Question: Will Cuteness Always Equal Sales Death In America?
One of the key lessons learned by American automobile marketers in the 1990s was: friendly cars flop, aggressive cars sell. Have they learned this lesson too well?
The Neon should have been a home run for Chrysler, with its all-Detroit, no-Mitsubishi-or-Simca ancestry and Civic/Corolla-beating bang-for-buck specs. This was not the case, and the Neon went on to populate rent-a-car lots and— soon after— junkyards in large quantities. Some blame alleged lack of quality in the Neon, but I’ve always suspected the Neon’s happy “face” and Chrysler’s 1995-96 “Hi!” ad campaign was the bigger factor.
After the defeat of the Evil Empire and the ass-kicking triumph of the Gulf War washed America’s palate clean of the nasty taste of the Fall of Saigon and the Iranian hostage crisis (not to mention the not-quite-ass-kicking farce of Reagan’s only real war), American car shoppers wanted vehicles that looked like victory!
Honda staggered into this new reality with the sugary-sweet-looking del Sol and alienated all the young first-time male car shoppers who had once snapped up CRXs in a frenzy. This was exactly what Honda USA didn’t need on top of Soichiro Honda‘s death, Acura’s lack of a V8, and a weak economy hammering Accord sales. Blame cuteness!
After the “Hi!” debacle, Chrysler decided that the Neon’s replacement would sprout fangs, facial tatts, and a glovebox full of temporary restraining orders. The very name suggested a car that would cold blast its opponents: Caliber!
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Nah, it really depends on the underlying car and its merits. As a teen in the early 90s, the Miata was decidedly a chick car. When the Z3 came out, it was colloquially known as the "Miata for men" thanks to slighly more aggressive styling. Now with a couple decades behind it, I no longer consider the Miata a chick car at all. In fact, I very rarely see women driving them anymore.
I go for cute. I've got 250k miles on a diesel New Beetle. My first car was a '77 AMC Pacer, of which I've had four. Angry is an easy emotion to pull off in car design; "beautiful" may be the hardest, with cute not far off. In terms of the national zeitgeist, the 2000's were possibly the least cute era of American history since the early '80's, when even professional hairstyles could draw blood. Everybody in the '00's wanted their own 9/11-proof bunker-on-wheels.