AUTO INDUSTRY Companies steer vehicles toward target markets

Category-defying vehicles are aimed at young buyers.
ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
It's a niche, niche, niche, niche world.
It's niche on your 200-channel TV. It's niche at your multiethnic grocery. It's niche at the mall, niche when you play, niche at your church, temple or mosque.
And now, the Summer of the Box Mobile, it's niche in your garage.
At least in Eric Melzer's.
About a month ago, Melzer, of Newport Beach, Calif., bought a Scion xB, a $15,000 vehicle that looks part van, part hatchback, part delivery truck.
The brand, Scion, is new. It's Toyota's name for a line of youth-focused vehicles the car company hopes to sell. Toyota, favored by baby boomers, is seeing the average age of its buyer grow by about a year every year.
So, in an effort to avoid becoming Cadillac or Lincoln -- two brands that previously have been associated with older customers -- Toyota is trying to lure the young. Hence, Scion. And the vehicle name, xB, also is new. In Japan, Toyota has been selling the car under the name bB.
Whatever. It's all edgy, unusual, beyond categorization. You get the idea.
A fascination
But more important, Melzer's boxy ride isn't close to what he was looking for in a vehicle; it is exactly the car he's been thinking about for some time, even though he didn't always know he was thinking about it.
"I've always been fascinated with Japanese cars and particularly with Japanese cars not usually available in America," says Melzer, 28, who repairs laser devices in dental offices. "When I first saw pictures of this car in Japan, I really wanted to get one."
And that's an example -- OK, an extreme example, but an example nonetheless -- of the new wave in the marketing of American consumer goods.
As the culture morphs into an increasingly large cluster of tribes, of sometimes smallish groups who happen to share common interests or ideologies or paychecks, entire industries -- in this case, the auto industry -- are dropping precision-bomb products like the xB onto the heads of consumers such as Melzer.
Of course, not every product bomb lands where it's aimed. And so far, that's true with this summer's rash of new, box-shaped cars.
Honda's answer
Like the xB, the recently introduced Honda Element is an edgy, cooler-than-cool machine. It has a huge radio, and its design screams something about angularity. The Element's engine is significantly bigger than the xB's, and its seats fold up into configurations that make car camping or surfboard hauling (or both) easy. The Element costs a bit more than the xB (about $19,000, though it's selling above sticker for now), and is, by most accounts, at least as solid a vehicle.
Honda's goal -- to get younger and hipper by wooing younger, hipper customers -- is the same as Toyota's.
Too bad. Average age for an Element buyer is 42, roughly twice as old as the Gen-Y surf/skate/bike dude that Honda hoped to reach.
"From what I understand, their target initially was an 18-year-old, unemployed male," says Art Spinella, founder of CNW Market Research, an Oregon company that provides consumer-spending data for automakers and other consumer-product companies.
At first blush, this miss is good news for Honda. Unemployed teens aren't a great buying group. And with the influx of older buyers, Honda figures it'll sell about 70,000 Elements this year, up from the 50,000 it once projected.
For now, the hope at Honda is that the tribe of Element buyers will turn out to be linked more by behavior than by age.
"There are a lot of 40-something surfers and mountain bikers out there, and they're the people who are buying the Element," says Honda spokesman Andy Boyd. "The average age of our buyer isn't really a problem."
Many flavors
Oreos, for example, now come in a half-dozen varieties, including some that are sold only seasonally. Soon, the entire auto industry will do something similar. This year, it will bring a record 35 new or redesigned cars to market. But in four years, the new-vehicle figure is predicted to hit 70.
Among the expected new offerings will be diesel-powered sedans for those who crave mileage and durability, and sports cars with electric/gas hybrid motors for those who want a peppy drive and blue skies. At least one superbig truck (Ford's 2006 Super Duty) will be designed to look, in part, like a Tonka toy.
The expected new-car wave isn't whimsy. For companies selling any kind of product in the niche world, offering up a vast & agrave; la carte menu of products is a matter of survival.