1970s Mazda Ad

I am drunkenly stuffing £2720 into my router, why is nothing happening? After the weeks of car shopping with the missus looking at various surprisingly rusty underneaths of certain 5 year old cars I need that thing so badly.

Somebody ought to make a documentary about the fabled man who spent his entire professional career stroking Mazdas with his hands.

Tempted to email this ad to Toyota who rather disappointingly appear to have decided that the solution to their longevity problem, which meant people like me are still driving cars they built in the 90s, is less vigorous attention to undercoating.

A number of things annoy me about the current situation regarding older cars and longevity of build quality.

- Older stuff seemed built to last, yet we're being told and encouraged to scrap them at every opportunity because, you know, digging several more tons of metal ore and oil out of the ground and using X amount of energy to make a whole new car out of it must be wayyyyy lower environmental impact than just putting fuel and a touch of oil in an older car for another 10 years... How many great (or even average but long-lasting) cars were scrapped in the name of propping up the car industry in recent years? Perfectly good cars that had years of life left of them? It is not good for my blood pressure to think about it.

- We were encouraged to buy new diesel cars because they apparently produced less CO2 (plant food, remember) and now, d'uh, c.50% of the UK car fleet (up from around 15% IIRC) is diesel and pumping out carcinogenic particulate pollutants, so what's the solution? Well, IIRC, Boris proposed a scrappage scheme for diesel cars over a year old. A YEAR OLD. wtf?? Why bother spending time, money and resources improving the quality and lifespan of vehicle bodyshells if they must be scrapped almost immediately? Retards.

- Toyota reducing the quality of their bodyshell protection in order to increase vehicle expiration and their turnover/profits, rather than building a quality product that lasts, is just another example of the backwards idiocy of the world we live in, where built-in obscelence and constant consumerism to buy the latest thing (as a much greater man than me once pointed out) is exactly what Big Business and Governments want, in order to keep the profits and taxes rolling in. We've all seen it with white goods, clothes, shoes, etc etc, and it is frankly stupid.


[/rant]

It is interesting to see how marketing has shifted from longevity to what's now fashionable for 10 minutes.