Chapter 24

What to Do, What to Do?

We all came to a similar conclusion, but for different reasons.

Market share would no longer be the leading indicator as the world turned around. Our partners were already making cars that had a life span greater than 30 days or 30 miles, whichever came first, unlike our competitors, so what would be next.

My girls answered that right away.

“Everything! The World would be next.”

The consensus was that new car deliveries in existing markets were going to be smaller each year, as more of our cars would hit retail buyers. The increases would be coming from new and emerging markets. Did that mean those China, Russia, Mexico and South American new markets for SMART II now might have even more value than before?

Hell, yeah!

They were my generals, as I called them; for were we not at war, now?

“Y’all have heard of this thing called, ‘Market Segmentation’, right? It just means doing stuff in different areas, for different people, in different ways.”

We, more so Diane and Dieter, had those ‘Lessons Learned’, from the earlier Smart Car introduction. The inability to change the world to your way of thinking was easily seen. The French found that out when they tried to ‘convince’ people that telephones should have round buttons, and those sounds, they made, should be music not tones and ringing; just as they had in France.

The Germans tried that with cars, so did the Italians, but no, things were different in America. There were many angry people when Datsun first hit the market, it went on.

With SMART II, we had a premise that was based on the car’s previous failures and what we could learn about each country. Some examples: Water in the desert was dearer than petrol. There may be sunlight most every day, but sand, not roads predominated. The poor economy in some countries meant, that while a utility car or small truck would do wonders, people just could not afford them, or financing was just not available.

What might work in China, would never work in say, Australia or Brasil. In order to be a success we would have to do, or be, something more than just a car to some of the people. We shouldn’t try to be everything to everybody. Try convincing some family to ‘buy’ a car for two or three thousand dollars, even if they only made that in one or two years, (which most did not, more like ninety to a hundred dollars a year). You might convince five or six families or one entire village to buy one car, if it could do the shopping, take goods to market, be used as a ambulance or rescue vehicle and they could pay for it on a ‘per season’ basis, or when their crops were sold.Even better would be if they could barter things to pay over many years. In many places, it was a slash and burn mentality, with families not even owning the land. Hard to collect from them.

The things James and ‘whatever his name was’ (That BF of the ‘20’ goddess, Monica, remember?) were working on for us (Yes, they were working for us big time, we would make them rich), would soon make so much difference that money and financing no longer became the primary obstacle.