[onion2k]

Pick a lane or perish.

Literally every industry has examples of businesses that don't excel at anything and still do well enough to carry on. In fact, in most industries, it's actually hard to see any business that's clearly leading on any specific front because as soon as it becomes an obvious factor in gaining market share the competing businesses focus on that area as well.

[gmac]

Yeah. Vauxhall/Opel has always been my go-to example here. Their cars excel at nothing. They’re not especially stylish. Not the fastest or nicest to drive. Not unusually efficient. Not particularly reliable or guaranteed for a long period. By no means the cheapest. They don’t even achieve a sweet spot of averageness across all these things. Yet people have somehow carried on buying them over decades.

[nDRDY]

Jeremey Clarkson called the Astra "the most boring car ever made". I loved both of mine - they always got me and my stuff where I needed to be, and were easy to fix.

The last one, a 2007 model that has now moved on to my younger sibling, might be the last "simple" car.