From Bangkok Posthttp://www.bangkokpost.com/Motoring/29Sep2006_motor004.phpGay carIs Thailand ready for gay car marketing? We exploit the possibility Unofficial gay car of Thailand 2006: Mini. American lesbian car: Subaru Forester.Second most popular gay car in Thailand: Benz SLK...... and Peugeot 407 coupé.WIWAT CHANG That's G-A-Y not grey. There is anything between 5-10% of the Thai male population that are homosexual or gay. If 5% is the conservative guesstimate, then we're talking about 1.5m gays in Thailand alone and may be 150m in the whole world. Could this be a niche market that car makers could tap into? What do gay drivers want? A self-admitted gay motoring journalist said that most gays consider a car pretty much the same way as a woman - aesthetic and practicality are the two top concerns. He also believes that many gays love cars just like straight men - they read about cars, drive cars and buy cars they like driving too. That's not a problem, because there are already cars marketed for men and women. But wouldn't it be cool if there are cars especially made for gays? Sorry, there isn't one yet. However, there are now several businesses in Europe that cater to gay needs from gay-friendly car dealers to financing and from gay chauffeur-driven rental cars to honeymoon packages for same sex partners. Gay customers can now shop for what they want without fear of being ridiculed by homophobic salespersons. However, the number of services are still very limited What cars do gays like? To get a better picture of what car Thai gays like, we did a little unofficial online poll recently asking gays to vote for their favourite cars. Tied second places are Mercedes-Benz SLK and Peugeot 407 Coupe' (ah, yes, 'twas in Motoring last Friday). The number one vote is ... the Mini. 2006 European gay car of the year: Aston Martin DB9 Volante. Coincidentally, the Mini is bought and driven by some celebrities such as Elijah Wood (Lord of the Rings), David Hasselhof (Knight Rider and Bay Watch) and Simon Cowell (the foul mouth American Idol judge) - aren't they all seemingly gay? One TV personality we know owns a Mini but don't generalise that he's gay - he's a womaniser. Mini convertible was crowned European Gay Car of the Year 2005 - an award organised by a French gay car club called Club Auto Rainbow. The club apparently named its first gay car of the year back in 2003 with the Peugeot 206CC. More recently, the world's first gay motor show was held alongside a gay Mardi Gras in Cardiff, Wales. Several car makers were present and one even donated the big prize - a Chevrolet Matiz. You can see from these examples that gay cars are fashion statement cars (ok, may be not the Matiz). That's quite like clothes and shoes that gays buy and wear - it's mostly about looks. A gay car is not a car made for gays, but a car preferred by gays. Gay car marketing abroad In 1995, Subaru hired Martina Navratilova - a lesbian tennis legend - as celebrity endorser of the Forester and later the Outback model. The idea worked and the Forester became the lesbian car by choice (at least in the USA). Since then many other car makers have joined in the hunt for gay buyers. Volvo USA is a prominent one with ads featuring gay families: one ad shows two men and a baby and another shows two women - one embracing a pregnant one. Perhaps Volvo read a year 2000 US census which found over 600,000 households to be of same sex partners and upto a third have children. We think the idea also works because even the latest C70 model has an ad showing two men hugging a dog. Gay ads need to be done carefully and subtly, for they can deter the mainstream straight men or women buyers. Why we don't see more gay car ads might be down to the fact that in any company, gays are still a minority in the marketing meeting. Gay car marketing in Thailand? Thais are very forgiving when it comes to dealing with gays. A gay can be exempted from military draft if he is too womanly, for the fear of disrupting order in the barracks. Thais watch cross-dressed stand-up comedians on TV every weekend and transvestites doing lip-sync cabarets in Pattaya and Bangkok are popular tourist attractions. At least three Thai gay movies released in recent times were all box office hits. So why haven't we seen any gay car ads? Well, Thai executives are generally conservative when it comes to publicity and a topic as controversial as this. May be all it takes is one brave top executive to pioneer a gay ad - then he and his company would be branded as gay forever. But uh... didn't we see a car ad last year with a forever single male star as presenter? Yes, but who said he's gay? 
