Toyota Motor Corp.’s FTX, a concept pickup truck unveiled at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit early this year, was designed to make a statement.
In a word: big. In two words: really big.
“We have to do something really special if we want to capture sales,” said Kevin Hunter, vice president of design and studio activities for Calty Design Research Inc., Toyota’s design center in Newport Beach.
Toyota has some of the best-selling cars but lags in trucks, where Ford Motor Co.’s big F-150 dominates. Toyota does have the Tundra pickup, but some criticize it for being too small and underpowered.
Concept vehicles such as the FTX are bait, according to Hunter. Their designs sometimes are exaggerated to trigger an emotional response, he said.
“We closely watch the reaction,” he said.
Ideally, Hunter said he’d like to see people excited enough about a concept vehicle to send letters to Toyota urging the automaker to produce it.
Some of the designs that have come out of Calty (short for California Toyota) include the Solara convertible and the 2001 RSC, a rugged sports coupe. But no concept from the center has made it straight into production, according to Hunter.
“Not yet,” he said.
More often, Calty’s designs are tweaked for production models. Other times, studios collaborate. The center worked on some of Toyota’s biggest hits: the 2002 Matrix, the 1997 Prius hybrid and the RAV4, a baby sport utility vehicle.
Craig Kember, Calty’s senior designer who worked on the FTX, said he came up with the Matrix’s design after seeing teens in Irvine riding around in lowered cars.
The Matrix reflects Southern California’s “tuner car” culture, according to Hunter. Those are cars that have been tricked out or personalized in some way.
“We tried to take some of that energy,” Hunter said, combining a street-racing look with the capacity of a wagon.
“If we created a wagon, young people would reject it,” he said.
Concepts rarely go into production as designed. But Hunter hints it could happen. Calty’s more recent prototypes, including the FTX, the 2004 LF-C Lexus sports coupe and the 2003 Lexus HPX luxury sport utility vehicle, have generated industry buzz.
Design is a critical selling point as U.S. and other automakers have narrowed the quality gap with Toyota, said Brian Chee, automotive editor for Autobytel Inc., an Irvine-based car shopping Web site.
So when people are auto shopping, they think less about quality and more about design, he said.
“Vehicles make people feel a certain way about themselves,” Chee said. “Cars are our calling cards. When we pull up, what we drive is how they think of us.”
Toyota’s Prius is a hit because of its efficient hybrid engine,and also for its design, according to Chee.
“The design evokes a response from people,” he said.
And good design comes cheap these days.
“Exciting design is more and more available to lower-priced vehicles,” Chee said.
Take the Suzuki Reno, he said, from Brea-based American Suzuki Motor Corp., part of Japan’s Suzuki Motor Corp. It’s priced around $15,000.
Toyota and other automakers are trying hard to woo the next generation.
“Everyone’s trying to capture the younger buyer,” Hunter said. “That’s Scion’s mission.”
Hunter uses words such as “hip,” “honest,” “direct” and “aggressive” to describe Scion. The 2004 four-door Scion xB, which looks like a toaster, goes for about $14,000.
But what’s attractive to some is ugly to others. Some look at the Scion and say it’s not design at all, said Jim Hall, vice president of industry analysis for AutoPacific Inc., a Tustin-based auto marketing and research company.
“But all they need is 80,000 people a year to buy it,” he said.
The best designs, according to Hall, are those that are polarizing,ones that people either hate or love. The Chrysler 300 V-8 sedan is a polarizing design, he said. The model has been dubbed the “baby Bentley.”
One thing’s for sure about styling: It’s more masculine than feminine, Hunter said.
“Women will probably choose something more masculine but the men won’t choose something more feminine,” he said.
There are some cars that men just won’t buy, according to Hunter. He said he hears all the time that the Solara is for women.
Design is part art, part science, Hunter said. Designers still use clay to make models for presentations.
“That’s not going away,” he said.
Design is going digital, though. The concept vehicle interiors are developed completely on computers, he said.
Most designers are trained as artists. The design part is the emotional side of a car, according to Hunter. “That can really get people pumped up about something,” he said.
But designers need to work with the engineers, which isn’t always easy.
“Their agenda is many times different than ours,” Hunter said of engineers.
Hunter said his favorite design isn’t a Toyota. It’s a 360 Ferrari Modena. (He drives a Lexus GS 430.)
Calty employs about 65 people, including 25 designers, in Newport Beach and at a newly opened office in Ann Arbor, Mich.
The Michigan center is set to design vehicles for production. Its first project is the next Tundra pickup truck.
Toyota opted to expand in Ann Arbor instead of Orange County because the company has a large technical center there with about 500 engineers, Hunter said. One of Toyota’s goals is to bring its later-stage design work closer to where the vehicles are made, he said.
Touring Calty’s headquarters wasn’t possible because of the automaker’s sensitivity about what’s done there. Hunter described Calty’s headquarters as fairly standard with white walls and white and black furniture.
Before getting a project, Calty competes for the work with Toyota’s other design studios in Japan and Europe. Sometimes a final production version of a vehicle includes input from all of Toyota’s studios.
Calty designs about two concept cars a year and recently started doing interiors.
“We treat it a little bit more as a special area,” he said of interior work.
Automakers are looking to make interiors roomier and appealing, Autobytel’s Chee said. Designers consider road and wind noise and the feel of the seats, he said.
Calty, which started in El Segundo in 1973 and moved to OC in 1978, is here largely because of Strother MacMinn, an auto designer and professor at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.
The influential MacMinn used to teach Toyota’s designers who traveled from Japan. He urged them to open a studio in Southern California. MacMinn, known as “Mac,” died in 1998.
After Toyota opened Calty, other automakers followed suit. Several have design studios in Orange County, including the Hyundai & Kia Design and Technical Center, Mercedes-Benz Advanced Design of North America and Mazda Research & Development, all in Irvine.
“We don’t generate any sales,” Hunter said. “But hopefully, if we’ve done our job well, we create an emotional design that can lead to really great sales.”
