I’ve recently bought a new car and being the internet addict that I am, I did quite abit of research. I made sure that I knew ALL my options, and researched brands, their technologies they used, the model line up, the comparative spec sheets, pricing, etc. Yes, I’m obsessive about these things.

Anyway, I ended up with a list of 25 options, narrowed it down to top 10, top 3 and then finally made my selection. I was so picky about the colour, that I purchased mine from a dealer near the border of Botswana and South Africa, and I live in Cape Town.

Henry ford is famous for selling cars in any colour as long as it’s black. Well, Ford is going to basics as it has realised that the cost of offering customers so many variations of the same model is far higher than convenient.

Ford’s chief of marketing, Jim Farley, who was hired away from Toyota Motor Co last year, said he was stunned to find that Ford was offering 100,000 combinations of options on its entry-level Focus sedan. Some 80 percent of Ford’s sales came from just 4,000 of those combinations, he said.

This is of course not so great for the consumer who enjoy highly customisable everything nowadays, but has a major long term effect on the economy on a global scale.