European superiority

Trabants were the East German ones. I remember a newspaper photo from 1989 of a Trabant in a dumpster.

Q: Why do Trabants have rear-window defrost?
A: To keep your hands warm while you’re pushing it.

Yeah – or the one with the parking garage attendant who sorrowfully tells the owner that someone has vandalized his car – by gluing a Skoda badge to the front.

Marketing ploy, of course, but also the very real fact that, in the world of medicine, drugs and procedures often get approved faster in Europe than they do in the USA. (look at RU-486, for instance)

I guess “used in Mexico for years” doesn’t have the same cachet.

Perhaps worth noting the worlds largest Pharm company is British: Glaxo-Wellcome-yada-yada and that Pharm companies tend to lead off their new products in different markets depending on many variables. It’s a genuinely international market place where politics also plays a role.

It’s also worth remembering that the US is the only first world Health Care market that is predominately capitalist - it’s sometimes easier for Pharm companies to get approval in the US, develop an identifiable market there and then try to sell it to Government funded health care systems elsewhere.

I think the stereotype is that the US is run by money-hungry corporations and evil pharmaceutical companies, and Europe is more artsy, alternative and humanist. Cosmetics made in the US sometimes have French titles or even product information translated into French to give them that aura of class.

Thanks Coldfire, but grimpixie is right about the advert - it was indeed for Skoda cars.
At least they were amusing car adverts, not the ones that show an empty road / no parking problems!

JillGat,
you mean the US isn’t run by money-hungry corporations?! :wink: