Automakers Say Simpler Better in Testing Market With Concept Cars

PARIS – Two top designers of European concept cars say that, today, putting a handful of ideas in a concept is better than having a whole host of features.

The Opel Monza and a concept signaling the next Renault Espace, both unveiled at last year’s Frankfurt auto show, illustrate their point at the recent Festival Automobile International here.

Creators of the Opel Monza, says Adam Opel advanced-design chief Boris Jacob, wanted to show how cars of the future could be wirelessly connected in new ways, so they looked for technology that could project images on a 3-dimensional screen that curves across the width of the dashboard.

What they found was a London firm that could help them use 18 tiny LED projectors like those used by high-end smartphones to project crisp, clear images that could come from anywhere thanks to wireless connectivity.

The rest of the car is beautiful, and some sleek forms and graphic details will be used on future production vehicles, says Jacob, but besides the gullwing doors and giant wheels, the Monza doesn’t have many other bells and whistles.

“To be so simple is a sign of Opel’s confidence,” says Jacob, and it helps people remember what they have seen. When concepts are jammed with different features, he says, they tend to blend into one another.

The Renault Initiale Paris is a sleek vehicle that prefigures the next Renault Espace people-mover.

“What is the main message in a concept car?” asks Axel Breun, director-design for Renault concept cars. “In the past, they had too many ideas in them. Now, we try to concentrate on three or four things.”

The Initiale Paris has fantasy items such as a see-through roof with a map of Paris embedded in it and saloon doors, but its real message is the refined interior of fabulous leather seats and a motorized step meant to suggest premium travel in a private aircraft. The Espace is Renault’s only successful vehicle in the luxury-price range, and the current one is 10 years old.

The Festival Automobile International, now in its 29^th year, displays more than a dozen concept cars from global manufacturers for five days under temporary tents behind Napoleon’s tomb.

Remi Depoix, founder of the festival, recognizes a theme of simplicity.

“There is a trend toward the essential, which is linked to budget constraints,” Depoix says. “There is less artistic frenzy to produce a dream car. Designers are recentering themselves on the essential, and concept cars are closer to products that can be industrialized.”

Renault Concepts Aim for Simple, Sensual, Warm

Concept-car design is an element of revival for both Renault and Opel, as both brands attempt to come back from deep holes of European unpopularity. Opel has lost money for more than a decade, and the Renault brand, once Europe’s best seller, has fallen to No.4 in Western Europe behind Volkswagen, Ford and Opel/Vauxhall.

Renault moved to change its look in 2010 by hiring new chief designer Laurens van den Acker. Almost immediately, he announced a project of six concept cars representing six different facets of human life, from love to wisdom.

The concepts gave Renault something to show while the product plan was in a lull, and they established the look and feel of the real cars Renault would be working on, such as the ’12 Renault Clio IV and ’13 Renault Captur, both selling well.

Every Renault car design, Breun says, must meet three criteria: simple, sensual and warm.

“We wanted to show that we can make beautiful cars,” he says. “We wanted our customers to fall in love again with the brand Renault.”

Breun says Van Den Acker’s clear vision for brand design will help the company achieve its goal of moving upscale.

“To have the vision is essential if you want to change something,” he says, comparing Renault’s challenge to Audi’s several decades ago, when Germany’s Ferdinand Piech led the brand to premium status step by step with determination.

At Opel, the bottom may have come in 2009, when parent General Motors went into bankruptcy and floated proposals to sell the German arm to supplier Magna International. However, says Jacob, former CEO Dan Ackerson, who stepped aside in January, supported Opel, “first with money.” GM sent executives to Europe too, and later decided to quit selling Chevrolets in Europe, leaving Opel a clearer playing field.

The Monza, says Jacob, was an on-again, off-again project for a while at Opel, when the future was not always clear. But now, he says, “Opel is back. We have a lot of intellectual property that we couldn’t display in the past.”

The concept car represents an automotive future in which perhaps fewer people may own cars, but they will be shared. The Monza’s screen, for example, could display a text message from someone who would like to share a trip.

“The first company to connect all the elements of mobility will be the winner,” says Jacob. “If I say I want to go to Paris, an application that can connect me most efficiently will be the winner. It might tell me to walk five minutes to a bus stop, take a bus to a train station and get off at a station where a car will be waiting for me with another person who will share half the cost.”

An engine’s efficiency can be improved 5%, he says, but taking another passenger doubles its efficiency.

“The auto industry is behind other industries in subjects like lightweight and social thinking,” Jacob says. “If we don’t do improve creatively, who else will be interested? We would kill our own industry.”