Sunday, January 28, 2007
New car models are showing more aggressive designs and better interiors.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
DETROIT -- A walk through the North American International Auto Show earlier this month revealed telltale cues about what tomorrow's cars and trucks will look like -- inside and out -- and the features they will offer to attract buyers in an increasingly competitive market.
"You didn't come away with the feeling that something phenomenal had just occurred," said David O'Connell, chief designer at Mitsubishi Motors Corp.'s U.S. research and design center in Cypress, Calif. Still, the Detroit show demonstrated "a lot of little sparks of energy that showed some trends."
One is the return of fender vents, or gills.
Chrysler Corp.'s Buick started it decades ago with portholes arranged along the front fenders. Land Rover updated the look recently with long vertical slits just behind the front wheel well of its Range Rover models. General Motors Corp.'s Cadillac joined the crowd with chromed vent openings high on the front fenders of the Escalade sport utility vehicle.
Many models use it
At the Detroit show, at least a dozen models on display -- concepts as well as production models heading to dealer showrooms -- featured rectangular or slotted vents and ventlike trim pieces of one sort or another.
"Everybody's doing gills," said market researcher George Peterson, president of AutoPacific Inc. in Tustin, Calif.
Some were functional, such as slots that enable hot air to flow from under the hood of the Jaguar C-XF four-door sedan concept. Others, notably the chromed faux vents slapped onto the side of Ford Motor Co.'s 2008 Focus, had little function beyond an attempt at eye appeal.
The big news for exterior design, though, seems to be that the featureless curves of the jellybean shape popular for most of the past 20 years -- think Ford Taurus -- have been melded with the angles and creases of the origami school of design that defined cars of the 1970s.
The result is that cars and trucks are starting to sport surfaces with tauter curves highlighted by muscular flared fenders and bold character lines -- the ridges or creases that run from front to back along the side of a vehicle, usually beneath or just above the level of the door handles.
"Car shapes won't be looking so melted," Mitsubishi's O'Connell said.
Accord coupe
Perhaps the best example was the Accord coupe concept car shown by Honda Motor Co.
Company insiders described the model as close to what the production car will be when it is launched in the fall.
The concept on display in Detroit featured a long hood, a sloping rear window line reminiscent of a 1966 Ford Mustang fastback and an aggressive nose-down, rear-in-the-air stance highlighted by bulging rear fender flares.
"The era of the bland midsized car for everyman is going away," analyst Jim Sanfilippo said. Automakers have "finally figured out that no customer wants a boring car."
The Honda was a coupe, but Sanfilippo, a Detroit-based analyst at auto marketing and product research firm AMCI, said he expected the next-generation Accord sedan to share some of the same lines.
On the inside
Interior styling trends were also a hot topic in Detroit.
"That was the general direction of the show -- better interiors," said Steve Lewis, assistant chief designer at Audi's U.S. advanced design studio in Santa Monica, Calif.
Automakers have rediscovered "that while people initially are attracted by the exterior, the interior has to captivate because that's where we spend most of our time" after buying the car, he said.
Cheap, hard, shiny plastic surfaces have become a thing of the past as even the least-expensive economy cars have begun to offer upgraded interiors with soft, textured vinyls, nubby cloth upholstery and metallic accent pieces.
"Everyone has gone upscale," said Hak Soo Ha, a design manager for the interior design group for Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford.
Interior features that soon will make their way into production models at all price levels include ambient lighting that is not just for the instrument panel. Colored lights in many models at the show highlighted door sills, map pockets, even cup holders.
Most automakers soon will be offering some kind of electronic interface in their vehicles to enable drivers and passengers to plug their digital music players, wireless cell phones and even laptop computers into on-board audio systems.
"The show was all about how cars can be individualized, how the vehicle now is going to be all about the consumer," said Jack Jittkaroonrus, a designer at CarLab, an automotive product development firm in Orange, Calif.
"Outside, shapes are more aggressive; inside, the materials are greatly improved," Jittkaroonrus said. "And there are just a whole lot of technology features to make things easier to use."