Acura Doesn’t Understand Percent Math?

I saw a fancy fold-out ad on the inside front cover of November 2013 Vanity Fair magazine. It’s an ad for the 2014 Acura MDX. It has problems.

The ad reads, “With 99.9993% of the body reimagined to be stronger, lighter and faster.”

First problem, it’s not a sentence it’s only a dependent clause. But let’s look past that.

Second and vastly more important problem: 99.9993%?? Do they have any idea how high a percentage that is? No they do not.

They are saying that 0.0007% of the body was not “reimagined”. If the body weighs 1,000 pounds, then the “unreimagined” portion of the body weighs 0.007 pounds, approximately one tenth of one ounce. That is the weight of a single sheet of paper! The only unreimagined part of the body is the magazine ad we’re looking at. Ooph!

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