Tuesday, February 8, 2011

"Auto"-matic

Loved seeing the little boy in Darth Vader gear on the Superbowl Volkswagen commercial.  After failing to "animate" anything around the house, his father comes home, seeing his son's attempt to animate the VW, hits the remote starter and the car growls to life.

I've been intrigued by all the new electronic gizmos they're putting into cars these days.  Is it Mercedes or Lexus that has programmed their cars to automatically slow down when the less than cautious driver is following too close in traffic?  I see that Ford has incorperated Blue Tooth and MP3 and GPS and a host of other features into their innovative new automobiles.  Some of the new cars now have rotating head lights that shift in the direction of travel and serve as expressive eyes in some of those fancy commercials.  GM, for some time now, has featured their OnStar program that automatically alerts all kinds of first responders if you are in an accident and can't signal for help yourself.

These fancy new devices are fine but if they want to win my approval there going to have to do more; much more.  I want to see carmakers install a program that will send, by remote control, any potential new car right to my drive-way.  Then, to simulate the typical car-buying process they'll need to program into the sound system a "car salesman" program.  The program will tout all the latest features of this outstanding automobile, run down the competitors' product, offer me a payment program that has me paying for it for the next decade, accept my down payment in the car's ATM slot and leave the car in my drive way.

Finally, I want a program that talks to me, tells me what a wonderful driver I am, reminds me to pick up the bread and milk, praises me when I follow GPS directions, tells me I am not old, just "seasoned"....and puts "backseat drivers" on "mute".

3 comments:

Crystal said...

One of the superbowl commercials showed a car that will tell you when someone has a new facebook status. I thought that was a bit ridiculous.

A Modest Scribler said...

I saw that too! First thought I had was that some folks got a high degree of insecurity.

Darlene said...

Lol!! I was like really you can't wait till you get home?!