Fanfare for the Common Car
04-21-2004, 06:47 AM
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Fanfare for the Common Car
Fanfare for the Common Car
By PHIL PATTON
Published: April 11, 2004
LIKE the children in Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon, the auto industry's precocious offspring are all above average. The next generation of cars and trucks, on display this week at the New York auto show, are all special, gifted and talented, their manufacturers contend.
Automakers are reluctant to admit to making what designers call car-cars, the basic family sedans bought by millions of typical Americans. Instead, they prefer to draw attention to fanciful design studies that project fun and freedom, all the better if they exude elegance like the Buick Vélite or design innovation like the Lexus LF-C.
But car-cars do still exist, and they are especially noteworthy this year, given the unusual confluence of new mass-market models from General Motors, the Chrysler Group and Ford Motor. These new cars include the compact Chevrolet Cobalt, the midsize Buick LaCrosse and Ford Five Hundred and the family-size Chrysler 300.
In decades past, solid square-deal cars like the 1949 Ford or the 1955 Chevy - and later, the Galaxie and Impala, the Taurus and Caprice - transported the vast middle class. Although hundreds of thousands were sold each year, the cars were not just average, they were stylish enough to bring a touch of romance to the masses.
But in 2004 there is no single iconic family sedan, the bland Toyota Camry notwithstanding. This reflects social and cultural change, a shift toward a more heterogenous society, said Ed Welburn, executive design director at General Motors. "We don't have a single set of fashion rules any more, for instance," he said. "We don't go from wide to thin all at once. You can buy ties of different widths in department stores."
The decline of the universal family sedan is partly a result, too, of the industry's learning to build many different models on common foundations. The car-car is also fading as the industry gets better at building and selling the more specialized, low-volume models known as niche vehicles.
In the marketing world, segments divide into segments, like the flatworms in eighth-grade biology lab. Families no longer limit their auto shopping list to four-door sedans; realistically, the family-car segment now extends to minivans, sport utilities and even extended-cab pickup trucks.
That is why Ford is replacing the Taurus not with a single, restyled model, but with two sedans, including the Five Hundred on display at the show, plus the Freestyle utility wagon. The other, unnamed, Ford sedan will have variants from Lincoln (the Zephyr) and Mercury (the Montego).
The Five Hundred is an unabashed tribute to the Audi A6, with taillights that wrap around the corners like those of a Mercedes. Over at G.M., the Chevrolet Cavalier has been, for a quarter-century, the quintessential cheap rental car and the first new car for millions of Americans. For years, G.M. has sold about 250,000 Cavaliers a year, more than BMW's total United States sales.
But the Cavalier's low-rung spot will be taken by two cars, the Aveo and the Cobalt. The Cobalt comes not just as an unassuming sedan, but in extreme versions like an SS coupe aimed at young enthusiasts. While the sedan is no more distinctive than any other small four-door, the coupe is a blank canvas. Customized by options and added accessories, it will no longer seem generic.
In New York, the Aveo sits forlornly at the edge of G.M.'s display. It is the company's smallest, most basic car, a Korean-built Daewoo that wears Chevy's bow tie. The look is the product of Italdesign, Giorgetto Giugiaro's Italian design house. Customers might be forgiven for thinking that by relying so much on foreigners, Chevy doesn't have its heart in small cars.
The most innovative car-car is the Chrysler 300, which comes with a six-cylinder, at $25,000 or so, or the brutish Hemi V-8. The innovation here is in the proportions created by a shift to rear-wheel drive.
Trevor Creed, senior vice president for design at Chrysler, rightly calls the look "noble" and emphasizes its American roots. (Ralph Gilles, Chrysler's design director, designed the car.) To the man in the street, the upright lines suggest the nobility of a Mercedes - even if he hadn't heard that the car uses many Mercedes parts.
The new car-cars show the influence of sport utilities. Americans have grown accustomed to the size: car-cars now offer more interior space and higher seats that permit a better view, while diminishing the "loomed over" feeling one gets from being surrounded by trucks.
A Five Hundred driver sits four inches higher than in the Taurus; in the new 300, you are nearly three inches above where you'd be in a prior model, the 300M.
The truck impact is also visible in the fact that the 300's sibling, the Dodge Magnum, looks like a wagon but is listed as a truck.
The new car-cars claim to be luxury automobiles disguised as ordinary cars - "value propositions," in marketer-speak. They try to look European, and they are pitched as luxury products at attractive prices. Ford will give you an American Audi; Chrysler, an American Mercedes. The Chrysler has luxury touches like optional tortoise-shell-look accents.
The perk here is size. "Space is the ultimate luxury," said George Bucher, the Five Hundred's designer. This is far from the old ideal of the long, low American car.
The influence of trucks and S.U.V.'s may increase the car-car's utility, but the result is not necessarily graceful. The car-cars seem to be growing higher. Their beltlines are rising. and from the rear they tend to look sliced-off and blocky.
But Pontiac's G6 joins the Nissan Altima and Mazda 6 to prove that basic cars need not be dull. The problem lies with designs aimed at generating acceptance rather than enthusiasm. Too often the shape of the average car comes out looking like the average of other shapes. The car-car will disappear only if designers make it so bland that no one notices it any longer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/au...de2456&ei=5070
By PHIL PATTON
Published: April 11, 2004
LIKE the children in Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon, the auto industry's precocious offspring are all above average. The next generation of cars and trucks, on display this week at the New York auto show, are all special, gifted and talented, their manufacturers contend.
Automakers are reluctant to admit to making what designers call car-cars, the basic family sedans bought by millions of typical Americans. Instead, they prefer to draw attention to fanciful design studies that project fun and freedom, all the better if they exude elegance like the Buick Vélite or design innovation like the Lexus LF-C.
But car-cars do still exist, and they are especially noteworthy this year, given the unusual confluence of new mass-market models from General Motors, the Chrysler Group and Ford Motor. These new cars include the compact Chevrolet Cobalt, the midsize Buick LaCrosse and Ford Five Hundred and the family-size Chrysler 300.
In decades past, solid square-deal cars like the 1949 Ford or the 1955 Chevy - and later, the Galaxie and Impala, the Taurus and Caprice - transported the vast middle class. Although hundreds of thousands were sold each year, the cars were not just average, they were stylish enough to bring a touch of romance to the masses.
But in 2004 there is no single iconic family sedan, the bland Toyota Camry notwithstanding. This reflects social and cultural change, a shift toward a more heterogenous society, said Ed Welburn, executive design director at General Motors. "We don't have a single set of fashion rules any more, for instance," he said. "We don't go from wide to thin all at once. You can buy ties of different widths in department stores."
The decline of the universal family sedan is partly a result, too, of the industry's learning to build many different models on common foundations. The car-car is also fading as the industry gets better at building and selling the more specialized, low-volume models known as niche vehicles.
In the marketing world, segments divide into segments, like the flatworms in eighth-grade biology lab. Families no longer limit their auto shopping list to four-door sedans; realistically, the family-car segment now extends to minivans, sport utilities and even extended-cab pickup trucks.
That is why Ford is replacing the Taurus not with a single, restyled model, but with two sedans, including the Five Hundred on display at the show, plus the Freestyle utility wagon. The other, unnamed, Ford sedan will have variants from Lincoln (the Zephyr) and Mercury (the Montego).
The Five Hundred is an unabashed tribute to the Audi A6, with taillights that wrap around the corners like those of a Mercedes. Over at G.M., the Chevrolet Cavalier has been, for a quarter-century, the quintessential cheap rental car and the first new car for millions of Americans. For years, G.M. has sold about 250,000 Cavaliers a year, more than BMW's total United States sales.
But the Cavalier's low-rung spot will be taken by two cars, the Aveo and the Cobalt. The Cobalt comes not just as an unassuming sedan, but in extreme versions like an SS coupe aimed at young enthusiasts. While the sedan is no more distinctive than any other small four-door, the coupe is a blank canvas. Customized by options and added accessories, it will no longer seem generic.
In New York, the Aveo sits forlornly at the edge of G.M.'s display. It is the company's smallest, most basic car, a Korean-built Daewoo that wears Chevy's bow tie. The look is the product of Italdesign, Giorgetto Giugiaro's Italian design house. Customers might be forgiven for thinking that by relying so much on foreigners, Chevy doesn't have its heart in small cars.
The most innovative car-car is the Chrysler 300, which comes with a six-cylinder, at $25,000 or so, or the brutish Hemi V-8. The innovation here is in the proportions created by a shift to rear-wheel drive.
Trevor Creed, senior vice president for design at Chrysler, rightly calls the look "noble" and emphasizes its American roots. (Ralph Gilles, Chrysler's design director, designed the car.) To the man in the street, the upright lines suggest the nobility of a Mercedes - even if he hadn't heard that the car uses many Mercedes parts.
The new car-cars show the influence of sport utilities. Americans have grown accustomed to the size: car-cars now offer more interior space and higher seats that permit a better view, while diminishing the "loomed over" feeling one gets from being surrounded by trucks.
A Five Hundred driver sits four inches higher than in the Taurus; in the new 300, you are nearly three inches above where you'd be in a prior model, the 300M.
The truck impact is also visible in the fact that the 300's sibling, the Dodge Magnum, looks like a wagon but is listed as a truck.
The new car-cars claim to be luxury automobiles disguised as ordinary cars - "value propositions," in marketer-speak. They try to look European, and they are pitched as luxury products at attractive prices. Ford will give you an American Audi; Chrysler, an American Mercedes. The Chrysler has luxury touches like optional tortoise-shell-look accents.
The perk here is size. "Space is the ultimate luxury," said George Bucher, the Five Hundred's designer. This is far from the old ideal of the long, low American car.
The influence of trucks and S.U.V.'s may increase the car-car's utility, but the result is not necessarily graceful. The car-cars seem to be growing higher. Their beltlines are rising. and from the rear they tend to look sliced-off and blocky.
But Pontiac's G6 joins the Nissan Altima and Mazda 6 to prove that basic cars need not be dull. The problem lies with designs aimed at generating acceptance rather than enthusiasm. Too often the shape of the average car comes out looking like the average of other shapes. The car-car will disappear only if designers make it so bland that no one notices it any longer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/au...de2456&ei=5070
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