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<\/p>\nSo as you probably know by now (because I’ve been bending everyone’s ear about it ever since October 12), I bought a brand new Mercedes-Benz. But no…you don’t just buy a car when you buy a Mercedes…you buy into a…culture. Sort of like another product line I’ve bought into recently…<\/p>\n
So I drove my new car to Strudsburg PA, last weekend, to visit an old grade school friend. In the process my car turned over its first thousand miles and I was obliged to bring it into the dealership for its complementary 1k checkup. I did that this morning, and swear to god I’ve never been treated nicer by a car dealership in my life. The waiting room was a nicely furnished lounge with free pastries and soft drinks, a widescreen HDTV to watch, and an Enterprise rental car office right in the lounge, in case the service department told you they’d have to keep the car for a while (I expect that if the car was still in warranty Mercedes would just give you a loaner car…they did me, no questions asked, when I traded my Accord in, but my new Mercedes wasn’t ready for delivery just yet…). There was also a nice little Mercedes boutique shop, where you could shop Mercedes-Benz paraphernalia to your heart’s content while waiting for your car. There were the usual assortment of Mercedes-Benz approved car care products. Polo shirts, jackets, caps, wallets, wrist watches, key fobs, umbrellas, posters…you name it. <\/p>\n
I bought a sharp looking little spun aluminum travel mug to go with the car. It had the Mercedes three pointed star logo. It was a lovely shape that seemed to go well with the look of the car I’d just bought. I saw it and I had to have it. I expect I’ll be experiencing that feeling a lot in the coming months, regarding Mercedes merchandise.\n<\/p>\n
The guy behind the parts counter window handed my new Mercedes-Benz travel mug to me in a little box, that reminded me of something else I’d purchased not that long ago…<\/p>\n
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Oh yes…that. The cult of Apple. The cult of Mercedes-Benz. Perhaps this was how initiates to the cults of the old gods once felt. But was there merchandise they could buy…?<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So as you probably know by now (because I’ve been bending everyone’s ear about it ever since October 12), I bought a brand new Mercedes-Benz. But no…you don’t just buy a car when you buy a Mercedes…you buy into a…culture. Sort of like another product line I’ve bought into recently… So I drove my new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[75,42],"class_list":["post-976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-uncategorized","tag-c300-love","tag-toys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}