T.J. Higgins writes:
> Jerry Kaidor writes:
> > I too, think we should keep the Brit-cars group as a mailing list. At
> > least here we can be as mordacious as we like.
>
> I agree, we should keep it a mailing list. Can you imagine what kind of
> responses our BRG Miata thread would generate in a newsgroup?
Newsgroups:
I completely agree that we keep it as a mailing list. T.J.'s example
above should be an excellent thought provoker!
This must be the third major discussion we've had in the last two
or three years about going to a newsgroup and it looks like the majority is
against it again! Yeah! (or is it Tally Ho!!!? :-)
BRG Miata:
It was me that originally began this thread. Some of you may be
wondering why the Miata is mentioned at all on a British Cars mail list.
(I wonder too!). But the facts of the matter are that Mazda targeted the
car at folks like us who own or are fanatical about *old* sports cars.
They may be British, Italian or whatever. Mazda seem to have targeted
British sports car fanatics in particular, their ad says:
"They had names like Healey, MG, Triumph and Jag. They smelled of
engine oil and leather. And a chosen few were of the deep green of the
English countryside. If these memories are familiar, this Miata is for you".
Now how more specifically can you target any segment of the market
than that?! They only mention British marques. Note for their other colours
they don't target Italian sports car lovers (Red), French sports car
lovers [are there any? :-)] (Blue) or American sports car lovers (White).
(What about Silver --- isn't that Germany's racing colours?). I digress.
The other thing that makes the Miata relevant in this mail list is
that since the car was introduced, the interest (and therefore sales) of
British sports cars has risen significantly. This is assuming that many
folks cannot afford (or condone) a $13,000 to $20,000 Japanese roadster
when they can have the real thing at a fraction of the cost. So in this
sense, we owe the Miata for at least restoring the interest to our beloved
British cars.
While I have said I like the BRG Miata (and what a controversy I
started!) I could never afford one. If I could afford one, as I told
Ken Streeter in separate e-mail, I would probably opt to build a three
car garage --- two bays for my daily runners (Toyotas) and one bay for
my other purchase... some British car, probably a BRG Jaguar 3.8L MkII !
The discussion about BRG is a separate issue since it is directly
related to British cars.
Unfortunately, since the BRG/Miata discussion I have noticed a
high number of folks wanting to be dropped from the list. I feel guilty
and responsible for that (my .sig quote seems appropriate here).
Garry Archer Esq. {yale, uunet}!hsi!archer -OR- archer@hsi.com
3M Health Information Systems, Wallingford, Connecticut, U.S.A.
"An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose." - A.P.Herbert
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