Crossovers: Many Models – But One Take?
February 07, 2008

By Dale Buss

The boom in crossovers is the biggest product story in the U.S. auto market these days. Sales increased to more than 2.8 million last year, extending a seven-year surge, and now more than 50 separate models of utility vehicles are offered on car-based platforms.

A couple more joined the fray at the Chicago Auto Show this week when General Motors unveiled the Chevrolet Traverse and Ford showcased a spiffed-up Ford Edge Sport.

Funny thing is, the more new crossovers that emerge, the more they look and feel essentially the same. One after another they’re being launched by automakers up and down the price scale, but more often than not they pretty much end up looking like some model year of the Lexus RX.

Take the badges off of a long roster of CUVs now in the market -- including Honda CR-V, Acura MDX, Mazda CX-9, and Nissan Rogue and Murano -- and see if most consumers could really tell them apart. Then peek at other imminent new crossovers, including the Dodge Journey and Toyota Venza and say which is which. It’s not unlike what happened to SUV design once Ford Explorer proved to be a hit several years ago.

“When one manufacturer has been so dominant, others will find ways to chase and follow them” in design, said Maria Rohrer, Buick’s marketing director. “That’s why we’re seeing cookie-cutter examples” of wedge-shaped CUVs.

Jim Yetter, senior manager of Dodge car marketing, agreed “crossovers in general have a certain kind of look.” He said that’s why, in putting together the 2009 Journey CUV that will debut later this year, Dodge focused on “what features and benefits do customers get when they buy this one over that one.”

Don’t Fight What’s Working

Now, of course, it’s easy to overstate an assertion about design homogeneity that isn’t universally true. Though aero-influenced, General Motors’ new Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia, Saturn Outlook and now the Chevy Traverse break the RX design mold to some extent. So do Ford’s new Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX, which are less streamlined than most of the CUV competition; Ford’s planned new Flex will represent a non-wedge-shaped design departure as well.

But even as CUVs have proliferated lately, the range of new design modes and the extent of experimentation isn’t keeping up. When crossovers became the talk of the industry several years ago, one of the most exciting aspects of the phenomenon was the multiple possibilities in style and functionality that would emerge as automakers threw SUVs, minivans, station wagons and sedans all in one big pot and scooped out differing interpretations of CUVs. The fact that most of them pulled the same-looking idea out of the kettle almost makes one yearn for something really different, like the Pontiac Aztek.

There’s one reason CUV designs seem to be converging rather than establishing radically different paths: The Wedge is selling. CUV sales of 2.8 million last year rose from 2.4 million in 2006, and from 2.2 million in 2005, and from just a little more than a half-million units in 2000. In the meantime, small crossovers alone reached sales of more than one million units last year, claiming 6.7 percent of the U.S. market -- up from 4.1 percent just two years earlier.

Sales of traditional SUVs, of course, have been heading in the other direction. After peaking at nearly three million units in 2000, SUV sales gradually edged lower over the next few years and then plunged in 2005, to 2.4 million units. Last year SUV sales came in at just under 1.9 million units, the first time since 1995 that fewer than two million SUVs sold in America.

Right Vehicle, Right Times

Automakers have been rushing new CUVs out the door as quickly as they can develop them. At the beginning of 2000, the U.S. market offered only 14 distinct car-based SUVs, now known as CUVs, according to George Pipas, Ford’s director of U.S. sales analysis. The number is now in the mid-50s now, he said, and some estimates are that there will be more than 70 different CUV options within a year.

“That’s one of the big catalysts for growth in this market,” Pipas said. “It can’t just be a few products.”

In addition to a growing menu of choices, of course, CUVs have been boosted by how well they fit the needs of baby boomers, the largest and still-dominant demographic in the auto marketplace. “(Boomers) fueled the minivan in the Eighties, with their young families, and the SUV in the Nineties,” Pipas said. “And now they’re increasingly becoming empty-nesters or retiring, so they have smaller households and don’t need vehicles as big as they once had.

“Plus, comfort is getting more important to them as they age -- they don’t want to have to get a stepladder to climb into and out of a vehicle.”

Automakers also see boomers’ children -- the so-called Millennials generation now aged about 15 to 30 -- are inclined toward CUVs. Nearly half of them list a small car as their likely first automotive purchase, Pipas said, but small CUVs already are third on Millennials’ segment-preference lists. As they age and form families, he said, “Millennials are going to feed the crossover category.”

Skyrocketing gasoline prices have only accelerated a trend toward CUVs, Pipas said. “They made the shift come sooner,” he said.

Nissan Focuses on the Inside

Altough the truck-based RX line -- the smallest of three Lexus utility vehicles – played a huge role in establishing what would soon become the design regimen for true CUVs, Nissan also has played a big role in creating design standards for the segment. With extremely aero-swept vehicles including the Nissan Murano and Infiniti FX, the company has advanced the styling benchmarks for CUVs.

Murano has gained sales each of its five years in the market. And with the 2009  Murano that is just becoming available -- highlighted by TV advertisements on Super Bowl Sunday February 3 –- Nissan is planning to maintain its design leadership in CUVs. “The exterior styling is fresher, a little crisper,” said Larry Dominique, Nissan’s vice president of product planning.

But perhaps in a bow to CUV-design homogeneity, Nissan plans to put more marketing emphasis on what’s inside the 2009 Murano than how it looks on the outside. “We took the interior up a notch, and now it’s phenomenal,” Dominique enthused. The new Murano adds bright lighting and a new layout for the instrument panel, for example, as well as better materials to improve "perceived quality," and improved insulation from noise and vibration. Murano now offers heated front seats and a power assist for moving the rear-seat backs.

When it launches later this year, the Infiniti EX will definitely move the needle on CUV design, expressing the most rounded shape of any Nissan or Infiniti vehicle. “It’s a crossover with a coupe-inspired design,” Dominique said. Moreover, EX will offer “more behaved performance” than other Infiniti models. “We wanted to balance the great performance and handling that we’re known for with a little more ride comfort and isolation, and not jerk the steering wheel out of your hand,” he said.

In doing so, Dominique said, Infiniti intended EX to be “the first (CUV) to try to bring women in.”

Journey Emphasizes Versatility

Chrysler actually debuted one of the first purported crossovers in 2004 with the Chrysler Pacifica. But it was based on Chrysler’s minivan platform. And despite features such as three-row, six-passenger seating and sedan-like handling, Pacifica didn’t catch on. Sales peaked about 78,000 units in 2006; in November Chrysler announced it was discontinuing Pacifica.

In Journey, Jim Yetter, Dodge senior brand manager, said Dodge has created a “distinctive” design from other CUVs, but he can point only to the cross-hair grille and wheel arches. Instead, Dodge too is emphasizing the many wonders of the Journey “package” rather than its exterior styling.

“Customers wanted all kinds of flexibility in terms of seating, storage and versatility to carry things, whether it be people or cargo like 2x4s -- and they wanted innovation, infotainment and safety – all in one package,” Yetter said.

So Journey includes features such as third-row seating that is big enough to handle “occasional use” by adults, second-row doors that open a full 90 degrees for easy access, FlipNStow storage under the front passenger seat, and features from other Chrysler vehicles including a front-seat beverage cooler and the MyGig entertainment system.

“If you treat this car as just a shape, you’re really missing the point,” Yetter said. “You’ve got to get inside the vehicle. It’s the synergy of all that we offer that we think will make Journey a huge success.”

Prediction: Design Departures

Some in the industry believe the CUV category actually is in the beginning stages of offering more design diversity.

A few CUVs proffer styling departures by resisting the streamlining trend altogether. Honda, for example, already has a hot-selling wedge-shaped CUV in the CR-V. So it decided to stick with the boxy design of its Pilot CUV in the upcoming 2009 version rather than sacrificing one of the model’s most important attributes — truly roomy third-row seating. Some consumers and industry observers have been criticizing the new Pilot prototype on that score, but the company is resolute.

“We want to appeal to customers who are leaving the traditional truck-based (SUV) segment with a CUV that will appeal to them,” said Rob Keough, a senior product planner for Honda. “All of the other new entries in the segment are really kind of soft-roaders, keyed toward being on the road, with no SUV capabilities built into them. They’re more like minivans. We want to give people something that can appeal to them more on the truck side but give them advantages of CUVs such as lighter weight, better fuel economy and a terrific safety structure.”

Ford may be leading the industry in at least one aspect of the evolving CUV segment: taking true design chances. Both Edge and MKX demonstrate some resistance to the wedge shape that has become so prevalent — though they resemble each other a lot. Meanwhile, the upcoming 2009 Flex, built on a unibody platform, resembles the boxy cross between an old Land Rover and a blown-up Scion xB.

“The first crossovers kind of looked like SUVs, and as they evolved they all sort of looked like RX — much more rounded, without all the skid plates or fake ones,” Ford's Pipas said. “They dropped some of the SUV cues. In the future, you’re going to see more different directions.

“What we’re trying to do is offer consumers a choice.”

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