itâs a remarkably quick and handy way to replace the old code.
Despite providing a sharing gadget, I wonder how much Iâll use one. Itâs been seven days since I last Instagrammed and I donât miss it. Granted, something major happened in my life but organic sharing had been dwindling through 2019, and if their algorithms arenât providing you with the dopamine hit that you seek, and youâre unlikely to pay for it like a junkie (which is what Facebook wants you to do), then you have to wonder what the point is. It might, like Facebook, just become one of those things one uses for workâand thatâs not something I could have predicted even a year ago.
I see Twitter is introducing features where responses can be limited by the user. The logical outcome of this is Tweets that are directed at limited audience members only, maybe even one-to-one. That looks remarkably like email. And these days I seem to be more productive there than I am on any social network.
The Chinese-market Buick Enclave became Autocadeâs 4,000th model today. It wasnât planned: in fact, I had readied a photograph of the Hyundai Tiburon (RD), expecting that would be the 4,000th. But, as happens with this site, you spot something, and you want that clarified. I havenât been methodical about Autocade, everâit has always been about what took my fancy and whether my reference books on the topic were around. (After the move, a few still arenât, so fans of smog-era US cars may have some waiting before they see those increase in numbers again.)
Just as I do with each millionth page view, I thought Iâd see how the entry numbers had progressed:
December 2009: 1,000 models (21 months to first 1,000)
December 2012: 2,000 models (three years to second 1,000)
December 2014: 3,000 models (two years to third 1,000)
January 2020: 4,000 models (six years and one month to fourth 1,000)
In other words, these last 1,000 took ages, and I suspect itâs a mixture of busy-ness on other ventures and the fact that a lot of modern cars that get entered arenât that inspiring.
When many entries of new models into Autocade are of SUVs, especially Chinese ones that have little to distinguish themselves, then itâs not as fun as adding those models that youâve had some connection with from your youth. The first 1,000 were easy: I remembered many of the details (cubic capacities and prices, for instanceâI am that much of an anorak when it came to stuff from my childhood) and while I still checked with books, they didnât take that long to write. But how many of us care about the difference between the Honda Pilot and Passport, or the links between the Beijing X3, Changhe Q35, BAIC X35 and Senova Zhixing anyway?
I imagine that thereâs more editing that goes on today, too. When a current model gets entered, you just put the start of production and âto dateâ. But thereâs no guarantee weâll revisit that page when the car ends production; and often thereâs no announcement of the cessation anyway. Naturally with more pages on the database, the more time youâll spend editing and correcting existing content than creating brand-new stuff. Chinaâs massive boom in the late 2000s and most of the 2010s meant a plethora of models got entered, and with the market the way it is there, cannibalization of your own model lines hasnât struck some car makers as an issue yet.
Thereâs also the issue of translation: you want to go to a Chinese resource when writing about Chinese cars, and my literacy hasnât really kept up with my age.
A middle-aged man uses, in part, nostalgia to make sense of the car worldâI buy Octane and Classic and Sportscar more than Autocar and Car these daysâand while itâs easy to understand Kas, Fiestas, Focuses and Mondeos, itâs not as second-nature to utter EcoSport, Puma, Escape and Mustang Mach-E. It is no surprise to see Mercedes-Benz stick with its A, B, C, E and S pecking order, even for its SUVs (prepend GL). The next generation of motorhead will have no such issue: theyâre used to these big line-ups and where everything sits.
Iâll keep building, and there is plenty of exotica that hasnât been entered. Perhaps between those and the Chinese crossovers, it can remain interesting.
Some interesting traffic patterns at Autocade. At the time of writing, two models have been added: the Audi A2 and the Daimler DE36. Theyâve netted 5 and 2 views respectively, which is what youâd expect for new pages.
The last significant updates, when models were added, took place on December 13. The last model added was the Toyota Corona Mark II (X10), which has amassed an incredible 1,409 views. I would expect around 100â200 for a page of its age. Here are the views of the latest 20:
Not that Iâm complaining one little bit, but the figures for the third to ninth entries are anomalous; the subsequent ones are where Iâd expect things to be. The Lancia Lybra link has had some social activity and the Opel Rekord C page is quite well linked on Autocade, so potentially people (or spiders) have hit it, but that doesnât explain the 690 for the Morgan Plus Six. The Toyopet remedied an old 404, but again Iâm surprised at the figure.
To whomever has been visiting this much, I do thank you. We may crack the 18 million mark before 2019 is out, and weâve netted a million page views on Autocade in record time. More on that after we get the next 14,000 page views.
Incidentally, the Po.st sharing gadgets across all our sites are down. Anyone else?
There are websites such as CBS News in the US that no longer let us here in New Zealand view them. US Auto Trader is another one. Itâs a damned shame, because I feel itâs a stab at the heart of what made the internet greatâthe fact that we could be in touch with each other across borders. These two US websites, and there are plenty more, are enacting the âfortress Americaâ policy, and Iâve never believed that isolationism is a good thing.
Letâs start with the Auto Trader one. As someone who found his car on the UK Auto Trader website, it seems daft for the US to limit itself to its own nationâs buyers. What if someone abroad really would like an American classic? Then again, I accept that classic cars are few and far between on that site, and if photos from the US are anything to go by, the siteâs probably full of Hyundai Sonatas and Toyota Camrys anyway.
I went to the CBS website because of a Twitter link containing an interesting headline. Since weâre blocked from seeing that site, then I logically fed the same headline into a search engine and found it in two places. The first was Microsoft News, which I imagine is fine for CBS since they probably still get paid a licence for it. The second, however, was an illegal content mill that had stolen the article.
I opted for the former to (a) do the right thing and (b) avoid the sort of pop-ups and other annoying ads that content mills often host, but what if the Microsoft version was unavailable? These geo-restrictions actually encourage piracy and does the original publisher out of income, and I canât see that as a good thing.
Some blamed the GDPR coming into force in the EU, so it appears CBSâwhich apparently is against Donald Trump talking isolationism yet practises itâdecided to lump ânot Americaâ into one group and include us in it. But so what if GDPR is in force? Itâs asking you to have more reasonable protections for privacyâyou know, the sort of thing your websites probably had 15 years ago by default?
I still donât think itâs that hard to ask users to hop over to Aboutads.info and opt out of ad tracking on each of their browsers. We havenât anything as sophisticated as some websites, which put their controls front and centre, but we at least provide links; and we ourselves donât collect intrusive data. Yes, some ad networks we use do (which you can opt out of), but weâd never ask them for it. The way things are configured, I donât even know your IP address when you feed in a comment.
Ours isnât a perfect solution but at least we donât isolateâwe welcome all walks of life, regardless of where you hail from. Just like the pioneers of the web, such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Make the internet great again.
As a child of the 1970s, I was exposed to this English word: new. Now, before you say that that isnât anything special, for some reason, in the â70s, there was an obsession with newness. It wasnât like the news (by this I mean the plural of new) of Amsterdam or Zealand, but an adjective that was adapted to really emphasize that you should pay attention and consume, consume, consume.
Perhaps the earliest exposure was a Tomica model I had: the Blue Whale Crown. The base plate and box read âToyota New Crownâ. Even as a child, I wondered: what happens to the old Crown models? And what happens to this Crown model when a new new Crown comes out? It didnât matter: Toyota wanted us to live in the present and bask in the newness, and back in the early 1970s, this Crown certainly looked like nothing that had come from Toyota prior, or since. It was almost saying, âYes, we know it looks weird, but hey, itâs ânewâ, so that means itâs good!â
The real car flopped (relatively speaking; they still shifted plenty given top Japanese managers still needed transportation), and it was the last generation of Crown to be sold in the US, but to me it remains iconic, even if it is garish. After a mere three years on sale, very short even by Japanese standards, its âNewâ successor emerged in 1974 with all the idiosyncrasies gone. Conservatism ruled in this segment, at least till fairly recently. The old toys hung round, still ânewâ, so even if your parents bought you one in 1975 or 1976, you could still relish the adjective.
It wasnât a case of Japlish. It was all over television as well. When we emigrated here, the Anglophone television introduced me to The New Dick Van Dyke Show. Never mind that I had never seen the old Dick van Dyke show at this point. This was the white-haired man doing the New Zealand Fire Service PSAs. Everyone knew him. And why was it The New? Because we needed to be told that despite the same network in its home country (CBS), Dick van Dyke wasnât playing Rob Petrie, but a new character altogether. Please donât take this as a continuation of the previous one.
Here are the News:The New Dick Van Dyke Show; The New Perry Mason; and The New Avengers.
Van Dyke, in his autobiography, recounts a fan coming up to him berating him for leaving Laura (Mary Tyler Mooreâs character from the earlier The Dick Van Dyke Show), so itâs not as though the qualifier worked; goodness knows how the same fan would have computed The Mary Tyler Moore Show, on the same night as The New Dick Van Dyke Show. Maybe that was proof that Rob had left Laura or vice versa and they were forging ahead with their separate lives. The New Dick Van Dyke Show wasnât alone. A couple of years later, there was The New Perry Mason (1973), starring Monte Markham in the title role (though no one ever called him âNewâ). The Fred Steiner theme was nowhere to be heard. Iâve seen a few of these, and they are pretty good in a 1970s sort of wayâwhich is to say more exterior filming and more flash cars (product placement was growing) on the back lot and on location. To make it more confusing, when Perry Mason returned in a bunch of TV movies in the 1980s, starting with Perry Mason Returns, it wasnât Markham, but original actor Raymond Burr once more. You see, it wasnât The New Perry Mason Returns. The New Perry Mason starred a different actor, so I can comprehend its Newness, and at least the presence of another actor underscored this. It didnât do that well, which is probably why hardly anyone remembers it. Probably more people remember Markham as the Seven Million Dollar Man. Iâm not kidding.
One that I do remember extremely well was The New Avengers, in 1976. Again, given when I was born, I had no exposure to The Avengers, but The New Avengers was a favourite of mine then, and I bought the DVDs when I saw them decades later. Unlike the other two series, this was a direct continuation, though it wasnât explained just how John Steed returned to Earth after Tara King blasted them both into space when they had their Endgame in 1969; but we do know they enjoyed Laurent Perrier champagne when they got back. Itâs a third definition of new as far as the TV shows were concerned, with the same motive: if you want to be seen as in, hip and groovy, come watch the new.
Perhaps more obscure were one-off TV movies: Halloween with the New Addams Family (1977), which had the same cast (grandmother aside, as actress Blossom Rock was ill), and where the new serves no useful purpose other than attempting to sell us on newness where there is none; and The New Maverick (1978), which sees the return of James Garner as Bret and Jack Kelly as Bart, though thereâs no sign of Roger Moore as Beau (presumably too busy being James Bond) and Robert Colbert as Brent, but it did introduce a first cousin once removed called Ben Maverick (Charles Frank). I imagine Ben is the new Maverick, and a short-lived TV series, Young Maverick, did appear afterwards.
No one really did much more New shows after thisâit seemed to be a 1970s phenomenon. With one exception: CI5: the New Professionals in the 1990s, an attempt to recapture the glory days of The Professionals but winding up more like episodes of Bugs. There, new sort of meant old, reminding us that some of the writing and directing was out of step with late 1990s’ audience expectations; and, with the greatest of respect, showed that certain parties were past their prime. By then, we had had seven episodes of Bodyguards, which perhaps showed how a modern-day Professionals might be. All that needed was to be âladdifiedâ for the FHM audience, at least in theory, and certainly, after 9-11, there may have been some scope for an élite, globally coordinated, anti-terrorist squad (which is what The New Professionals suggests the fictional CI5 unit morphed into, probably to accommodate its backers and the South African location filming in some episodes). But in 1998, there was less of an appetite for revival shows, especially when the top-rated series were ER and Friends, and the Americans were a year away from The Sopranos. Britain, meanwhile, was gripped with the tension of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and the FHM lads were more than catered for by Babes in the Wood.
PS., December 6: How could I forget this item of regular childhood viewing? From the US, in 1979.
Long before Mad Men, and before I got into branding in a big way, I had an interest in advertising. One of the greatest send-ups of the industry was the 1990 Dudley Moore starrer Crazy People, set in the advertising industry against a politically incorrectâactually, cruel and inaccurateâlook at mental health. It’s one of those films that could never be made today, and for good reason. But there are some gems in it, as Moore’s character, Emory Leeson, embarks on “honest advertising”. It gets him committed to a facilityâwho ever heard of an advertising agency telling the truth, right?âuntil his ads become a hit, welcome by consumers who don’t want BS.
I came across this wonderfully copywritten and set ad from a PR professional in London trying to sell his Nan’s 1981 Volvo 244DL:
It’s bloody good. The copy kept me engagedâlike all good ads used toâand he’s done a reasonably good job with the Volvo Broad headline typeface (it was wider back in the day). The body text type should be Times rather than Baskerville, but considering the exact cut of Times isn’t available digitally (to my knowledge; it’s for larger text, and has very short descenders), there’s no wonder he opted to use another family.
It got me thinking: I’ve often posted the Crazy People Volvo ad in comments, as a humorous response. However, the ad doesn’t exist in a decent res online. The only ones that have wound up online are from screen captures from the movie. This 22 kbyte file is actually the best one around, save for one on the Alamy stock photo website that I found after the fact:
I couldn’t re-create the imageâI assume the only person who has it (or had it) is the art director of the film, or the photographer that was commissionedâbut maybe I could have a go at the type?
The digital Volvo Broad had to be widened 25 per cent, and I didn’t attempt to match the kerning.
The body type was the interesting one. I opted for Times Headline, since it wasn’t at a text size, but as I discovered, Volvo used a particular cut that had short descenders and was slightly condensed. I tried to match the leading.
Therefore, here it is, offered under Creative Commons with attribution to me for the typesetting, please, while noting the image is not mine:
We almost never plan which car winds up being the x hundredth model entered into Autocade, and here’s proof.
The humble, boxy Mazda Demio (DY) was the 3,800th entry in Autocade. It makes a nice change from all the SUVs that have found their way on to the database in recent months, even if it isn’t the most inspiring vehicle.
The vehicles either side of the Demio weren’t terribly interesting, either: the Sol E20X (the Volkswagen badge-engineered JAC iEV7S) and the current Fit-based Honda Shuttle. But if you want to be complete (we want to, even if we’re far away from it), you have to include the everyday workhorses.
