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Saturday, January 30, 2010

More Boomer Bunkum

According to Quebecor Media Inc. (QMI), ". . . boomers, frustrated with Detroit's poor quality, fell in love with Toyotas because they rarely broke down . . . Now that trust is in danger."

Don't you read stuff like this and think, "How do they know?"

According to CNW Marketing Research, a darling of the American car industry after their release of the report entitled "Dust to Dust" in which they trashed the green image of the Prius while praising the Hummer H2, the average age of new-vehicle buyers at the end of 2007 was the fine boomer age of 48. These folk, born in '59, were boomers by anyone's definition.

CNW claims the average age of shoppers choosing a domestic vehicle was 49.4 years old in 2007 — older than the average 42.5-year-old buyer of Asian cars but younger than the 50.6-year-olds choosing European nameplates. (It is interesting to note that all the ages given are boomer ages. But the Asian buyers are just barely boomers as they were born mid-way through 1964, the last year of the baby boom according to BabyBoomers.)

The oldest average shoppers were looking at the Ford brands, at 54.3 years. GM shoppers averaged 48-years-old, while Chrysler shoppers came in at 44.

The average age of Toyota shoppers was 46.6-years-old. Toyota buyers were younger than GM's and a lot younger than the shoppers for Ford brands.

It is thought that when times are tough, and they've been tough for the young and the middle class for a good decade in the States, and when the choice is between making a mortgage payment or a car payment, the house wins out. Many of the young are simply not in the market for a new car.

There does not seem to be any reason to claim that boomers were enamoured with Toyota, anymore than they were attracted to GM or Ford.

Now, I admit that these numbers are suspect as the source, CNW, is suspect but where does QMI get the figures to support its claims?
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I just must do a post on this whole boomer foolishness. It is all so downright silly. Boomer talk reveals an erroneous way of looking at the world, divided and categorized and mythologized.

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