The Chrysler PT Cruiser, which looked like nothing else when it was launched in 2000, has sold more than half a million copies, making it a hit.
The Mini Cooper also has been a hit as a niche vehicle with 32,222 sales through November.
But the Pontiac Aztek and BMW Z4 are among the cars with out-there designs that have disappointed. Aztek sold only 19,186 copies and Z4 sold 13,117 through November.
So why do some far-out cars capture buyers’ hearts and wallets while others barely register a shrug?
Because it’s not about design. According to longtime Mazda designer Tom Matano, a risky design must fit its brand and price point to be successful.
Experts also cite the market segment a car is in and the financial pressure to make certain vehicles successful as factors that weigh on the process, making the goal of edgy-but-popular designs more elusive.
“Some customers want things that push the envelope because they want a vehicle that screams ‘look at me,’ ” Pontiac spokesman Jim Hopson said. “Others want things because they want a vehicle for pure transportation.”
Matano, now the director of the Industrial Design Department at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco, said some manufacturers court those groups of buyers and build their mentality into their brands’ image.
“Chrysler by nature, they can’t be a follower. They always have to take some risks,” Matano said. This is in evidence all the way back to the minivan in the 1980s. “Toyota could take risks, but they usually don’t.”
Chrysler Group has had several models in recent years that were hits with critics, buyers or both. In addition to the Cruiser, the Crossfire and 300 have met or exceeded sales goals; the Plymouth Prowler served its purpose of garnering attention for the company; and the Dodge Viper has rivaled the Chevrolet Corvette for sports car supremacy among American builders since its inception in 1989.
Chrysler hits its marks by taking an “educated risk” and aiming for design that will enthrall some while alienating others, said Sam Locricchio, communication manager for Chrysler Group design.
“What you have to do is find design that [has] one of two things: People who love it, and people who aren’t necessarily going to love it,” he said. “The tension that exists in between there is what really turns heads.”
The Crossfire, with its ridged hood and extreme fastback, is an example of a Chrysler design that became a hit because of the risks it took, said Bryon Fitzpatrick, transportation design chairman at Detroit’s College of Creative Studies, which says it has placed more designers in the auto industry than any other school.
“It’s a little overdone … but it’s very attractive. It’s very modern,” he said. “I think it inspires people because it is different, it is exciting.”
Fitzpatrick said all companies have people seeking innovative looks, but some put a higher priority on function or sales.
“The designers will always come up with really interesting and sometimes far-out concepts,” Fitzpatrick said. “But when management and engineers and bean-counters come calling, they’re going to back off.”
That didn’t happen with the Chevrolet SSR, a roadster truck with a cargo bed and a retractable hardtop. Bob Tripolsky, Chevrolet spokesman for the SSR and Corvette, said the concept was put forward as “an afterthought” in preparation for the 2000 auto-show season, and management–particularly General Motors Chief Executive Rick Wagoner–championed it.
The $40,000-plus SSR was intended as a niche vehicle, but it has sold only 8,538 copies through November.
“When you’re talking about a low-volume vehicle that we consider a halo for the truck side of the operation at Chevrolet, just like Corvette is a halo for the car side, styling is a very important part of the equation,” he said.
That notion of success being measured by factors other than sales is becoming rare in the industry, Matano said. In the past, he said, GM would use brands to introduce elements of a car–Pontiac for design or Cadillac for technology–and even if a certain car had poor sales, it served a purpose by letting people get used to new ideas.
“Nowadays I don’t really see that kind of a planned structure,” he said. “Nobody’s using one line to be experimental or avant-garde anymore. I guess nobody can afford it anymore.”
In some automotive segments, designers are limited by function. Pickup trucks, for example, must be able to serve as work trucks, and midsize sedans draw buyers who mainly want safe, reliable transportation.
“The hottest-selling car is the Camry. And a more boring car you’ll never see, but it does everything you expect of it,” Fitzpatrick said.
He also labeled Ford’s Five Hundred sedan, which came out this model year, as “really boring.”
But Matano said Ford is among the brands that shouldn’t take risks. He said its cars have been intended to appeal to the mass market since the Model T.
“Every time Ford gambles on something, they’ve failed in the past,” he said. “Ford shouldn’t be taking gambles.”
Matano said the Mazda6 midsize sedan also took fewer risks than might be expected from a brand that markets itself on fun and performance, though he said that’s in large part because the car is sold around the world and must satisfy diverse markets. He said the company took a bigger risk with the compact Mazda3, giving it a wagon-like hatchback version, because its predecessor, the Protege, was successful with a similar formula.
Furthermore, he said, Mazda took the design of the Mazda3 about as far as it could go.
“If you want to take it farther, then you might have to create another brand, like Mazda-speed,” he said, in reference to the company’s designation for high-performance versions of its cars.
The Mazda6 also has a hatchback version, but its shape is very similar to that of the sedan. Robert Davis, Mazda North American senior vice president of marketing and product development, said that in itself is a unique design element, and one that paid off.
“Customers are coming in asking not for a five-door or a four-door, but a Mazda6, and when they see a five-door they say, `Man, that looks good,'” he said.
On the other extreme are cars that suffer because they don’t take enough chances, such as the Pontiac GTO, which has had 10,617 sales through November–well below the pace it needs to sell its target of 16,000. The only criticism of the car has been that its design is bland, though Pontiac says short supplies and a winter launch contributed to poor sales.
“The interesting things about the GTO is that while we have heard the word `bland,’ we haven’t heard anyone say it’s unattractive,” Pontiac’s Hopson said. “It’s a sleeper. It’s not the kind of car that screams `Hey I can beat you from any stoplight anywhere.’ . . . It’s a different kind of performer.”
Bill Knotek of Lockport has been using a 2004 GTO as his daily driver since trading in a Pontiac Bonneville in March, and agrees that the car should be judged on performance–and often is at stoplights.
“Cars that would be in my peer group–Corvette, Firebird, Mustang–they don’t really look like they want to take their chances,” he said. “It’s the kids with the Saturns and the Hondas” who challenge him in an ultimately futile display of youthful exuberance, he said.
Knotek, who owns a 1968 GTO among his three vintage cars, downplayed the importance of looking like the original.
“In the GTO community, there’s a lot of whining that it doesn’t have any retro design cues,” he said. “Most of the cars that have been built in the last few years, they make a splash and then a couple years later, dealers can’t give them away,” he said, pointing to the Ford Thunderbird, revived in 2002, as an example.
Still, Pontiac is dressing up the 2005 GTO with a split rear exhaust and an optional hood scoop, which Hopson said is the element consumers asked for most.
“The GTOs from 1964 to 1974 all possess hood scoops of some variation, although the location and size and functionality of those hood scoops varied from year to year,” Hopson said. (The 2005 hood scoop will be more than cosmetic; it will bring air into the engine compartment but not directly into the air intake box.)
The Honda S2000, which has never had as many as 10,000 sales a year, could fall into that category. But while the GTO design seems to have missed its fan base, Matano said the S2000 failed to match its price point with its understated shape and simple lines.
“That doesn’t look like a $35,000 car,” he said. “Performance and everything may, but if you look at the surface it doesn’t have everything that car is supposed to have.”
Locricchio also said a car must have something more than design, be it performance, functionality or reliability.
“It’s almost like a marriage and a courtship,” he said. “You’re drawn to the person or that vehicle because they catch your eye, but to live with that every day, it comes down to what’s inside.”
