If you want to haul 2x4s, get a truck.
If you want open-air driving, get a convertible.
If you want zero-to-60-m.p.h. off-the-line power, get a sports coupe.
But if want to haul 2x4s, have the wind toss your locks and zip down the strip ahead of the others without buying three vehicles, you’ll soon be able to opt for a Chevrolet SSR.
A variety of trucks, vans and sport-utility vehicles, as well as truck/van/SUV derivatives, variants and hybrids, are on display at the Chicago Auto Show in McCormick Place South through Sunday.
One trip around show makes it clear that trucks have come a long way from the days when they hauled hay.
It’s also clear that even the term truck may need an overhaul soon.
The SSR is a concept, though the term concept is used loosely because the vehicle has been approved for production; it just doesn’t have a firm introduction date.
SSR is a pickup, built off the Chevy S-10 platform, making it a compact truck that will haul 2x4s. It also comes with a power retractable hardtop roof, making it a convertible. There are only two seats, so it’s a roadster. And a 6-liter V-8 provides enough power to give it bragging rights as a performance machine.
Then there’s the Ford Equator concept, which started life as an extended-cab Ford F-150 pickup, shrunk to the size of a Ford Explorer sport-ute.
Equator addresses one problem of trucks: a high step-in height that makes entry and exit difficult, especially when compared with the low-slung family sedan. When you open any of Equator’s doors, a step hydraulically motors down from that door panel to form a mini running board to ease entry and exit. When the door is closed, the step motors back up into the panel.
But while offering car-like ease of entry, Equator holds true to its truck heritage with that step, which has a tool compartment.
Equator addresses another shortcoming of trucks–that the long bed can make it difficult to pull all the way into the garage or slip into or out of the parking space at the store. Unlike most trucks with those long beds designed to hold 2x4s, as well as 4×8 sheets of plywood, Equator has only a 5-foot bed.
But, again, its truck heritage isn’t forgotten. The rear window slips into the rear cabin wall and the rear seats fold down, providing the space needed to haul the lumber.
Chevy has done the same with its extended-cab Avalanche pickup that comes out in the spring of 2001 as a 2002 model. Avalanche has a 5-foot, 3-inch bed; but remove the rear glass, fold down the rear cabin wall or “midgate,” and drop the seats, and that 8-foot piece of lumber fits.
The GMC concept Terradyne pickup also offers a power step like the Equator’s, evidence that such a feature is thisclose to appearing on trucks, just like cupholders and push-button four-wheel-drive.
Terradyne boasts of another novel feature that consumers can expect to see soon: a non-traditional door system.Though the same size as regular doors, the Terradyne doors pop out and slide open similar to those on mini-vans, which eliminates entry and exit problems in parking lots and makes it easier for older motorists to get in and out without having to fight heavy doors. GM is testing this system in earnest.
DaimlerChrysler offers another twist to the pickup truck: The concept Dodge MAXXcab is a sedan variant of the Dakota pickup.
Like Equator and Avalanche, MAXXcab features four traditional swing-out doors that open to a cabin as spacious as that on the family sedan.
As evidence that the family sedan of the future can just as easily be a truck, MAXXcab comes with a split rear seat in which the middle section holds a child seat. When Mom or Dad want that child closer, such as to hand the baby a bottle or a snack, the parent pushes a button on the dash and the child and seat motor six inches forward.
After the seat motors back into position, Mom and Dad can monitor the child and siblings with a camera in the roof panel that shows its display in the instrument panel.
And the family truck goes one step beyond the mini-van in that a picnic table and chairs are integrated into the rear cargo floor so the family can stop and lunch on that long trip to see the relatives. (The Honda Odyssey mini-van has a removable table that stows in the rear floor.)
“You’ll see more of this stuff,” says Art Spinella, referring to truck derivates as well as novel features.
Consumers have not demanded such things as drop-down steps or sliding front doors but they have demanded easier entry and exit from big trucks, and the automakers came up with these ideas as possible solutions, said Spinella, general manager of CNW Marketing/Research of Bandon, Ore., which studies the reasons people buy the vehicles they do.
“Each year after the Los Angeles and Detroit auto shows in January we conduct special clinics among hundreds of new-vehicle intenders to measure their emotions to what they saw at the shows,” said Spinella.
“We’ve found that any vehicle that scores in the 95 to 100 range in our study usually has broad appeal while any vehicle that scores below 95 would have a problem.
“For example, the new Volkswagen Beetle scored the highest of any vehicle we’ve ever surveyed–at 184–while the last-generation Ford Taurus, which bombed, came in at 81. But the new generation Taurus, which is doing very well, scored 107,” he said, adding that there is no top figure in the range.
“The first reaction to the Chevy Avalanche was that it simply was another big truck. Then when the people saw the midgate and learned how it worked, that one feature blew them away and they got excited and started coming up with reasons to justify the purchase of that truck. Avalanche scored 137,” Spinella said.
“Avalanche hit an emotional chord just like the original Miata, which scored 161, the Dodge Viper, which scored 179, and the new Beetle,” he said.
Spinella said auto shows are the perfect test bed for automakers to judge ideas.
“This is why the automakers have brought so many concepts to auto shows the last few years–to let consumers see things like midgates, fold-down steps and sliding doors so that based on the emotional feedback they can narrow down the choices of what consumers want,” Spinella said.
“For example, our surveys showed that no one demanded a third door for pickup trucks until consumers saw concept trucks with third doors at auto shows and then everyone wanted one,” Spinella said.
By the way, other concepts that scored high on the CNW emotion survey were the Buick LaCrosse sedan, which isn’t at the auto show, at 120; the Chevy SSR convertible truck, at 114; and the Dodge MAXXcab, though no final number has been calculated, Spinella said.
Besides, the attention to trucks that act like trucks and those that act like sedans reflects how consumer preferences have changed in the last few years.
Automakers sold a record 16.9 million cars and trucks in the 1999 calendar year, up 6 percent, or more than 900,000 units, from the previous record of 16 million sold in calendar 1986.
An analysis of the numbers by Morgan & Co., a West Olive, Mich.–based automotive forecast/research/analysis firm, leaves little doubt about consumer preferences.
For example, GM car sales fell 45 percent, to 2.5 million units in ’99 from 4.6 million in 1986, but truck sales rose 55 percent, to 2.3 million from 1.5 million.
Ford car sales were off 24 percent, to 1.5 million from 2 million, and truck sales were up 84 percent, to 2.4 million from 1.3 million.
And DaimlerChrysler car sales were down 43 percent, to 745,000 from 1.3 million in ’86, but truck sales were up 135 percent, to 1.89 million from 803,676 in ’86.
Industrywide, car sales were off 23 percent, to 8.6 million from 11.4 million in ’86, while truck sales rose 78 percent, to 8.2 million from 4.6 million in ’86.
Also, Ford and DaimlerChrysler sold more trucks than cars in ’99, while at GM car sales topped trucks by fewer that 200,000 units. Sales of trucks didn’t top cars probably because three GM truck plants were converting to next-generation models, which held down output.
Mazda provides a glimpse of yet another trend: the sedan/SUV in its Nextourer, a mouthful of a name that should be revised and shortened when the vehicle’s produced in the next three years. Nextourer is a cross between wagon, van and sedan that stops short of sport-ute genes because it comes with only front-wheel-drive.
Hyundai is using the show to introduce its concept CrossTour “triple-utility vehicle,” a four-door wagon/sedan/SUV based on the Sonata sedan platform that can be offered with front- or all-wheel-drive.
The Buick Rendezvous and Pontiac Aztek are also hybrids, but they are crosses between mini-van and sport-ute and feature four- or all-wheel-drive.
Both are built off the GM mini-van platform, but Aztek was given a sport-ute appearance in keeping with Pontiac’s excitement and performance theme while Rendezvous was given sedan-like styling in keeping with Buick’s premium American motor-car theme. Aztek comes out this summer, Rendezvous a year from now.
Many of these vehicles are made on existing platforms.
Automakers make a variety of models off the same platform and plan to do so even more in the future. But they’ve learned the value of different exterior styling, different engines and suspensions and, thus, different personalities.
A prime example is Rendezvous/Aztek, built off the GM mini-van, though neither looks or acts like a van, much less like each other.
Platform sharing also keeps plants operating at capacity by filling them with high-volume models and limited-edition niche vehicles.
