Guilty pleasure: Subaru Mediocrity
Please tell me I’m not alone in liking the distinctly average, humdrum, unexceptional and run-of-the-mill 2011 Mediocrity. I guess it speaks volumes that I own a Toyota Camry (XV20) with an interior finished in the colour of a Werther’s Original. Beige is my thing. Heck, my old motorhome was called ‘Elaine Beige’. As Gordon Gekko nearly said: ‘Beige is good. Beige is right. Beige works, etc, etc.’
Few vehicles of the twenty-tens were as so-so as the Mediocrity Motor Company’s only car. Launched in a blaze of, erm, mediocrity on 1 October 2010, the Mediocrity was the automotive equivalent of vanilla ice cream. A Coldplay album at a dinner party. A rich tea biscuit. Magnolia paint. The Kia Magentis, but more on that in a moment.
Josh P. Brown, president and CEO of the Mediocrity Motor Company, said: ‘The Mediocrity mission is to manufacture the most mainstream mid-size sedan on the road today. Our company is extremely dedicated and passionate about middle-of-the-road. Each and every day, we strive for predictability, unoriginality and no-frills utilitarianism for all your transportation needs. The 2011 Mediocrity will get you from A to B without anybody ever noticing, and that’s a good thing.’
Unveiled to an underwhelmed nation on the American cable television network TNT, the advert for the Mediocrity was hosted by someone with the appearance of an Aled Jones tribute act. Children gazed open-mouthed, as American Aled took everyone by surprise by removing the dust sheet from the beige beauty. Nobody could believe their eyes. The new car was so… mediocre. Front-wheel drive and a 142hp four-cylinder engine were the technical highlights, of sorts. No bells or whistles, no glamour; just four doors, four wheels and adequate gas mileage. In the land of the compact saloon, buyers should have been queuing up for a slice of Mediocrity. So much mainstream ordinariness for just $24,699.
It wasn’t to be. On 17 November 2010, the company issued a statement announcing it had been acquired by another automotive company. Josh P. Brown said: ‘Our purchaser has assured us that the vision at MMC will stay with the Mediocrity. Yes, the Mediocrity will not be available in name, but we have it on good authority that you’ll see it on car lots and in showrooms across the country very soon. Yes, the Mediocrity is dead. Long live Mediocrity!’
Forget the middle of road, because the Mediocrity never even made it out of the gutter. It was never meant to. The 2011 Mediocrity was nothing more than the central act of an award-winning Subaru advertising campaign created by Carmichael Lynch. It used a Kia Magentis/Optima to target Americans who had been raised on a diet of Corollas, Camrys, Civics and Accords. The aim: to raise awareness of the new Subaru Legacy. Fake spy shots were sent to the American automotive press, bogus social media accounts were established, and for a short while, the Mediocrity created a lot of online buzz. Hats off to the ad agency for creating something so unique and memorable.
In 2011, four out of top ten best-selling vehicles in America were four-door saloons. A decade on, that number had fallen to just two, as American consumers marched to the beat of the SUV drum. The irony is that even a thinly-veiled Kia Magentis would stand out in the car park of an American mall. Even in hearing aid beige.
Fourteen years later, I still think about the Mediocrity, so I’m considering creating my own legacy of Subaru’s brilliant campaign using a UK Magentis. Josh P. Brown, we could do mediocre things together. Call me on my cell phone. Dial M for Mediocrity.
This article first appeared in issue 13 of Classic.Retro.Modern. magazine.
