The Aesthetic Imperative Comes to Cars
When I was working on The Substance of Style, Eugene Volokh asked, once in conversation and once in the Q&A after a speech, why, if people care more about aesthetics, we don't see more car customization. It turns out that we do--just as extrapolating from my trend-spotting would predict. (The car-customizing trend didn't make it into the book but it did show up in my Wired article, much abbreviated from its original version, on aesthetic jobs.)
The WaPost and Fortuneboth feature articles on how automakers are trying to capitalize on the trend. From the Post piece:
The popularity of those over-the-top decorating shows for vehicles has pumped new life into the auto customizing business, as more mainstream consumers decide they want to trick out their car or truck with fancy accessories. The auto parts and accessories industry has doubled in size in a decade, reaching $29 billion in sales last year, according to the Specialty Equipment Market Association, or SEMA.
That's a stream of money too big for the auto industry to ignore, so car manufacturers are beginning to offer options up front that once were available only from the local hot-rod shop. Toyota blazed the way with its youth-oriented brand Scion, which offers such must-have accessories as glowing cup holders and multicolored dash displays.
"What some manufacturers figured out is if they contract with [customizers] or make the products in-house, they can make a lot more money," said Dan Kahn, a road-test editor at Edmunds.com.
While that seems like a predatory business move, small customizing companies actually welcome the trend, according to Peter MacGillivray, vice president of marketing and communications for the California-based SEMA.
"What they're really going to do is plant the seed, plant the notion of personalization and accessorization in so many more places than we ever could," MacGillivray said, adding that big car companies "have the single largest marketing budgets in the world."
The Fortune article reports from the SEMA trade show (and features a photo of comely autoshow women):
Heads are turning up and down the aisles at this year's show, and it's not just because of the short skirts. Diamond-studded lugnuts, 24-speaker stereo systems, nitrous-oxide injectors, underbody neon lighting, pneumatically adjustable suspensions, flashing tire-valve caps — the bling goes on for 12 linear miles of exhibits. SEMA has become the second-biggest trade show in the country, after the Consumer Electronics Show, and possibly the most important car show after Detroit. "We take it very seriously," says Ed Golden, Ford's director of design. Why? "We want them to be tuning up a Ford."
As the business of aftermarket parts has exploded--sales are expected to surpass $29 billion this year, more than twice what they were a decade ago--it has become something Detroit can't ignore. That's why Golden and fellow Ford designers Larry Erickson and Patrick Schiavone are here, their suits and gold name badges making them look a little out of place among the "tuners" in T-shirts and oil-stained jeans. "The thing is, today everybody's reliable," says Erickson, who designed the 2005 Mustang. "Everybody's quick. Everybody's got quality. So now the personality thing becomes more and more important."
That can mean anything from flashy chrome wheels to $10,000 entertainment systems with ten flat-screen TVs to paint that changes color when viewed from different angles. It started in the 1990s when California teens--much like their parents in the hot-rodding 1960s--started turning beaten-up sedans into street racers. Their racetracks were long blocks and riverbeds, some of them the same places where earlier generations competed in souped-up Mercurys and Thunderbirds. Only now technology allowed hot rodders to get high performance out of smaller, four-cylinder cars like Honda Civics. Some swapped out the computer chips governing engine functions; others lowered suspensions for better aerodynamics. Some just added bass speakers in the trunk or chopped off mufflers to add "noise." But now, a decade later, "tuning" has moved to the exclusive brands. At the SEMA show, there are Porsches with doors that scissor open like those on Lamborghinis, Jaguars with racing-style suspension, and six-figure Bentleys with tinted windows and 20-inch wheels (called "dubs" on the street).
At some point, I hope this trend will break out into serving a less flamboyant market: those of us who'd like a bit more color and style in our boring cars--maybe nothing more than a prettier paint job--but don't share the streetracer or hip-hop aesthetic.