Minor design updates speed up as technology enables faster work

At its worst, updating a car design after only a few years on the market is like putting lipstick on a pig. Automakers change pointless details they hope will mask the failed model underneath. But when done right, a refresh or restyling can let designers fix mistakes, catch up to current technology, or hint at what’s coming soon.

Motivations vary for mid-cycle updates – model updates that happen at about the halfway point between complete car redesigns – but the trend now is to release upgrades more frequently. Driven by intense competitive pressure and enabled by new design and manufacturing technologies, car companies are offering updates after two or three years instead of five or six.

“I don’t think we’re getting back to the days of annual model updates, but updates are coming out a lot faster now,” says Brian Baker, a former General Motors designer responsible for the Chevrolet SSR sports car/truck concept and co-author of the book Driving Style: GM Design’s First Century. He now teaches design and design history at Detroit’s College for Creative Studies. “Companies are looking at ways to shave any time off the design process to get to market a little bit quicker.”

Late this year, three compact cars that all entered the market in 2010 or 2011 are getting new engines, updated looks, new technology, and new features for the 2015 model year. The previous generations of all three vehicles went nearly a decade without such attention. And Toyota is launching an update of its Camry mid-sized sedan for 2015, only three years after that car’s last major redesign.
 

A tactic from the past

Baker says to some degree, the push for more-frequent redesigns harkens back to the 1930s when former GM Chairman and CEO Alfred P. Sloan introduced the idea of annual vehicle updates. Especially after World War II, as affluence grew in the United States, the strategy was to convince buyers that this year’s model was the best available. So every year, the looks of cars changed – sometimes slightly, sometimes radically. By the ’50s, Oldsmobile started putting the model year on the car’s grille so people would know whether or not drivers were with the times. Automotive design hit its wildest extremes in those years as chrome and tailfins took over the roads, each automaker trying to outdo its competitors and its own earlier efforts.

“It was very much an American trend. You didn’t see this in Asia or Europe,” Baker explains. “That is counter to at least the Germanic way of thinking where you build a good design and you stick by it and ride it until there’s nothing left.”

Volkswagen’s iconic Beetle, for example, kept the same basic look from the 1940s through the 1970s (and some versions of the original remained in production in Mexico until 2003). VW even made the lack of change a selling point in U.S. advertising in the ’60s, offering the Beetle as an escape from having to keep up with the Joneses.

As the ’50s moved into the ’60s, car companies began offering multiple unique vehicles instead of only one or two models, and design teams could no longer support annual model updates. As competition from VW – and later Toyota and Honda – increased, frequent redesigns became too costly to continue.

By the 1980s, design changes were infrequent and less radical. Cars such as the Chevrolet Cavalier kept the same basic design from 1981 through 1994. After a minor redesign in 1995, it remained unchanged for another decade.
 

New technology

Even within those style-averse years, Baker said car companies would often announce “new” vehicles every few years when they could add updated systems. New engines, new entertainment electronics, or updated safety features often led to fresh advertising for models that had not gone through thorough top-to-bottom makeovers.

Those technology-driven upgrades continue as companies try to one-up each other with new features. With the Focus, Ford will add a 1L, three-cylinder EcoBoost option for 2015, giving the car a shot at beating the Chevy Cruze Eco’s 42mpg highway in fuel economy. At Chevy, the refreshed Cruze will get a voice-activated entertainment system to better compete with Ford’s Sync.

Other automakers have updated cars in recent years to add more flash. Baker notes that LED accent lights around headlamps and tail lamps have come into automotive fashion, especially for luxury brands.

“Drivers have really responded to that technology. There’s a real demand for it on every car,” Baker explains. “LEDs have given everybody the opportunity to justify a mid-cycle, just to put the new lighting technology on the front and back of the car.”

While adding a new stereo system or an updated instrument panel can be done fairly inexpensively, redesigning body panels to make space for the new lights used to be prohibitively expensive. Such changes to metal body panels used to be reserved for complete overhauls, not mid-cycle updates.

Baker explains that between digital design tools, more-effective part simulations, and the increased use of easily formable plastics in car bodies, designers have more freedom to make big changes in mid-cycle upgrades than they did a few years ago.

“The body manufacturing technologies that are coming at us right now are allowing manufacturers to make these mid-cycles and specialty variants more quickly than ever before,” Baker states.

Styling cues

Still, massive changes to body panels generally have to wait for complete vehicle redesigns. New stamping dies can be expensive, so automakers typically try to use them as long as possible. Because of that, changing the looks of vehicles generally gets limited to the front and back ends, leaving doors, vehicle sides, roofs, hoods, and deck lids untouched.

Grilles and body fascia around the front ends of cars use more plastic than metal, giving designers the freedom to make more noticeable changes. The 2015 Cruze will get a new grille that better matches what Chevy is doing with the Impala large car and Malibu mid-sized sedan. At Hyundai, the updated Elantra features a new rear end with an optional built-in spoiler.

Baker says such cosmetic changes can often be pointless – something to make the car look a little different without spending the time and money needed to make real improvements. On the other hand, a successful facelift will make an aging car look modern and offer a preview of what could be coming in a few more years.

“That’s where mid-cycles can be exciting. If there’s a chance to bridge major models from one to the next, you get a big opportunity to show what’s next,” Baker says, recalling the 1961 Corvette.

For that model year, designer Bill Mitchell had just taken over for longtime GM style chief Harley Earl, Baker says. GM’s product design plan didn’t call for a complete remake of the sports car until the 1963 Stingray, “but Bill knew what he wanted to do, so he made a lot of design cues in the ’61s and ’62s that signaled what was coming.”
 

Fixing mistakes

Possibly the best reason to update a vehicle soon after its initial release is to fix problems that become apparent when sales don’t live up to expectations. None of the vehicles getting mild updates for the 2015 model year appear to be in the quick-fix category. The compact cars from Hyundai, Ford, and GM are all selling well, and Toyota’s Camry remains the No. 1 selling car in the country.

However, Baker says there have been dozens of cars over the years that needed almost immediate rescues. When Honda launched the 2012 Civic compact, for example, its executives admit that they misjudged the market. Designed during the height of the global economic crisis, the automaker tried to focus on cost, opting for inexpensive materials on the interior and avoiding high-tech toys such as entertainment systems that synch with drivers’ smart phones.

By the time design had been completed, however, the economy was recovering, and the Cruze, Focus, and Hyundai Elantra were gaining sales because they had gone in the opposite direction – using richer materials and lots of technology. Honda designers realized early that the new Civic wasn’t competitive and had a refresh ready for the 2013 model year.

The strategy worked. Through the first five months of 2014, the Civic is the No. 2-selling compact in the United States, second only to Toyota’s Corolla.

A similar story played out with the 2014 Chevy Malibu. After sales for the redesigned 2013 model failed to meet expectations, GM quickly refreshed the car for the following year. As with Honda, GM had misjudged new entrants to the market, specifically the 2014 Ford Fusion.

“Sometimes, you don’t know how much you’ve missed the mark until the vehicle is out and you see sales numbers,” Baker says.

College for Creative Studies
www.collegeforcreativestudies.edu

About the author: Robert Schoenberger is the editor of TMV and can be reached at 330.523.5381 or rschoenberger@gie.net.