Build Cars Bigger

When a car succeeds, ask why. We learn things that way.

As far as I'm concerned, 2003's most impressive success was the Chevrolet Impala. Nearly 250,000 sales in 11 months: a 40% jump from the year before. Why?

You can argue it was give-away deals, rental-car fleet sales and special deals for GM employees. Even so, it's a huge gain.

Detroit uses those gimmicks with lots of other cars and doesn't reap that kind of success.

And if you think of the Chevy Monte Carlo as a 2-door Impala, then we're past 300,000 units. Impala's got Taurus in its rearview mirror and is moving up on Honda Accord.

Yet Impala is an old warhorse with front-wheel drive, an under-whelming V-6 and an old 4-speed automatic. The design is so-so and old, too.

So why is it selling so well? Size counts.

This is the biggest family sedan around. And people like big.

This is the trend. Just about every new model is bigger than its predecessor, with more horsepower, too. The new Ford Five Hundred coming out this year is bigger than Taurus. The new rear-drive Chrysler sedans, out next spring, are bigger than the old front-drive LH cars and, unlike before, there is a V-8 option. Bigger and punchier goes for Toyotas, Hondas and Nissans, too. There's even a fullsize Kia coming.

Despite the shouting about global warming and worries about importing foreign oil, size counts.

What could an auto maker draw from this? It's not just “build them bigger.” It's build them bigger and reduce the number of platforms even more.

Would it be better, in Chevy's case, to kill the Malibu and build twice as many larger Impalas?

How about Ford? In two years Ford will offer three cars in the family sedan market: Taurus, the bigger Five Hundred and the smaller Futura (due out next year). Toyota and Honda have three between them: Camry, Avalon and Accord. The Five Hundred will be built in Chicago, the Taurus in Atlanta — until Ford cuts a deal with the union to shut the plant, say in six years — and the Futura will be built in Mexico.

Suppose you just rename the bigger Five Hundred model. Suppose you call it the new Taurus. Then convert the Atlanta plant to Futura production. Ford can find something else to build in Mexico. It gets rid of one platform, but keeps the Taurus name and perpetuates the brand identity.

What about corporate average fuel economy mandates? Make 50-mpg (4.7L/100-km) versions of the smaller cars — the Cavalier/Cobalt-to-be and Ford Focus — to offset the poorer fuel economy of the bigger cars.

All you hear today is niche, niche, niche. Niche works only when the products can be based on a high-volume platform. The real money is made on big production runs, 400,000 units annually for a car, or a million on a truck platform. And that's what Detroit is all about.

Jerry Flint is a columnist for, and a former senior editor of, Forbes magazine.