The Age Of Novelty As King: The Nano Car

Maybe, we’ll run a series this year about Novelty. Novelty threatens real change. All too often it is distracting – the crazy and the wacky far to often obscure the real direction of cultural change, and all too often the blogs and wedia picks up and spreads dud ideas as good ideas rapidly (before dropping them for the next whoa-look-at-this moment). Erm, anyway – the reason I’m on this rant is because the very good What’s Next blog points us to a great reaction from a blogger in New Delhi about the cheapo car:

Purple prose hailing the new peoples car, breathless editorials brazenly brushing aside environment and traffic concerns, mushy interviews with the man himself, over-the-top opinion polls have all greeted the “world’s cheapest car”.

But, has anybody driven the bloody car?

Welcome to the age of hype as journalism. Welcome to the age of who cares as long as we can get into their media plan journalism. Welcome to the age of the details don’t matter, the spectacle is the story journalism.

…Sure, the Nano it looks cute, the colours are snazzy, and yes, it’s a proud moment for a desi company that has put out some of the most dangerous vehicles on our roads, like the Sumo and their godawful mini-trucks, to have stuck to a “promise” and delivered a car with a sticker price of Rs 100,000.

But, brother, how does it move? Isn’t that what a car is all about?

The launch that showcased a thousand slips