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What Would Frankenstein Drive?

"Why does Dr. Frankenstein hate the monster?" My daughter asked me that a couple of days back -- the book is on her high school summer reading list. "He's a monster," I said. "What's to like?" She didn't buy it, so we ended up paging through the book for the answer, which we found (I think) in a single paragraph devoted to the moment the lifeless thing is reanimated. No lightning bolts from the sky, here -- no scientist driven to madness, screaming at his assistant to adjust the voltage. 

All we get are a few sentences: first, the reanimated man is tall, with beautiful locks of black hair and pearly white teeth. If Mary Shelley had stopped with that, the book would have been over, in every sense: an attractive guy strolling around trying to explain to people that he’s dead. And if the monster had been merely head-to-toe ugly, it would have been a case of "Win some, lose some, the compost bin is over there, make yourself at home."  

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It seems that -- unless I’m missing something -- the juxtaposition of beautiful and  grotesque is what the doctor can’t countenance (okay, the monster is also a macrame of dead people, but anyway). The hair is perfect, the teeth, perfect, but the creature's skin is like something stewed in a bottle of formaldehyde for six years; its eyes are dead white and watery like a flounder's; the lips, coal black; the nails, not so good. Voice: "yuuurrgghhh." (daughter: "Ew, he's like the original Goth!"). 

I'll bet that if you were to look at plastic surgery data, or even statistical data on orthodontics, adjusted for income -- and I guess, cultural determinants -- people who are attractive with minor blemishes/misalignments are more apt to get work done than average-looking people (however that's determined) who have more significant cosmetic issues.   

Which gets me thinking about the luxury car business, where beauty is both an attribute and a risk. The more you raise the aesthetic bar, the more the blemishes stand out. Roofline to console, every element has to challenge the others and reflect the whole. The risk? Especially in a luxury product with lots of moving parts, it is losing -- even horrifying -- customers because one sub-prime element stands out. 

In mass market, it’s less of a factor. If a car with plastic panels, manual seat adjustment, and even manual windows -- yes, manual windows still exist and some of us actually like them, though I won't name brands -- happens to have an eye-pleasing profile, a $13,000 MSRP, and a half-decent warranty, well, hey, suddenly the window cranks are a value-add! It's retro! If they throw in some telematics, interior space, and decent mileage numbers, that's even better. I'll take it, and the plastic, too! Gimme more! Deliver it in shrink wrap -- I don't care. 

Now, imagine our customer eyeing a luxury car. It has silken curves, double hand-stitched leather, great infotainment, brushed chrome door handles designed like a Brancusi sculpture and a hood that doesn't just retract, but retracts into another dimension (so there's still trunk space). Suddenly our customer notices the vent covers. They look like plastic grates from an air conditioner. That customer is now sprinting from the dealership, screaming for help. Questions are raised: who really made this car? What else is wrong with it? Where else did they go cheap? From what auto graveyard did the body parts come from? 

Now go look at the Tesla S. The car has set the luxury bar extremely high, even without the warp-drive electric powertrain. Everything on the car is incredible, down to the unreal retracting-door handles. It's a good benchmark for everyone. If Dr. Frankenstein were a plastic surgeon in Brentwood, he'd be driving one.

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