It took a while: Autocade hits 4,000 models

08.01.2020/07.41

The Chinese-market Buick Enclave became Autocade’s 4,000th model today. It wasn’t 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 haven’t been methodical about Autocade, ever—it has always been about […]

Healthy jump in Autocade traffic for home-page entries

24.12.2019/09.30

Some interesting traffic patterns at Autocade. At the time of writing, two models have been added: the Audi A2 and the Daimler DE36. They’ve netted 5 and 2 views respectively, which is what you’d expect for new pages. The last significant updates, when models were added, took place on December 13. The last model […]

The “fortress America” approach to the internet fuels piracy

21.12.2019/13.05

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. It’s a damned shame, because I feel it’s a stab at the heart of what made the internet great—the fact that we could be in touch with each […]

The 1970s: when TV shows were New

12.11.2019/09.16

As a child of the 1970s, I was exposed to this English word: new. Now, before you say that that isn’t anything special, for some reason, in the ’70s, there was an obsession with newness. It wasn’t like the news (by this I mean the plural of new) of Amsterdam or Zealand, but an adjective […]

Volvo: boxy, but good

02.07.2019/10.06

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 incorrect—actually, cruel and inaccurate—look at mental health. It’s one of those […]

A very humble 3,800th entry on Autocade

28.04.2019/12.00

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 […]

Capturing a buyer: some advice to Renault New Zealand

01.01.2019/09.51

On this Pope Gregory Arbitrary Calendar Start Day, I wrote to a contact of mine at Renault New Zealand. In mid-2018, I joked that, since Renault had no dealers in Wellington (never mind what’s listed on their website—the only people who can see a dealer there are psychic mediums), I could sell them out […]

Autocade hits 14,000,000 page views, and we start a YouTube channel

13.10.2018/12.07

Above: Behind the scenes of the Škoda Karoq road test for Autocade. I hadn’t kept track of Autocade’s statistics for a while, and was pleasantly surprised to see it had crossed 14,000,000 page views (in fact, it’s on 14,140,072 at the time of writing). Using some basic mathematics, and assuming it hit 13,000,000 on May […]

Ford to stop selling passenger cars in the US and Canada, save for Mustang and Focus Active

26.04.2018/12.20

The Ford Focus Active: by the turn of the decade, this will be the only four-door passenger car Ford will sell in the US and Canada In a surprise move, Ford has announced that it will cease selling passenger cars in the US and Canada by the early 2020s, excepting the Mustang and the […]

The path of least resistance: we humans aren’t discerning enough sometimes

04.02.2018/11.38

I came across a thread at Tedium where Christopher Marlow mentions Pandora Mail as an email client that took Eudora as a starting-point, and moved the game forward (e.g. building in Unicode support). As some of you know, I’ve been searching for an email client to use instead of Eudora (here’s something I wrote […]