CAR-BON COPIES

Courtroom Scenes We’d Like To See, #56: a man charged with burglarizing a Mercedes-Benz 300SEL is on the witness stand. The defense at- torney approach- es him and asks, “What were you in the process of doing when you were arrested?”

“I was trying to go home.”

“In somebody else’s car?”

“No, sir. In my own car.”

“What kind of car is that?”

“A new Ford Taurus.”

“And you mistook the Mercedes for your Taurus? Why?”

“They’re kind of hard to tell apart.”

“One costs $15,000, the other costs $50,000, and you mean to tell me you have trouble distinguishing between the two?”

“From the side. yes. sir, I can’t tell the difference.”

The attorney walks back to his table and picks up a sheet of paper. “Now, as you know, you’re also charged with several other counts of car burglary-burglary of a Mazda 929, a BMW 735i, an Acura Legend, a Sterling 825S, a Mercury Sable, an Audi 5000, and a Lincoln Continental. Are you asking the court to believe you mistook each of these cars for your Ford Taurus?”

“Yes. sir. Absolutely.” The defendant turns toward the judge and smiles sheepishly. ’To tell you the truth, your honor, they all look alike to me.”

Okay, chances are we’re not going to see this scene played out any time soon. Still, the underlying premise-that most modern cars have been cloned from a single generic automobile design-has become the stuff of conventional wisdom during recent years. All cars look alike is now among the truths that American consumers hold to be self-evident.

It almost goes without saying that automobile designers hate to hear this sort of thing. And just as predictably-and plausibly, too-they insist that it isn’t entirely true. “1 wouldn’t agree that all cars today look alike,” says Strother MacMinn, a celebrated instructor at the Art Center College for Design, which produces the bulk of American automobile stylists. “If anything, there’s more diversity now than there’s ever been before.”

Twenty-five years ago, remember, there simply weren’t as many cars on the market. European imports were considered a curiosity. Japanese imports weren’t considered at all. Even the choices offered by the Big Three were relatively limited. With the rise of niche marketing, those days have gone forever. Today’s automobile buyers have not merely a handful, not merely a dozen, but hundreds upon hundreds of models from which to choose.

There’s more diversity, no question, but there’s less distinction between cars. Form now follows function, and function hasn’t changed much since Henry Ford introduced the Model T. That’s why we now have the aero look instead of tailfins, and collapsible bumpers instead of portholes. And why most people have a hard time telling most cars apart.

There are differences here and there, but they’ve become oh so subtle. “We’ve downplayed loud design changes. Car designs used to be fully orchestrated. Now, they’re [near-silent] like Sony Walkmen,” says Michael Marsden, professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University. “You can’t forget a ’59 Cadillac. But who can remember what an ’84 Cadillac looks like? Or an ’83 Cadillac?”

This message hasn’t been lost on advertising agencies. Who can forget, for instance, the classic TV spot for the retrograde-and-proud-of-it Lincoln Town Car? Mass confusion reigns outside a posh restaurant because neither the valet parkers nor the car owners themselves can distinguish the Cadillacs from the Buicks from the Mercedeses from the Chryslers, so nobody can figure out which car belongs to whom. Up glides a gargantuan Town Car, and there’s no mistaking this baby for anything else in the lot. The salient point, not to mention the selling point, is that the Lincoln stands out in the lookalike world of luxury automobiles.

And isn’t that what we really want? A car that’s comfortable and reliable, sure, but something that also looks a little bit different from everything else on the road. It’s one major reason for the immense success of the Hyundai Excel, an econobox in every respect except its handsome, almost dignified appearance. (The man who designed it also did the Lotus Esprit.) And it’s why Buick Reattas-stunning $25,000 two-seaters offering middling performance and no more luxury than a Buick Riviera-are sold out.

Automakers aren’t stupid, and they don’t build nondescript cars out of spite. Nor is it a case of not having stylists capable of designing striking-looking automobiles. Just the same, the very structure of the industry virtually guarantees that most cars are going to resemble one another.

First of all, nothing succeeds like success. Which is why most new cars look a lot like most old cars. Tailfins were a big hit on mid-Fifties Plymouths, so everybody started slapping vertical stabilizers on their new cars. The boxy VW Rabbit sold like crazy in the mid-Seventies, so everybody started cranking out rectangular automobiles of their own. The current craze is the “aero” shape popularized by the Ford Taurus in 1985. It may look like a bar of soap or a jelly-bean to you-and that’s what rival designers say-but the Taurus’s aero look is echoed in dozens of cars on the market.

The second reason is more blatantly economic. “You have to spend some money to make cars look different,” says retired GM designer Bill Mitchell, the man responsible for the seminal 1963 Corvette Sting Ray. These days, automakers often use a single “platform”-the foundation upon which cars are built-as the base for several models. Back when Lee Iacocca (and Joe Taxpayer) were resurrecting Chrysler, virtually every new passenger car model built by the company featured the K-car platform. Ford’s Lincoln Town Car, Mercury Grand Marquis, and Ford Crown Victoria share the same platform. So do five General Motors products: Cadillac Cimarron, Buick Sky-hawk. Oldsmobile Firenza, Pontiac Sunbird, and Chevrolet Cavalier.

Even rival automobile manufacturers have gotten into the act. Each of the Big Three now sell so-called “captives”-foreign cars imported by domestic automakers. Quick, what’s the biggest difference between a Mitsubishi Starion and a Dodge Conquest, an Isuzu I-Mark and a Chevrolet Spectrum, a Mazda 323 and a Mercury Tracer? The spelling, of course. Mechanically, they’re identical twins. Lately, a couple of manufacturers have taken marriage vows that yielded fraternal twins. The Ford Probe and Mazda MX-6 don’t look alike, but they’re built on the same assembly line. And the Acura Legend and Sterling 825S, cars with different bodies and interiors, share platforms and engines.

The bean counters love this stuff because it minimizes development and production costs, and lower costs mean higher profits. At least in theory. In practice, when the cars start to look too much alike, nobody but bean counters wants to buy them. GM learned its lesson the hard way a few years ago with, among other cookie cutter cars, the Cadillac Cimarron. In the planning stages it must have seemed like such a great idea-a small luxury car built on a Chevrolet Celebrity platform. Talk about your mega-miscal-culation. The problem was that most self-respecting Cadillac owners didn’t want anything to do with anything that had anything to do with a Chevrolet.

It’s no coincidence that production of the Cimarron ceased this year. But GM thinks happy days are here again courtesy of its much ballyhooed GM-10 program-a $5 billion mid-size car project formulated to repair the damage done by lookalike models such as the Cimarron. Last year, GM unveiled the first of the GM-l0s-the Buick Regal, Oldsmobile Cutlass, and Pontiac Grand Prix. Although the common platform compels a certain similarity of shape and dimension, each of the cars looks strikingly different. In this case looks aren’t deceiving: the only styling components they share are the windshield, steering column, and carpeting.

The GM-10s harken back to the days, as GM design vice-president Chuck Jordan once put it, “When you could tell a Chevy was a Chevy and a Cadillac was a Cadillac.” But designing a Chevy that looks different from a Cadillac is only half the battle. “The big challenge,” says Sheldon Payne, Nissan’s corporate product strategy manager, “is to differentiate yourself in the marketplace.”

And for the first time in a long time, styling is perceived as a good way to do it. People want practical cars with good gas mileage, but they also want an element of style.



In the meantime, how do you choose between these cars? Price, the most obvious place to start, can be misleading. Suggested retail prices are generally quite close, if not identical, but trim levels often differ by company. More important, how much you pay for your car has as much to do with the dealership where you buy it as it does with the sticker price.

All warranties are not alike. And neither, of course, are dealerships. Will you be more comfortable with an Isuzu or a Chevy dealership? And which is more convenient? In the case of the Acura and the Sterling, the cars are built in different factories-the Legend in Japan and the 825S in England. Thus far, the English cars have displayed far more quality control problems. The Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan Dallas and the Texas Motor Vehicle Association in Austin can provide information on consumer complaints about specific models.

Another consideration is the cost of parts that aren’t covered under most extended warranties-oil filters, brake pads, and clutch components, to name a few. According to a recent study by Automotive News, the bible of the automobile industry, automakers sometimes charge radically different prices for identical parts. Sterling charges nearly twice as much as Acura for a clutch disc, for instance, while Chevy almost doubles the Isuzu price for a front brake pad set. If all else fails, try flipping a coin.