Say goodbye to the pink Mazda
Reporters on the Job: Sometimes good story ideas can come from the people closest to you. A few weeks ago, my fianc茅e鈥檚 mother, who lives in western Germany, was telling us that she had finally bought a new car, thanks to a sizable cash incentive the German government has begun offering people to scrap their old cars and buy new ones (read the story ).
When I initially read about the incentive program, I thought that the roughly $3,000 the government was giving people didn鈥檛 seem all that much (it鈥檚 not like the government is slashing car prices in half or anything).
But I was wrong. The cash is just enough to get people into car showrooms. I really began to understand that as I listened to my future mother-in-law. She鈥檚 an elementary school teacher, not wealthy, and she had been driving the same pink Mazda hatchback for 15 years.
Interestingly enough, one of the major criticisms of this new car incentive program is that while it is ostensibly offered to help German automakers, it doesn鈥檛 guarantee that people here will buy German.
What did my fianc茅e鈥檚 mother buy? Another Mazda.
