AFT_B912

I ’m not a jolly old soul, it’s been noted, I have to say. When the air turns crisp, frost appears in the morning and thoughts begin to turn towards Christmas, I am not the first one to don a seasonal jumper and antler ears down at Parkit Motors. To be honest, with local supermarkets doing mince pie offers as far back as September, by the time Jolly old Saint Nick could be described as heading our way, I’m already playing the part of the humbug- munching curmudgeon. Those you can get at some local discount shops at a good price all year round! I can’t say my dentist is too keen on my sweet habit, but it keeps me going when tea and sympathy have failed. It’s not all tacky traditions though. Christmas gives you a chance to look back at where you’ve been, and where you are going. The end of the year is like that generally. I would say I prefer Christmas to New Year – I detest “Auld Lang Syne” with a passion. Back to the point though, being in the garage trade, when we get these seasonal pauses, I tend to think back on how things have been, and how they are going to be. Take the connected car. I find the idea very exciting, but also worrying. On the exciting side, assuming us fragile, fallible independents are able to access the car in the same way as our illustrious, immortal franchised cousins, whose ultimate masters the VMs are trying to sew up the concept, it would put us in a whole new world. 20 years, ago, 10 years ago, today even, we have to wait for an actual failure to occur in many cases, and for the customer to realise and tell us about it, before we can get to work on the car. Now, some of our customers are lovely, but I would not trust them to notice that their hat is on fire before seeking assistance in some cases – we have to be very thorough. We can only pick up on so much via servicing and during the MOT. Now, if we could get our hands on some kit that would live-stream a system failure, and then enable us to contact the customer? That would be brilliant. Would I abuse the system to track Mrs P when I’m not sure where she is during the Christmas shopping silly season? Yes I would. As some of you will doubtlessly be aware, Every Christmas Eve, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the U.S/Canadian missile defense agency, tracks Santa Claus around the world. Such jolly fun. With the connected car, we could get in on it too. The marketing potential locally of pretending to be tracking Father Christmas and advising him on system failures would be amazing. Imagine if we could tell that him when it looked like Blitzen was about to pull a muscle, and might need swapping for an alternate. That’s the kind of world I want to live in! Have I popped one too many humbugs this morning? Yes, I think I might have… A VERY SPECIAL ARTHUR PARKIT FREAKIN’ CHRISTMAS 58 AFTERMARKET DECEMBER/JANUARY 2020 TEABREAK: MEMOIRS OF A MOTOR MECHANIC www.aftermarketonline.net