There is a TV commercial for the Mitsubishi Eclipse currently getting a lot of airtime (for a thread on the woman dancing in the car, go here).
At the end, the text announces the car as the '03 Mitsubishi Eclipse.
“'03”??? I mean, it’s not even the end of March 2002, fergodssake. I remember when new cars were actually given the designation of the year in which they were produced, and the '03 cars would start being released in December, maybe. But recently “next year’s” cars have been released earlier and earlier, and now i’m just waiting for the auto manufacturers to skip a year altogether and start advertising the '04 cars.
I assume that cars produced in, say, March 2002 still have 03/2002 imprinted on their vehicle identification plates? So is this all just a silly rhetorical device to get people to think the car is cutting edge, or is there some logic to the process that i’m missing?
don’t mix up production date with model year, they are not the same.
For as long as I have been paying attention to the auto industry (40+ years) next years models have been introduced no later than fall of the previous year. Sometimes earlier.
Regardless of what MY you call your car the production date will show the when the car was built.
Here in the US the emissions label will show what year the car is certified for.
I think it was Feb of 1975 that Mercury launched the 1976 Capri.
It used to be, back in the old days, that new models would be introduced in the fall. So in Sept/Oct of 2000 the 2001 models would come out.
But with more manufacturers looking to grab headlines with new models and a rush to introduce many new models to market, that has passed by the wayside. I believe that in order to call a car a 2002 model, for instance, it has to be produced at least partly during the 2002 calendar year.
New models for the following year have been introduced as early as January. I don’t know what federal regulations affect this, maybe crash tests?
Maybe i should have clarified my own experience a little better. I’ve lived in the US for a couple of years, but i’m from Australia, and this sort of futuristic dating of the Model Year doesn’t seem to happen so much over there.
I appreciate Rick’s distinction between Model Year and Production Date, but it still doesn’t really explain why the car industry (uniquely, as far as i’m aware) feels the need to make the advanced model year designations in the first place. I mean, if you’re going to launch a new Capri in February 1975, why not call it the 1975 Capri?
Because you want to appear cutting edge, and not last year’s model. Because you want to stand out in a crowded field. Because you are planning on keeping the same model going for 18 months and this is cheaper. Because you want to make a statement about a major change in the car line.
What Telemark said. Because by February '75, the '75 model cars have already been out for months. If you call your new issue a '75, you’re behind everybody else, and the appearance (though of course not the actuality) of it’s being new is lost. Call it a '76, and you’re ahead of the pack. Wow!
Pretty much the same reason the June issue of a magazine arrives in March. Hype. Expectation that the average consumer ain’t too bright. Unfortunately, it works. Someone said you won’t go broke underestimating the public’s intelligence.
I thought the reason the June issue of a magazine comes out in March was for shelf life. If the March issue came out in March people wouldn’t buy it after March 31st because it would be “old”. By putting June on the cover it can stay on the shelf until June 30, over 90 days later. Can’t remember where I heard this so I may be wrong. Anyone?
Although I’ve heard that another reason for this kind of marketing was that people were less likely to buy cars in mid-winter. So by bringing new models out in the fall you could boot sales.
There’s another reason for doing this as well. Back when Chevy first introduced the Corsica (I think), they gave it a model year something like two years after it was actually built (i.e. car was made in 1985, but was called a 1987 model) and stated in their ads for the car that it “wouldn’t suffer depreciation for two years!” This, of course, is absurd, since a car with 50,000 miles on it is worth less than a model from the same year with zero miles on it. However, I’m sure there were people who fell for that ploy and bought the car thinking that they could sell it two years later for what they paid for it new. :rolleyes:
Wasn’t there a spate of half-year models at one point in the 70’s or early 80’s? I can’t remember which makers did it, or the exact years, but I remember ads along the lines of “the 1982 1/2 bananamobile” or whatever.