Market segmentation in the Car Market - sometimes it works but not always

Ignore all of the personal ‘folksey’ stuff in this article and look for the observations about auto marketing.

The premise of the article is that cars are being designed for ever smaller niche markets. Sometimes the manufactures get it right sometimes they ‘fail’. The reasons for the quotes around ‘fail’ is the way Honda positioned its car called ‘Element’ to the ‘younger and hipper’ audience. They got it wrong and the average age of an Element buyer is 42, roughly twice as old as their target. The good news is that Honda thinks it will sell 70,000 Elements this year, up from the 50,000 it once projected. Maybe this has got something to do with perceived rather than actual age?

Toyota seems to be getting into a panic because its average age of buyer is growing by about a year every year! Might this have something to do with the changing demographics?

If the author of this article is right about the mindset and prejudices of auto marketers then they would benefit from some good old fashioned 50+ marketing consultancy advice.