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FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog

March 30, 2005

Road Test

So I'm taking the train to work this morning to avoid getting stuck in Chicago traffic for 17 hours when I come across a New Yorker story about people doing just the opposite. They're looking for traffic. Driving into the teeth of the monster that is New York City gridlock, ostensibly to determine the worst route into the city at the height of rush hour. It was Ford's idea, though, so it's a little more complicated. All the vehicles were Hybrid Escapes, which happen to get great mileage in slow-moving traffic. Not that this was the point of the exercise. Of course not.

Last year, while reporting on the Escape Hybrid, I participated in a similar event. Guest drivers (One was Kevin Bacon, which raises the important but tangential question, does driving the same SUV as him qualify as a six-degrees connection?) took turns driving the new vehicle around Manhattan to see how far it would go on a tank of gas (the answer: 576 miles on 15 gallons).

What do you think of the marketing-as-research approach - effective, harmless, disingenuous, or something else altogether?