What's Wrong With This Picture: The Shoe Event Horizon Edition
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy tells the story of Frogstar B, pretty much the most evil planet around. Frogstar B had been a happy planet until things got just a little bit depressing… and people started to look down at their feet. They started buying shoes. They became obsessed with shoes. Designing, making, and selling shoes of increasingly shoddy quality became the primary occupation of the whole world. When the economy finally collapsed, the people of Frogstar B gave up in disgust and evolved into birds.
I found these two vehicles in a hotel parking lot yesterday. Ninety percent of the spots were empty, but these two were huddling together, perhaps for warmth. It put me in mind of a discussion I had with a PR fellow at Cadillac back around the time of the CTS-V Challenge.
Discussing the then-new SRX, he stated, “The (Lexus) RX(350) is the template for this class and we approached it head-on.” Doing so has proven to be the correct strategy; the SRX is, I believe, currently the volume leader for Cadillac, whereas its sales in its previous iteration — RWD tall wagon with a honkin’ Northstar — were mostly theoretical. With this example firmly in place, it would take a very stupid, or egocentric, manufacturer to approach the class with anything but an RX clone. Surely Nissan, in particular, wished it had simply tarted-up the Murano to create an FX35, rather than creating the current “Bionic Panther” which swallows fuel and cramps its occupants in equal measure.
With that avenue closed for now, Nissan decided to simply copy the RX line-for-line with the Rogue, as seen above. In a previous 3WTP I pointed out that Hyundai has also nearly mastered the Lex-a-like formula.
I don’t envy the men and women who are tasked with planning the next generation of CUVs. If they don’t imitate the RX, they won’t get the sales, and their bosses will want to know why. If they do imitate the RX, they risk losing brand identity, losing out to cheaper copies from elsewhere, and simply digging deeper into a tunnel of aesthetic development which we already know to be a dead end.
Alternately, they could bet on something completely different. If and when the inhabitants of the suburban Frogstars decide to fly away, they could be the ones to sell the wings. It’s just soooo hard to see the future, you know?
More by Jack Baruth
Comments
Join the conversation
Since January 98, when we had a preview event for the new RX at our dealership, I knew this vehicle was a game changer. We wrote over 50 orders that night, 3 months before the vehicle was introduced to the public.I'm always amazed how the automotive cognicenti ignores it in any comparison.I just read Michael Kareshe's article on the Q5, a vehicle that blatenly targeted the RX in their intro ads, which by the way increased our RX sales dramaticaly at the time,and every other CUV was referred to except the RX.A loaded RX lists for under $49000, much less than a Q5,X3,GLK,SRX,etc. when it really competes with an ML,X5,Q7 etc. The only complaint about the RX is people say ther are to many on the road. In terms of value,(resale) saftey, and reliability there are no equals, maby that is why it dominates in term of sales.We are the 1st, 2nd,or 3rd largest Lexus dealer in the US,hense the world depending on what month your looking at,and the only vehicle that is tough to go up against is the MDX because of the 3rd row. Lexus should hav dropped the GX and replaced it with a larger 3rd.row RX while keeping the current RX350,450h.The other time we will loose against the above mentioned vehicles is because of "the hood ornament" if you know what I mean.Thank God the RX is a fancy Toyota.