Doug Drives: The Problem With Selling A Stylish Car

I recently got up behind a Smart car in traffic the other day, and I realized something: Smart has managed to do what very few other brands can boast about. They’ve successfully redesigned a car that sells primarily based on its style.

Now, you might think this is a bit of an unusual point, because you probably don’t think the Smart Fortwo is a very stylish car.

In fact, you probably think it looks like a shopping cart with alloy wheels. But hear me out, here, because I think one of the biggest challenges automakers face is redesigning stylish cars. And I think the good folks over at Smart deserve some credit for doing it right.

First, a brief overview of the problem. When you debut a car where style is the main selling point, buyers all want to be the first in line to own it. “THAT’S SO COOL!” people say. “I WANT TO BE THE FIRST TO OWN THAT!” And then they rush down to the dealership, and they pay over sticker, and then three years later they realize they’re driving around in a PT Cruiser.

This is the problem: cars whose primary selling point is style have almost no shelf life. When BMW redesigns a Z4, the new model is relevant for approximately four weeks before every cool L.A. mistress has one. Then it’s over. There’s a new Mercedes out, or an Audi, or a Land Rover that looks like it can probably take on the most challenging parking curbs at the Starbucks on Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevard without a fight.

So how the hell do you redesign a car whose success is based on styling?

Many automakers simply don’t. The PT Cruiser’s early success largely revolved around its unusual design, which held considerable appeal way back when it came out. By 2005, it was clear that Chrysler had absolutely no idea where to take it next. So they did a convertible, and they body colored the bumpers, and eventually the car was a bigger joke than the marketing intern who gets her foot stuck in the printer.

But the PT Cruiser isn’t the only example of a stylish car that froze like a deer in the headlights after its initial success. In fact, there have been dozens. The Nissan Cube. The Lexus SC 430. The Chevy HHR. The Cadillac XLR. I could go on for days: “style”-based cars that earned some success initially, then fizzled out over time as their automakers had no idea how to redesign them.

And then there are the car companies who “evolve” the design. A good example of this is the New Beetle. First, we had the original New Beetle, which came out in 2000 to great fanfare. Then we had the “new” New Beetle, which came out much later to approximately the same fanfare a laminate flooring company gets when they put out a press release announcing the retirement of their vice president of sales for the eastern region.

It’s the same story with the Camaro. In 2008, we got a totally new model that was truly among the coolest things on the road. In 2016, we’re getting an “updated” version that looks basically identical to last year’s model.

The reason for this is that Chevy and Volkswagen got themselves trapped. People loved the look of the Camaro, and they loved the look of the Beetle, and so the design folks sat around for days asking themselves “WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?” And the answer was: barely anywhere. Smooth it out a bit. Tell people it’s new. That’ll do the trick.

Then there were the cars that suffered both fates. My favorite example is the Honda Element, which originally debuted to so much excitement at a time when most cars were pretty dull, largely due to its unabashed weirdness. People loved it. People went to the dealer, all excited for their box car, and they plunked down some actual amount of money to own an Element instead of a CR-V. And then once all those people had their Elements, sales stopped. So Honda employed both strategies discussed above. First, there was a redesign that you had to be a Honda dealer to spot. Then, outright cancellation. Nice.

But the Smart car is different.

Now, you might be shaking your head here, because I still suspect there is some chance that you do not consider the Smart Fortwo to be a stylish vehicle. But let me tell you something: the people who own them do. A lot of people in Europe buy this car because it’s small, cheap and parkable. Nobody in North America does. The reason people in North America buy this car is twofold: No. 1, so they can admire how cute their car is. And, also so they can tell their friends how they “don’t need” all that space.

And this year, the Smart Fortwo has been redesigned. And do you know what? Smart actually managed to successfully redesign a style-based car.

Unlike weak redesigns such as the “new New Beetle” and the Element, the Fortwo actually looks measurably different than its predecessor. And unlike the PT Cruiser and the Cube and the HHR and the SC 430, they didn’t cancel it. The new Smart is so different, in fact, that Smart owners might actually want to go on down to the Smart dealer and trade in their old Smart for a new one. How many Beetle owners do you know who did that? The answer is none, because instead they had their car towed into a Toyota dealer after a severe electronics failure, and they bought a Corolla.

The point is, it seems the folks at Smart have done the impossible: they’ve managed to come up with a desirable new style for a car that originally debuted with a desirable new style. “We decided we didn’t NEED all that space,” owners of the all-new Smart Fortwo will soon say to me, in the same condescending tone as ever. “In your BRAIN?” I will reply. And then I’ll saunter off, disappointed, because actually the new Smart Fortwo is kind of cool.