How designers are trying to reach different segments with smaller vehiclesLOS ANGELES -- In devising Ford Motor's next family vehicle, designers thought urban loft instead of McMansion.
That's because the car-like Edge, a new kid hauler that's critical to the financially troubled company, is 7 inches shorter and 367 pounds lighter than the archetypal SUV that reigned last decade, the Ford Explorer.
Designers wanted the Edge to feel small on the outside, big on the inside and decidedly fresh, airy and hip. And definitely not cheap.
Edge, and the next generation of vehicles like it, are the big hope of an auto industry that finds itself back in a familiar situation. Car buyers, fearful of more gas price jumps, are thinking small again. The last time that happened was in the 1980s, when motorists flocked to cheap small cars, derided as econoboxes. Besides being bland, the cars carried no profit margins, wrecking automakers' bottom lines.
This time, automakers are pressuring their designers to come up with new smaller vehicles that wow buyers -- older as well as young, families as well as singles, those with disposable incomes as well as those on a budget.
The designers are incorporating useful and desirable features, sculptured sheet metal and overall emotional appeal. The goal is make them so sexy that that they will sell for the same or more than today's bigger sedans and SUVs.
"Small does not equate to cheap anymore," says GM interior design chief Dave Rand.
With a base price of $25,995, Edge, for example, will cost $695 more than the Explorer when it arrives in showrooms by year's end.
Sure, it was SUVs that powered Detroit profits until gas prices rose. But foreign automakers have shown that small cars still can make money.
"Sexy small cars like (BMW's) Mini have really caught on," says George Peterson, president of consultancy AutoPacific, which predicts the percentage of small cars sold will continue to rise through 2010. "There are buyers who are willing to pay a premium price for a small car because they are fun to drive" and have a cachet.
Consider the premium for BMW's cheapest Mini Cooper. It lists at $17,450, but buyers typically tack on thousands more in options, spokesman Andrew Cutler says. The average price being paid for a new Mini Cooper as recently as September was $25,338, Power Information Network says.
Mini was named as the best value of any car this year in an annual survey of 64,000 new-car buyers by Strategic Vision, another industry consulting company.
But a hit like the Mini doesn't come along every day. Designers struggle to find the right size and features to attract customers who will see value in smaller vehicles.
To make vehicles look big on the inside, designers are turning to lighter upholstery shades, more glass and other tactics that give the appearance of space. Just making the seats thinner can open up extra room, says Jerry Hirshberg, retired president of Nissan Design International.
To make them look small on the outside, designers play some visual tricks. Joel Piaskowski, Hyundai's designer, says that rounded corners make a car appear more compact. It also helps to push the wheels to the corners of the car.
Sometimes automotive fads help the process along. GM's new full-size Chevrolet and GMC pickups "are not much smaller than the vehicles they replace but look smaller because of larger wheels and tires," says Rand.
Designers also have learned that a successful small car isn't just a downsized version of a larger one.
"In the '80s and late '70s, the idea was to take a big car and shrink it down," says Bruce Campbell, vice president of Nissan Design America. "Now when we start with fresh architecture, we do it right."
Just ask Chrysler's design staff. They had a hit in the latest version of the Chrysler 300 sedan, a slab-sided car that took the hip-hop generation by storm. But when they tried to create a smaller version for the redesign of its Sebring, the translation proved too literal.
"I jokingly called it 'Mini-Me's limousine,' " says Chrysler designer Joe Dehner, a reference to the little villain in the Austin Power movies. Instead, the new Sebring was designed from the ground up.
Whether it's a car like the new Sebring or a crossover like Edge, small vehicles aren't just being targeted to the young and broke anymore. They are aimed at a cross-section of buyers. How designers are trying to reach different segments with smaller vehicles:
• Hipsters. They've been lured by bold design before. Volkswagen's New Beetle, Chrysler's PT Cruiser and Toyota's Scions have all gone on to small-car success.
Nissan hopes to have a similar hit in the redesigned Sentra compact.
• Families. When it comes to thinking small, families could be designers' toughest customers. Moving them from hulking, truck-like SUVs into car-like crossovers like Edge won't be easy unless they can be convinced that smaller vehicles offer loads of space.
• Luxury buyers. With its CTS, GM's Cadillac showed that a domestic brand could compete in the entry-level luxury segment. In fact, the CTS may change Detroit's thinking about luxury. "We don't rely on bigness to get across the idea of luxury," Rand says.
