Chrysler banks on its 1980s hit -- the minivan
Other automakers switch to crossovers
A visitor to the New York International Automobile Show this month looks at a new Chrysler Town and Country minivan with its right side removed for easier interior viewing.
(STAN HONDA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
DETROIT -- Soccer moms and dads, take note: Rumors of the minivan's death have been greatly exaggerated.
Even as
The automaker has unveiled its 2008 Chrysler Town & Country and Dodge Caravan . Even if you're not a fan of the van, Chrysler and analysts and suppliers say you should be impressed.
"Chrysler's new minivan is a dramatic departure from where they've been," said auto analyst Erich Merkle of IRN Inc. in Grand Rapids, Mich. "It's a more hard-edge, upright, industrial design than the current jellybean look. . . . Chrysler is taking some risk here. They're taking their number-one-selling product and they're laying it on the line. That shows some machismo when you can take your number one product and turn it upside down. I think it will hit a home run."
The automaker needs to knock it out of the park with the new minivan because the seven-seat people-and-stuff mover is to Chrysler what the F-series pickup is to Ford. It's the company's biggest seller and is responsible for nearly 20 percent of its annual sales.
"It's really interesting to see the different strategies the automakers are using to address the shift away from SUVs," said Rebecca Lindland, associate director of automotive sales for Global Insight consultants. "Minivans evolved because consumers went away from station wagons, which was driven by baby boomers' desire to be bigger and better than the other baby boomers on the road with their trophy children."
As baby boomers' children got older and moved out, the SUV grew in popularity, she said.
"Now we're seeing a shift away from SUVs," she said.
Ford and GM are moving toward offering a variety of crossovers, vehicles that are classified as trucks but built on a car chassis.
Ford spokesman Jim Cain said the Dearborn, Mich.-based automaker expects the minivan market to shrink and is investing in crossovers because Ford thinks that market, in which it already has the five-passenger Edge and the seven-passenger Freestyle, could grow to be as large as the passenger car segment or the pickup segment by 2010.
But Chrysler expects the minivan segment to hold steady or grow and hopes to grab an even larger share of the segment it already dominates.
Other automakers considered strong competitors in the segment,
Some view a dependence on minivans as risky at a time when many analysts, including Lindland, forecast a slight decline in the minivan segment and the other automakers have called it a dying design.
But Ann Fandozzi, Chrysler director of product marketing, who is intimately involved in the research that results in Chrysler's minivan innovations, is confident that minivans will see a revival.
"We don't really talk about volume expectations," Fandozzi said. "But let me say this: We are the leader, and we intend to stay the leader."
Chrysler chief executive Tom LaSorda calls the new minivan a knockout. "We don't give up on the segment."
Suppliers said the new minivan offers all the amenities you can find on any competitors plus some. Examples of some of the mom-and-kid pleasers: more directed lighting, more pockets in the doors, and built-in adjustable sunshades for the rear windows.
Chrysler launched the minivan during former chairman Lee Iacocca's reign in the early 1980s and now sells more than twice as many minivans as any other automaker.
Global Insight forecasts that Chrysler will sell 366,500 of its Dodge Caravan and Chrysler Town & Country minivans this year; Honda Motor Co. will sell 175,000 minivans; Toyota Motor Corp., 157,000; and Ford and GM combined, 154,000.
Fandozzi said Chrysler's research shows the minivan segment holding steady at about 1.2 million units or growing slightly in 2007 as members of the group known as Generation Y begin starting families.
"It's a large segment of the population, and they're much more about family formation than, let's say, my generation, Generation X. This generation is much more like the baby boomers. They're going to have multiple kids. They put their family first. And as soon as you start talking families, right away minivan stability is a foregone conclusion."
And if you believe the minivan segment is going to be at least 1.2 million, then if two competitors exit and you're the leader, Fandozzi said, "you figure proportionally, Chrysler will at least get our fair share of that pie. So Ford and GM exiting is only good news for us."
Ford and GM say they expect to convert most of their former minivan buyers to buyers of their crossover vehicles like the Ford Edge or the Saturn Outlook.
At least a couple of minivan owners say it may be hard to move them to anything other than a minivan, with sliding doors and folding-seat flexibility.
Ford Aerostar owner Ernest Bukovitz, 44, of Monroe, Mich., said he'd consider something other than a minivan, but it would be a hard switch.
"I love my minivan," Bukovitz said. He uses it to transport children and building materials. "I like the two sliding doors they have now, all the cup holders, and the climate control in back. And when I take those benches out, I can haul things in my minivan that you can't even haul in a pickup."
Linda Good, 46, of Ferndale, Mich., who drives a 2001 Chrysler Voyager, said she's not in the market now, but her next vehicle will be a minivan.
Good bought her first minivan because she needed a vehicle that got decent mileage, had room for her three children and was easy for her mother and aunt to get in and out of. She bought her second minivan, the Voyager she drives now, because she still needed to transport multiple kids and family members and because she needed room for the bulky goods she hauls for her three jobs: selling Avon products, delivering newspapers, and cleaning houses.
When she is ready to finally trade it in, she likes the idea of getting one with Chrysler's Stow 'n Go seats.
That's the innovation Chrysler introduced in 2005 with Fandozzi's help.
"I talk to customers a lot about trends and observe them in their homes and in their minivans," Fandozzi said. "We went into homes and minivans that had young children and said, 'Don't clean up -- we want to observe,' " Fandozzi said.
"They'd always apologize, you know -- 'Sorry it's so messy' -- even if it wasn't that messy because they'd say: 'I have to have the crayons. I have to have the extra diaper bag. I have to, have to, have to.' So that was the genesis for the storage bins that opened up and you could store things in there and have hideaway storage."
Then Chrysler researchers did the same thing with older families.
"We observed families taking their kids to college," Fandozzi said. "When kids go to college, they throw in everything but the kitchen sink . . . and sometimes the kitchen sink. The second-row seat would have to come out. Then they got to school and wanted to take their friends out to dinner. So the idea became, 'OK, what if those middle seats could actually stow into the giant storage bins?' "
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