Your Japanese word of the week is...

"azakeru" 嘲る which is "to mock/ridicule".  No, this isn't about me mocking my students or the other way around.  This is more about the state of the car market currently.

As I mentioned last week, I went to the Vancouver International Auto Show with fellow car friends and, while lacking in truly exceptional cars, there was endless scope for us to make fun of bad ones.  We got into lots of different ones and pushed buttons, turned dials, knocked on panels, and ran our fingers over surfaces.  What did we look for?  A generally high quality feel.  A button should "press" with a dampened solid feel, not "click" in a plasticky sound.  Dials should turn smoothly with consistent resistence, not stiff at the start and sticky like it was set in molasses.  The same goes for materials- panels and surfaces should feel substantial and pleasant to touch, not feel and sound like plastic painted to look like wood.

In fact, high end luxury car makers actually spend money into research and development on what kind of pressure it should take to turn a dial, what kind of sound each button should make, and what materials to use.

So it's no surprise that the Europeans seem to do it best, with the Japanese in a close second. It's also not surprising that expensive cars tend to do it better.

What ~IS~ surprising is just how poor some cars are built, despite being expensive.  Not to sound biased, but the majority of these were American cars.  A Lincoln Navigator is, for example, atrociously put together.  Door handles have visible seams where the plastic was moulded together; the gauges are incredibly small and hard to read; the covers for the storage compartments rattle and sound cheap.

Similarly, the Lincoln Mk S is just as bad.  The materials are woeful, the gaps in the panels are consistent only in their inconsistency, and the feel of all the controls the driver touches just reeks of budgetary constraints.  The worst part is that, at $66,000 as displayed at the Auto Show, it's not cheap.  In fact, you can get the ridiculously fast and aggressive Mercedes C63 AMG for ~LESS~ money which, despite being a bit smaller in the back, is a no-brainer in terms of choice.  And if you opt out of the performance, you can buy a similarly equipped Audi or Lexus for less as well.

Then again, it's not just the Americans.  One of the most hideous cars of the show, the Porsche Panamera, is equally affected.  All the controls feel fine up front, but some of the stuff in the back seats are just awful.  The lid for the cupholder, for example, springs open with a tinny "clack" and the cover for the storage area only manages to open itself halfway before getting stuck.  That kind of stuff is unacceptable for cars costing $50,000, let alone $100,000.

Perhaps some people don't care.  Perhaps some people don't have a chance to compare.  But even so, most people should have a sense of what feels expensive to them.  But more critical than that, the upper management of these companies shouldn't settle for second rate standards.