Soft Road, Hard Miles
Sun Herald
Sunday July 9, 2000
The morphing of the automobile of the new millennium continues apace: part car, part four-wheel drive and part people mover. But JOSHUA DOWLING asks what happens when everyone's driving one.
THE FUTURE of the soft-roader has firmed up. Our wheels are being re-invented before our very eyes. The lines between what we call a four-wheel drive and a car have been blurred for a couple of years, and it's not getting any clearer.
When marketing types came up with the name soft-roader to describe "light" recreational vehicles, it was thought of as a fad. The irony is, by the time the term becomes part of our common language, we'll probably refer to them as cars.
The evidence is in the traffic jams. Honda sells more CR-Vs than Civics (how many of those shiny spare wheel covers have you sat behind?). With its roomy interior and commanding driving position the CR-V is the modern substitute for a family wagon. It just happens to be marketed as a four-wheel drive, no matter how tenuous its off-road ability.
Buyers don't care. They barely scrub the sheen off the sidewalls let alone get a rock caught in the tread.
But guess what is Australia's biggest-selling 4WD? Toyota LandCruiser, right? Wrong. Honda CR-V, with a Subaru Forester and others of the same ilk not too distant in the mirrors.
This worldwide trend has not escaped the attention of any car maker who doesn't have such a vehicle and the ones who thought they had the concept to themselves.
Take Toyota, for instance. When it released the funky-looking RAV4 in 1994 it was deemed by the blokes who wear work boots and cork hats as an imposter, a disgrace to the badge and Toyota's 4WD heritage. The thing sold like cold beer in the outback - to people in the city.
The concept which began in a more humble form as a 4WD Tercel in the 80s had grown up. So close, yet so far. The engineers must now be saying "missed it by that much".
Now there's a new second generation RAV4, due in showrooms by the end of this week. It promises to be bigger, better, more powerful and more car-like. Not much mention about how far it will go off the beaten track, however.
Most importantly, though, is that the arrival of the new RAV4 tells us the concept is not only alive and kicking, it confirms it is here to stay.
Even Hyundai is getting in on the action with a car, sorry, soft-roader, called the Santa Fe. Size-wise it is wedged somewhere between a CR-V and a Jeep Cherokee, a niche within a niche. Consider this another boundary stretched, a dingo fence knocked over.
It will have a choice of four-cylinder and V6 engines and have "some" off-road ability, says Hyundai. And you can bet it'll sell like Excels with free air, too.
The companies most conspicuous by their absence have been Ford and Mazda. Their 4WD twins will arrive early next year and the differences are minor apart from a badge here, a bumper bar there.
Remember, every one of these cars sold takes the place of another Falcon or Magna station wagon. Wagons aren't cool: 4WDs are.
As one car company marketing guru said: "People buy 4WDs to live the dream that they can escape the city if they want to. The dream is more important than the car's ability to get them there. The irony is, the faster our cities grow and the more congested they become, the more people want to escape."
This is why the latest advertisement for the Mitsubishi Pajero is trying to beat home the beaten-track message. Mud puddles and mountains are what people want their car to conquer. Instead, they drive over pot holes and speed bumps but feel better doing it in a 4WD than they do in a family hack.
It is ironic that Mitsubishi is doing the rugged outdoorsy thing when it has just released what could be described as its most "tame" Pajero.
Long regarded as a competent 4WD (despite its reputation as a Mosman chariot), the Pajero is built more like a car - literally. It doesn't have an old-fashioned chassis onto which it nails a body.
Fierce 4WD rivals the world over must be seriously considering their options after such a watershed decision by Mitsubishi. The car makers insist the Jeep isn't extinct, but it is an endangered species.
"There will always be room for the real rugged 4WDs but the over-whelming majority of cars will become more like 4WDs and 4WDs will become more like cars," a US auto industry analyst told Sunday Drive. "One day there will be this big crash in the middle but at the moment the world is going crazy for what appears to be a 4WD but isn't really.
"The funny thing is, no-one is going to call anyone's bluff because we're all driving the same damn thing.
"I don't think you're going to see people arguing about how tough their car is. The big question is 'where do we go next'?
"Where do we go when everybody is in a 4WD and no-one has a commanding view of the road any more because they're behind another 4WD? Does that mean we start from the bottom and go to really small cars to see under them, and then work our way up?" he joked. But is he joking? The room - and the view - is one of the big reasons we have embraced the soft-roader concept.
That, and the branding. Cars are an extension of our personality, whether we like to admit it or not. That's why Ford bent over backwards to buy LandRover recently. It wasn't as interested in the product (Ford is the world's biggest builder of 4WDs) as it was in the name, the badge, the image.
And LandRover knew it, too. Just look at some of the latest advertising. Some billboards only ever featured the badge, albeit covered by carefully placed dirt. The very fact that Ford and Mazda can build identical cars and sell them to different people is another excellent example of the success of different branding.
But before you sneer, it's probably a good thing. Because the way things are shaping up, we're all going to be driving the same cars in five years.
Truck stops here
Sales of 4WDs virtually came to a standstill in the pre-GST June sales figures, according to official industry monitor VFACTS. The previously buoyant compact all-terrain market (such as Honda CR-Vs and Subaru Foresters) dived 37.3 per cent on the 1999 June figures, but large 4WDs such as Toyota LandCruisers fared even worse, with sales down 46.2pc. Wait until next month, though. July is going to be a boomer.
Plot hatched
Even the humble hatchback is being consumed by the soft-roader phenomenon. The Honda HR-V is sold here as a 4WD but in Japan it is sold as a Civic substitute and without 4WD! Honda Australia ticked the 4WD box so it could take advantage of lower import tariffs. Volvo and Subaru both raised the suspension of their recreational wagons to take advantage of the same loophole in Australian Government regulations.
Small scale
The tiny Daihatsu Terios and Suzuki Jimny are unofficially substituting hatchback sales locally. Priced not much more than the fleet of $14,990 cars, many young buyers have been wooed by the promise of (limited) off-road ability - and more street cred at the beach car park.
Is it a bird?
While many 4WDs are trying to look like cars, here's an example where utes are trying to look like 4WDs. In an attempt to cash in on a more macho image, some Japanese makers have made their utes look like 4WDs by fitting chunky tyres and tall suspension. The Isuzu-sourced Holden Rodeo V6 is an example and Toyota has done a similar thing in the US with the PreRunner. The benefit other than the look? A cheaper price tag by virtue of the lack of complex 4WD parts.
© 2000 Sun Herald