Lamborghini and the sex appeal pendulum
October 2nd 2010 01:32
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Paris Motor Show
The Lamborghini Sesto Elemento goes from 0 to 100km/h in 2.5 seconds and doesn't need scantily clad women to look sexy.
One has to applaud companies which have the strength of long-held convictions and insist on adherence to traditions of excellence. Well, most of the time.
The Paris Motor Show, one of the most glamorous and prestigious of automotive events, is on this week. All the great marques are there, as is the gloss, gleam and marketing pizazz one expects of such an event.
Just look at the Lamborghini stand. Their cars are always stunning, as are their girls. Motor shows have long been as well known for scantily clad women as cars. The Lamborghini marketing people this year dressed their models in skintight, strapless, silver dresses slit to the thigh.
That's dedicated adherence to tradition for you.
But wait. Look at a few more stands and you notice something remarkable. Where are the girls? Where's the tradition?
The fact is that Lamborghini was pretty much alone with the sexy marketing in Paris this year. It might be traditional, but it's outdated.
"The days of bikini-clad women on bonnets are gone," said automotive PR agency PFPR Communications.
The reason is prosaic: the car makers don't wish to alienate an estimated 30 per cent - and growing quickly - of the market. Women.
The Renault stand in Paris summed it up. They had women attendants, but as one report said, they were dressed "more like a woman behind the wheel than across the bonnet".
Many stands featured male hosts.
Of course, if the proportion of new cars being bought by women continues to grow and one day women dominate the market the way men have in the past, we can expect more men on the Paris Motor Show stands, wearing less.
Thomson Reuters
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