Surprise Car Deal

Chances are that most of you have seen or heard ads for Kia Motors advertising their "buy one car, get another for free" deal. The company and their dealerships have been doing this in various forms for the past few years and it's created quite a buzz. In some iterations of the deal, you buy Kia's most expensive car, fully loaded and you get the cheapest car at no cost. However, you were still required to pay taxes on the second vehicle. Honestly, that's not necessarily a bad deal as even game show contestants have to pay taxes on a car when it's given to them. Don't blame Kia for that one--blame the government.

But the most recent version I heard on the radio does seem to have a catch. While a television or print ad has actual fine print that you can read (provided you have a high-powered magnifying glass or you managed to record the tv comercial on your DVR), a radio ad has the announcer reading these details at a frantic pace. So, at the end of the Kia ad that I heard this morning, the announcer is rambling off the details so fast that I cannot hear most of what he's saying--except this one, minor detail:

"Price of single car includes second car."

I wish I would have written it down word for word because I'm sure that I'm paraphrasing--but only slightly. That's the jist of it. You're not really buying one car and then getting the second car for free. You're buying both cars when you buy the one car. Technically speaking, it's not really a "buy one and get another one free" deal. It's more like a "buy two when you think you're buying just one and then we give you the second one to make you feel good...since you've already paid for it, anyway."

Now that's the Power to Surprise!

EDIT: I just heard the radio ad again while sitting at my desk. So, I can now safely give you the words from the "fine print" verbatim:

Price of one car includes another.

Forgive Me For Being Stupid

I suppose you could say that I'm a product of the automobile industry in the United States. My dad was the breadwinner in our house and he worked at a tire factory where he eventually retired. He took care of me and my two brothers. He paid for most of my college education. So, you could say that somehow the automobile industry took care of me and my two brothers and the automobile industry paid for most of my college via my dad's hard work. Dad was also a consumer of the automobile industry. He was one of those guys that had to have a new car at least every two years. I never remember being in an old or junky car as a kid.

And yet I've never purchased a new car. I'm not sure that I ever will. These are my cars...


They look much more beat up in real life today than in these pictures. They've been well-used and I guess that we've been fortunate to get so much out of these used vehicles.

And that's what I don't get. How many new cars does this country really need every year? I just read today that Honda was originally planning to build 1.46 million vehicles in 2009 and now they've reduced their plan to 1.3 million. GM was originally planning on building 3 million cars & trucks in 2009 and now they plan to build just 2 million. Notice that I'm not even including Ford and Toyota and all of the other automakers in the world.

It doesn't take an economic genius to figure out that the automobile industry is going to be hurting severely this year (and perhaps in the years to come). And as I can attest to as a product of the generation, it's much bigger than just the factories that make the cars. Think about all of the components and accessories and you have a huge economic impact.

In our lifetime, my wife and I have had the following vehicles:

• 1974 Nova (ugly green with a three on the tree manual transmission--I should blog about this some time)
• 1987 Plymouth Horizon (referred to as "The Hor")
• 1985 Honda Accord
• 1990 Mercury Sable (like a Ford Taurus, but uglier)
• 1992 Chevrolet Corsica
• 1998 Plymouth Grand Voyager (pictured above)
• 1996 Honda Accord

Of these seven cars only six have been around during our marriage (we've been married over 16 years) and only four were actually purchased during our marriage. So why do we need so many cars? I don't see the current changes/struggles in the automobile industry as all that surprising. Am I missing something here?