Yesterday's Calendar is so ... "Yesterday"

Let us reflect, for a moment, upon the concept of obsolescence - when something is no longer desirable and is en route to being obsolete (ie: useless).

In 1970, my father ordered a "Granada Gold" Pontiac Catalina (exactly like the one Ron Burgundy drove). This was exciting stuff. During that era, cars were custom-ordered, so we waited weeks for the assembly line workers in Detroit to nap their way through the process of producing this land-barge. When the big day finally arrived, we took delivery of our shiny new leviathan, but only after we inspected it for defects, which took a long time, because the thing was as poorly produced as a closed-circuit high school news broadcast.

The windshield and rear view mirror were cracked. The rear bumper was lop-sided. The paint was chipped. Neither the electric clock, nor the gas gauge functioned, and the air conditioner compressor wouldn't kick-on. The list of deficiencies went on and on, and could have filled a college blue book.

We scheduled time with the service department to get all the punch-list items addressed, and then we piled into our new prize and drove home. That night, before retiring to bed, my older brother and I begged our dad to let us steal one last glimpse of our family's shiny new conveyance. Dad acquiesced, probably because he wanted an excuse to take another look himself, and we opened the garage door.

It was like we were slapped in the face with a wall of stench. Fortunately, neither of my parents were smokers, because if they were, I'd be writing this to you from the afterlife. Our new car's fuel tank had a leak, and purged its entire 27 gallon gas supply onto the garage floor.

The next morning, the dealership retrieved the behemoth with a tow truck, and for the next several months, that car resided in the dealer's garage more often than it did in ours. All the while, we were provided "loaners," which was cool for me and my brother, since my parents got to drive virtually every model in Pontiac's vast arsenal - all of it was complete rubbish.

Strangely, my parents took this in stride, because it was par for the course. This is what one endured when taking possession of a new car. Cars were practically hand-made, and the lack of quality was chalked-up to human error.

Although it was nearly ten years, and 80,000 miles before we parted company with that car, it began deteriorating pretty much the first time the key twisted in the ignition, and it qualified as dilapidated junk by 1976. That rolling street turd squeaked so loudly, it could be heard coming from a block away, and it evolved into a bottomless pit of embarrassment for us whenever mom would drop us off or pick us up at school.

Back then, this rapid deterioration was attributed to planned obsolescence (the assumed conspiracy that automakers intentionally made junk so buyers would have to replace one generation of refuse with the next generation in short order - 3 to 5 years). Whether planned obsolescence was intentional or not was irrelevant, because the end result was the one manufacturers desired - a predictable sales volume, year-in and year-out.

Then the Japanese came along and screwed everything up with their fuel efficiency and product reliability. Damn them right to hell!

After a couple decades of trying to swim up-stream, American automakers, through bankruptcies, near bankruptcies, and ever-diminishing market shares finally conceded to the tide and began producing respectable products. Now, it seems only cars produced from the former Eastern Block, or China are unreliable crap, and a new car can run forever if properly maintained and used.

Well, that created a whole new problem - if consumers purchased reliable cars that lasted decades, why would they replace them? Please welcome the marketer's new tool: functional obsolescence, where a product may still work, but it possesses few of the features that entice today's buyers.

How is that possible, you ask? Isn't a car, by its nature, merely a motorized box with wheels that enables one to travel from one location to another and back again (the back again part doesn't apply to French or Italian cars)? Well, sure, in its most-basic form that's true, but most-consumers now seek things like "crumple zones," and air bags, and anti-lock brakes, and back-up sensors, satellite navigation systems, MP3 connections, satellite radio, rear-seat DVD entertainment systems, heated/air conditioned seats and steering wheels, and blah blah blah ad nauseum.

And as if that wasn't devious enough, now, automakers have taken the next step and begun to entice consumers with an alternative to the revered internal combustion engine with hybrid systems that support the traditional motor with electric ones. Then there are the cars that eschew the internal combustion engine entirely and operate solely on electricity or hydrogen. Some cars retain the internal combustion engine, but replace fossil fuels with stuff produced from corn. As such alternative methods of turning a crank are adopted, more functional obsolescence will exist.

Where did the auto industry learn such diabolical techniques of consumer manipulation? From the technology sector, of course. Anyone out there still using an IBM with a 286 processor and Windows 95? Probably not. It seems every year or two, we are coerced into replacing our computers because the hardware isn't fast enough, doesn't possess enough storage capacity to operate in the current world, and is operated by software that is no longer either supported or capable of performing even the most-mundane tasks.

Case in point? In 2007, the first iPhone came to market. Three years later, Apple is selling the iPhone 4, and every prior generation of that product is considered to be nothing more than a doorstop.

Who's to blame for this? To quote Pogo:



If we weren't such chattel, we'd scream "no mas" and stop buying the latest and greatest gizmos and doohickies, but we can't control ourselves, and the marketing gods know this. They realized long ago that we are goldfish with feet - if it's shiny, we must have it.

Sadly, we are the architects of our own economic demise, and if we're not careful, we're going to buy ourselves straight into destitution. Beware, my savy cohorts, for there is poverty in them thar iPhones, and iPods, and Sat Navs, and 3-D LCD Flat Screen TVs that are only about a half inch wide.

Have you seen one of these things by the way? They're amazing. I just order two - one for each end of my Jacuzzi soaking tub. They came with complimentary Blue Ray DVD players, and an amusement park-style popcorn maker ...