In our on-going quest to keep you advised of the intersection between commerce and music, we have discovered the following. But first a bit of back-story is required.

The Ka in question is a small car from Ford that’s available in the European market, a car that some U.S. auto writers rhapsodize about and pine for in a domestic driveway. The Ka is comparatively compact; it would be nothing more than a blip in the rearview mirror of the sport utes that rule the roads on this side of the Atlantic.

The Kylie in question is Kylie Minogue, an Australian pop sweet tart who is popular in her homeland as well as in Europe; she received an award for being the “Best Selling Australian Artist” at the recent World Music Awards. Kylie is comparatively invisible in the U.S.; she is nothing more than a blip in the rearview mirror of the likes of Britney, who rule the airwaves on this side of the Atlantic.

The quote comes from Earl Hesterberg, Ford of Europe’s vp for Marketing, Sales, and Service:

“StreetKa and Kylie have a lot in common—they are both small, beautiful and stylish.”

I’ll bet this is exactly what Ms. Minogue is looking for: comparison to a car. Kylie, a former soap opera actress, plays off of her curves in a way that even vehicles designed by Pininfarina can only make weak gestures toward. I suppose that what would be more disturbing to her would be if she was being sponsored by the purveyor of major home appliances; while there is a certain intrinsic sexuality related to some vehicles, the notion of a side-by-side refrigerator just doesn’t have the same resonance (e.g., they are both white, straight and resistant to fingerprints).

(StreetKa is one of the sponsors of her Euro tour. Hesterberg observed, “Kylie is universally popular, especially so with young single people who are resistant to more traditional avenues of marketing communication.” That sentence is resistant to semiotic analysis.)