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Take some deep breaths, Mr Jarvis, and check out what Gordon Murray Design is up to over at Autocar. It’s like open-source, and innovative and stuff. Man. Actually it is a pretty radical vision for such a traditional industry. And it’s being done by folks who know things about cars. Oh yeah, and it’s nothing like Google.
did he say he hooks up his Ipod through a cassette?
Yes, he did. The man is clearly an idiot.
Yawn.
Call me when it has four years real-world experience under it’s belt.
This guy is a real outside the boxter.
An unpainted car is a neat idea as is custom seats.
Would this be all that difficult on an assembly line to stick in a special work order especially when it is bypassing features and the subsequent owner will purchase the needed equipment after market.
It would be a stretch I feel for the manufacturer to add certain items but eliminating them can’t be that difficult.
I recall years ago in Oshawa Ontario seeing truck chassis being driven from the north plant to a finishing plant in the south end with a driver sitting up on a coke box like arrangement for a seat. Don’t know if they still do this but it was probably the cheapest way to move the vehicle for those several miles.
Someone should take him to SEMA and show him that you can already change anything you want on your car. Seats and a deck that will control your ipod are just the beginning. Man.
Hey now, there’s a special quality to cassette adapted music. I first learned to appreciate it back in the early 90’s in my brother’s first car (’83 Grand Marquis Coupe FTW!) It had an 8-track player, somewhere my dad got ahold of an 8-track to cassette adapter (there was a tray you slapped the tape down into in front of the 8-track radio slot. Then I used my BRAND NEW personal CD player with car kit and 3 second anti-shock/skip to play CDs in my brother’s car.
I think this was a big contribution to my obsession with the Ambient Dub music of The Mountain Goats: here
e36m3:
Sure, you can already change anything you want on your car. But what this guy wants (but is not saying) is that he doesn’t want to have to pay for two sets of seats (the factory ones and his custom ones). He doesn’t want to pay for two paintjobs. Etcetera. He wants these things to be what the car companies used to label “delete options.” He wants a lower price. Problem is, the more things deviate from standard at the factory, the higher costs are.
What he’s talking about is not new. He would have been happy in the era when certain cars left the factory incomplete, destined for the coachbuilder. Your car would then be finished to your heart’s desire. But he would not have been happy with the price.
I was perhaps too subtle–my point was that Jarvis’ recommendations are superficial to what’s wrong with Detroit.
I bet he spent lots of time thinking up his ideas on the car industry. Too bad he didn’t spend a little time reading up on the early history of the car business. Coachbuilding long predates the automobile but it’s still alive and well. I sort of doubt Jeff Jarvis would be willing to spend the money for say a Ferrari P4/5.
He also doesn’t seem to have any appreciation of the basic fact that Google is in a knowledge based industry and car companies, despite the huge importance of design, intellectual property and so forth, are in a stuff industry. They are fundamentally different from one another.
The closest analogy to the mass-market customization that he wants is Scion’s original business model. Ironically, Scion’s model only worked by further standardizing the product from the factory (you could only choose between transmission type and paint color,) all the custom choices were dealer installed accessories.
I work with these kind of guys every day here in Silicon Valley, and they drive me crazy. I’m sure I’ll see a business plan now for this kind of thing. Not looking forward to it.
Still, I think he is on the right track. Detroit might do a lot better with a business model that moves more to mass customization. Holweg and Pil do a pretty good job in The Second Century in making that case — that carmakers could do a lot better making cars to order.
These kind of people in general is what is wrong with much of our industry.
Guys with good communication skills who think they are good at everything. They make the most sophomoric mistakes, but somehow end up being in charge.
Mass customization? I can hardly see my 75 y/o mom, nor any of my 3 sisters (all of which are car buyers) customizing their cars … their ideas of personal customization are Mom (put a “My Grandson Attends XY Univ.” window sticker on the back window of her PT Cruiser (the customizer’s poster child); Little Sis, removing the pick-up box door to save weight and cut-down wind-resistance on her GMC; Sister Nr. 1, scraping the paint off her front bumper of her Toyota Matrix (next victim her new Saturn Aura); Sister Nr. 2 (changing the odometer numbers – by driving – her Hyundai SUV) …
Call me what you will, but even I, a car guy who took a lot of joy modestly pimping his Brabus ForTwo, couldn’t imagine wanting to be a sub-contractor in the Trim Final Chassis assy of his new car…
Somewhere I read that Ford offers something like a million different configurations for the F-Series. If this isn’t mass customization, then no such animal exists.
@James2:
And even Ford isn’t proud of this, constantly vowing to reduce the number of combinations … either elsewhere on this site, or on Auto News, there was recently an article where Ford, yet again, said it had and was continuing to reduce allowed variants…
Oh, and I didn’t watch the video, but looked again at the banner photo … from the background, it looks as tho this guy has been locked away in the book annex corner of the store room…
The concept of mass customization is a little different. Ford, as people note here, seems to think that it means offering a million different configurations. That’s not really it.
Mass customization means providing a customized product at a mass production price. A suit, for example, that is custom-tailored to your measurements and material choice but at an off-the-rack price.
For cars, many people call mass customization “build to order.” I’ve heard that it’s popular in Germany, with about half of cars being specially ordered. But it’s not particularly popular here in the United States.
There are a lot of advantages to mass customization for car buyers, dealers and makers. I don’t see it happening, though, in our current carmaking crisis.
Back to the future. In the great era of Classic cars, you would buy a chassis from Rolls Royce or Dusenberg or Talbot, and have them send it to a carrosserie (custom coachbuilder), who would attach the body. Some really beautiful cars were made that way, but they were also very expensive. The practice ended after WWII in the US, and in the 1950s at Rolls Royce.
I expected a lot more agreement with this idea. It’s a sound concept, especially the “why don’t you LISTEN to the people giving you their money?” idea.
I bet everyone who has rented a Cobalt had the same thought as me as soon as he sat down: “Why in the f**k do I have an oil life monitor, but not an iPod jack? That’s REALLY what your focus groups said they wanted?”
There’s a lot to be said for customization without the requirement that you buy all the OEM crap first.
Scion was getting close to this concept, with a few dozen options available for picking-and-choosing. Sadly, now that the base cars are completely unloveable, this isn’t doing so well. (another case for revamping the consumer channels of communication)
Although: Kia is picking up the process with the Soul, as part of their campaign to exactly follow the Gen 1 xB’s business plan.