The Marketing Obvious part 1

So, you want an apartment in downtown Brooklyn but you’re only going to need a car once in a while. Why not have a car rental office in your apartment block? Why has this idea eluded developers until now? (I think it’s still eluding these developers since they haven’t mentioned it on their website).

Renting a car is cheaper than owning one: you don’t have to pay for parking, maintenance, depreciation etc etc. Though, for most people, the ease of having a car in the garage is convenience worth paying for. But, if you could have both, why wouldn’t you?

This idea, if it took off, could transform city centres, reducing congestion and the pressure put on downtown neighbourhoods caused by the need to park all those unused cars (in the UK, only 1m of the 28m vehicles is ever on the road at any one time). But as people are generally lazy, car rental or any kind of communal ownership is only going to work if it’s easily accessible. And putting it in the basement of an apartment block really is easy. And obvious.

The clues we put together on our own

Saw this as I was driving passed and nearly didn’t think more about it–it’s a truck for sale.

Except, of course, it isn’t; it’s a truck parked on an empty lot that’s for sale in Richmond, Virginia.

In rural Wales–like a lot of other places–they do sell cars by the side of the road, but there they don’t bother putting any kind of ‘For Sale’ sign on it. Instead, they use a fantastic piece of collective wisdom: all the houses are far enough from the road, so nobody would leave their car at the roadside and walk to their house, so anything left at the roadside can only be there for one reason–it’s for sale. If you’re interested, simply drive up to the house and ask the price.

Of course, this doesn’t need any kind of explanation as it’s a faultless logic.