The idea that there will only be a handful of car companies in a decade is tosh
I’m told a television programme called You Bet! still exists, which some of you might remember from the 1980s, while some others among you might not quite believe existed.
A contestant would come on – a scientist, perhaps – and tell a panel of celebrity judges that they reckoned they could do something unlikely, like tell the temperature of a jug of water to within half a degree centigrade, perhaps even more accurately, by dipping their nose in it.
I’m fairly certain that example actually happened and I’m not making it up. The judges would then bet on whether said feat was possible or not.
You would have thought not for that specific example, but from memory I think you would have been wrong. And so the show went on.
Two other examples stir my memory. Someone identifying cars from just their wheel or hubcap design. I think I stood a pretty good chance of getting most of those right at the time. And someone who thought they could tell you what any product was just from its barcode.
Barcodes must have been a fairly new thing at the time. “That’s Whiskas cat food, chicken flavour,†might have been possible in the late 1980s, but surely it wouldn’t be now, would it? And likewise the proliferation of wheels and wheel designs means that I’d still have more chance of identifying one from then than now.
Anyway, I mention now because I read the other day another industry expert saying that in a few years there would only be a handful of brands still making cars.
That the big companies would otherwise have eaten or killed the little companies and you’ll be able to count the remaining ones on two hands.
Over the past 40 years I think I’ve heard that argument more times than I can count on two hands, and I’m still not sure it’s true. Not all of today’s car companies will survive, I’m sure, and I can imagine even some big ones being bought or running out of cash.
But there are more people in the world with the money to buy a car than ever. I’d rather predict the number of wheel designs I can spot than the number of car companies that will live on.
