Lies, lies, lies

A pet peeve of mine is advertising and other marketing that blatantly stretches the truth. It may be done under the guise of "idiomatic usage", or "creative license", or "euphemism", or any of several other rationalizations.

But it is really just plain lying!

The automobile industry is one of the worst offenders. It used to be that the following year's models were introduced in the fall.

So that 1999 car I looked at in the fall of 2001, could have been 3 years old, not 2, as the model date would suggest.

Over the last several (I don't know how many, perhaps as long as 20), the date on which the "next year's" models are for sale has been moving farther and farther from the truth.

I haven't paid much attention to the auto industry for many years; I didn't realize how bad it had become until I saw a 2003 model advertised in February of 2002.

modelyear.html: last modified Monday, 11 Feb 2002