Ford’s new Explorer Sport Trac and Lincoln’s new Blackwood combine sport-utility cabs with pickup-truck cargo beds, though in very different ways.
Chevrolet’s new Tahoe sport-utility vehicle has the seating capacity of a mini-van.
Pontiac’s Aztek tries for a triple treat by combining the attributes of a sedan, mini-van and sport-utility.
The auto industry is about to take America’s infatuation with trucks down a new road, and consumers are likely to be surprised at how many ways trucks can be sliced, diced and spliced and how the line between a car and a truck is not just blurring but disappearing.
“The manufacturers are, it seems, combining many body styles with each other, and in the process creating more hybrids than one thought possible. The conventional definitions of a car and truck are losing their substance,” said Tom Libby, director of the performance improvement team in the Troy, Mich., offices of J.D. Power and Associates.
For the auto manufacturers the payoff is more customers and more money, and there is good news for consumers.
“Whenever there’s this open competition the consumer benefits,” Libby said. “One, in choice of product and the other in terms of price.”
Car substitute
Industry analysts attribute much of this action in the pickup segment to the crossover of the full-size pickup from a commercial vehicle to a personal-use vehicle with four doors and an extended cab.
“The idea of selling pickups to people to use as cars has increased sales in the full-size arena dramatically,” said John Stewart, editorial director of the Petersen Truck Group in Los Angeles, which publishes magazines, including Four Wheeler and Truck Trends.
One out of every eight vehicles sold in the U.S. is a full-size pickup, and the segment is likely to get bigger, said James N. Hall, vice president of industry analysis for AutoPacific Inc. in Southfield, Mich.
In 1999, it looks like the total U.S. market (foreign and domestic) is going to be 52 percent cars and 48 percent trucks. By 2004, the breakdown is going to be 52 percent trucks and 48 percent cars, according to AutoPacific.
“So they flip-flop volumewise,” Hall said. “Ten years ago, in 1989, it was 67.3 percent cars and 32.7 percent trucks.”
Given these figures, and the fact that trucks continue to increase their share of the U.S. light-vehicle market, it is no wonder that Toyota replaced its small truck, the T100, with the full-size 2000 Tundra, which is powered by a V-8 engine for the first time.
“Toyota wants in on this,” Stewart said. “Toyota’s position is that they have been losing many truck owners to full-size domestics, and they would really rather have a product they could offer.”
The automakers don’t want the truck-fest to end, so they are experimenting more and trying to appeal to many subsets of customers.
“I think they are throwing out a lot of alternatives and in time there will be a weeding out of ones that don’t work,” said Libby.
Sport-utility pickups
One thing the automakers are trying is a new category of “sport-utility pickups.”
Going beyond the extra bit of room offered by extended or crew cabs, SUPs combine full-size cabins of sport-utility vehicles with shortened pickup beds.
Nissan showed its concept SUT (Sport-Utility Truck) at January’s Detroit Auto Show, but it looks as if Ford and Lincoln are going to be the first out with such vehicles.
Nissan research showed that truck owners use their vehicle beds only 25 percent of the time and then generally use only 20 percent of the space. But research also showed that sport-utility owners like to keep the interiors of their vehicles clean. So Nissan created a four-door, sport-utility cabin with an abbreviated bed with a rear door that swings open to carry that 4×8 sheet of plywood.
A Nissan spokesman said the SUT is a logical addition to the next Frontier, but a decision has not been made whether to put it into production. Nissan, however, has applied to trademark the term “sport-utility truck.”
For the 2001 model year, Ford has two SUPs. The Explorer Sport Trac marries the Explorer cabin to the 4-foot cargo bed of a pickup with a foldable, lockable hard tonneau cover. In 2001, the F-150 Crew Cab joins an Expedition cabin to an F-150 cargo bed. It is the first truck in its lineup to offer a full rear-passenger compartment with four full-size doors.
Ford sees different markets for the two. The Explorer Sport Trac is aimed at younger buyers who want a sport-ute with extra cargo space. The F-150 is intended for families who want cargo capacity and comfortable passenger space.
Still, some industry watchers are not sure how functional these combinations will be.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen there,” said Petersen’s Stewart. “The idea of an SUV with a bed on it is pretty cute, original, interesting, entertaining, but from my very functional four-wheel-drive background, I keep thinking that a bed does ultimately have to be capable of carrying stuff.”
The luxury market for this isn’t being ignored, either, as Lincoln will weigh in with its four-door Blackwood, which goes into production late next year.
The Blackwood combines the Navigator with a pickup bed. Inside there are four bucket seats, and the bed is an enclosed 4-foot 8-inch box that serves as a trunk. The exterior trunk area is covered with more than 20 square feet of Wenge wood, a dark dense, striated wood from central Africa.
Consumers could be seeing more of these combinations in luxury vehicles, where profit margins are so high, Libby said.
According to a report in Automotive News, Cadillac has a response to the Blackwood under way, but Cadillac executives will neither confirm nor deny that.
Industry sources also say Chevrolet is coming out with a vehicle similar to the Blackwood, based on the Suburban and likely to be named Avalanche, Hall said.
Hall expects it to bow within two years, but Chevy is mum.
These “product-line extensions” are no different from Colgate toothpaste coming out with stripes and then with tartar control, said Jay Houghton, automotive account director at the Troy, Mich., office of Oracle Corp. “The truck industry is constantly trying to add a new package, a new configuration in order to keep the momentum going.”
Door wars
Garden-variety pickups are also becoming more congenial.
In 1998, Ford began adding four doors to its models. These were were hinged to the C-pillar and opened rearward, making it easier to get in back of an extended cab.
The trend now seems to be to four full doors.
The 2000 Nissan Frontier Crew Cab compact pickup has four forward-hinged doors.
DaimlerChrysler’s Dodge has introduced a four-door version of the Dakota compact pickup, the Quad Cab, with more passenger room and easier access. It goes on sale in November. The marketing launch, when more are produced, is the end of the year.
Four doors and a crew cab also are expected for Chevrolet’s S-10 compact pickup, according to industry sources. This means a roomier back seat and four full doors, most likely front-hinged.
Things happen quickly in the segment. Once a new feature is added by one manufacturer, it becomes “a minimum daily requirement” for all, said Hall.
Seat wars
The door wars in pickups look to be the seat wars in sport-utility vehicles as the addition of third-row seats gives them the passenger capacity of mini-vans.
“When a model sells well with a certain feature, anybody who has a similar model that does not have that feature has to add it to be competitive,” said Libby.
Analysts say the Dodge Durango with its eight-passenger capacity, the nine-passenger Ford Expedition and seven-passenger Lincoln Navigator have been successes. Competitors are adjusting.
The redesigned 2000 Chevrolet Tahoe and GMC Yukon will seat up to nine. It is likely that more and more GM sport-utilities will get the third-row treatment.
And industry sources say GM is designing a longer version of the Blazer that will seat up to eight and is likely to make it to market before 2004. Chevrolet will not confirm nor deny those reports.
Ford is expected to add third-row seats to the 2001 Explorer, though the automaker is mum.
Blends
Automakers have introduced sport-utilities based on passenger cars, such as Volvo’s Cross Country and Subaru’s Forester. More are coming, said Hall.
One is the Ford Escape, which will arrive the first half of next year, and Hall believes it will begin to shake things up among the mid-range sport-utilities.
“It looks like they are going to aim it to be competitive with the (Jeep) Cherokee at around $17,000 to $18,000, and it will have a level of refinement you won’t be able to touch in any other vehicle at that price,” he said.
At the Detroit Auto Show, GM showed the Pontiac Aztek concept.
This cross-over vehicle combined the attributes and features of a sport-utility (command seating), mini-van (seating and cargo flexibility) and sedan (car-like ride and handling) based on the Montana mini-van platform. It was rumored to be a preview of a production vehicle coming in a few years. Industry insiders say it will be showing up again this auto-show season and is very likely to be a 2001 model with the concept’s funky design. It is aimed at the youth market.
That’s entertainment
Even individualists who are bravely resisting peer pressure to purchase the much-maligned mini-vans have some excitement in store with more seating versatility and entertainment options.
The 1999 Honda Odyssey took the lead in seating. Though bigger than its predecessor, Honda carried over its innovative third-row seat that can be easily folded and stowed in a well in the floor, leaving a large, flat cargo area. This feature does away with the need to remove heavy seats on rollers.
The Odyssey’s “convertible” second-row bucket seats also let owners slide the second row of seats apart (as Captain’s chairs) or together (to form a bench seat).
The 2000 Mazda MPV is next up with those features.
Oldsmobile has started a mini-entertainment revolution by adding a factory-installed video system with a screen that pulls down from the overhead console to its Silhouette mini-van.
It is hoped that children will find a movie more entertaining than yelling, “She’s looking out my window” or “He touched me.”
Oldsmobile calls this the Silhouette the Premier. Video systems have been available in floor consoles for mini-vans and conversion vans, but this is the first factory-installed version with the pop-down screen with which airline passengers are familiar.
Oldsmobile didn’t have this feature to itself for long before GM stablemate Pontiac began to offer it as “Montanavision” on extended-wheelbase models of its Montana mini-van for 1999. Now automakers ranging from Nissan to Chrysler are offering rear video entertainment systems.
Where this is heading is anyone’s guess.
“It’s like fireworks. One rocket goes up and all these things burst off of it,” said Houghton. “But the question is how long it will last before someone invents a new more attractive concept instead of tweaking the basic concept.
“This is like the movie industry. After three sequels, they try doing a `prequel.’ Pretty soon you have to come up with a new story.”
