I have an announcement to make this week. If you look at next week's Feature of the McLaren F1, you'll see our new car evaluator, the "NOT-ometer". It is a very reliable meter to indicate whether the car under consideration is a refrigerator, getting a zero evaluation, or a car,
getting a ten evaluation. Of course there are some cars out there that get an evaluation somewhere between zero and ten. Here's a sample for you to look at next week.
On to something really about cars, I'm wondering just how long the romance with SUVs and trucks will last. I keep thinking that it is just a fad and will disappear sometime soon. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be on the horizon. But what is on the horizon?
It appears that manufacturers can't seem to figure out what the automotive consumer really wants. They are trying to make the "butchest" SUV around, yet also blanding out others making them almost cars.
Take for example GM. They have told themselves that they have very accurately figured out the "brand identity" of the Hummer after buying it from AM General. Oh yeah? What I see is the original H1 which is really used by the Army, then GM invented a cartoon version of it, making it a bit smaller and called it the H2. Apparently cartoons do sell and it was at least an initial success. Now to capitalize on the success of cartoons, we'll have a truck version of the H2 very soon and next year a miniature cartoon of the H2 truck called the H3. Soon to follow will be a 4-door version of the H3. Obviously people like to drive around in cartoons.
At the other end of the scale we find Honda. Poor Honda is a truckless company in a sea of companies making money like mad selling trucks. Woe is Honda! The answer is obviously for Honda to make a truck. But how? They could design a new truck frame-based platform and make a "real" truck, but they decided not to do that. Instead, they have announced in January that people really want cars, so they are remodeling the Pilot into a unibody truck.
This new Honda will be the first unibody truck since the VW Rabbit and Dodge Rampage/Plymouth Scamp of the early eighties, unless you include the current Subaru Baja as a truck. Note that this new truck, based on the Pilot, which is based on the Odyssey minivan, which is based on the Accord shows how to really make the maximum use of a platform.
Honda is responding to arch rival Toyota who has made real trucks in all shapes and sizes for many years. Toyota and Nissan were the pioneers in the "little truck" or more properly compact truck market. Both brought here really little ones in the mid-sixties. It was 1969, when the compact truck really hit the U.S. from Japan. Nissan as a Datsun started selling their "Pickup" and Toyota sold their first "Hilux". These were really little body-on-frame trucks.
But what has happened to these compact trucks? They've really grown up. Bigger is better in the U.S., so they've gradually grown into big trucks. The original Datsun was 170 inches long. The current Frontier is 203 inches long. That's a lot bigger.
Is there a market for a smaller truck? I think so. On vacation in Mexico I saw Volkswagen's newer version of the Rabbit pickup. It is called the "Pointer" in Mexico. That's a unique model to Mexico that is about the same as the Golf. While the market wouldn't be huge, in this era of filling every little niche in the vehicle arena, VW is really missing the boat by not federalizing this cute little pickup and bringing it here.
This wouldn't be all that difficult because the Golf and New Beetle sold in the U.S. are already made in Mexico. While the body for the Pointer is different than the Golf and probably doesn't currently meet the U.S. safety standards, it wouldn't be all that difficult for Volkswagen to upgrade it for sale here.
The VW Pointer pickup is an improvement over the Rabbit pickup because the cab is longer. It looks like there probably will be room for a bigger driver or passenger with the latest pickup.
If Volkswagen would decide to bring the little truck here, Ford and GM will do the same as they also have little pickups in Mexico. These are based on European platforms, so they too should be rather easy to bring up to U.S. standards. Who will be the first to see this niche and fill it?
Apparently the honchos at Chrysler have looked at the success of the Hummer cartoons and decided that their own Jeeps weren't butch enough looking. The latest styling studies of Jeeps show them looking like Hummer clones. I guess that means that if you need a real off-road vehicle, the performance alone isn't enough. It needs to look like a real military HMMWV (High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle) or Hummer. Look for the upcoming Grand Cherokee replacement to get the Hummer cartoon treatment.
Even Land Rover isn't immune to the "need to cartoon". Their latest styling study for a Discovery-like SUV is another view of the Hummer. I wonder what the saturation point is for vehicles that look like this? Is this a world-wide trend, or just for the U.S. market?
