Why Car Manufacturer Websites are rubbish

Having just been through the hell that is buying a new car I feel compelled to vent my frustration at their useless websites.
 
If you haven't been to one recently then I suggest giving them a go - they are all the same so pick anyone you fancy.  But first get a large mug of tea and a few valium ready first.
 
The biggest gripe is their obsession with using flashy flash animations to do virtually everything. The amount of time spent watching a little circular "loading" icon going round and round and round is just endless.  You go on their home page and unlike every other web site around which loads pretty instantly (even on a 500kbit/s 'broadband') they sit there loading endless widgets and slidey animations and active controls for this that and the other.  The processing power to advertise a Fiesta must be 20 times that required to launch a shuttle.
 
And it doesn't end with the home page.  Every separate vehicle has its own animation sequence (or three) with revolving cars, zoomy in and out pictures of the interior and the ability to paint each car in any of the colours available.  Why this can't be done with a range of static image galleries and some fancy navigation I don't know.
 
Then once you've done all this you can go to the "configurator" where you can add options to your vehicle and get a price.  Now forget tick boxes or radio buttons - this has to be done with custom animations and graphics. 
 
Not to mention huge abuse of the mouse-over function which makes trying to do any of this virtually impossible if your mousepad is a bit oversensitive  (as an aside http://www.Royalmail.com is another big villian in the mouseover abuse stakes and as I use that site daily I know!)
 
I realise that car firms spend millions on fancy brochures and TV ads but trying to replicate these experiences on the Internet simply isn't the way that its done and they need to consider the Internet to be a separate distinctive media.
 
For any examples of the villany try  www.citroen.co.uk  www.ford.co.uk  as some of the worst of the bunch
 
Karl Meyer
Associate ww.Spice.co.uk