SUV Evolution: The Next Big Thing

IF designers working deep inside car companies get their way, people will see, in a few years, a vehicle zip past and ask: "What was that?"

The same companies that brought us station wagons, minivans and sport utility vehicles (SUV) are trying to create The Next Big Thing -- a vehicle that will be totally different from those that went before it.

"It won't be a van, it won't be an SUV, it won't be a wagon," said Jack Telnack, vice president of corporate design for Ford Motor Co. "Just call it a missing link.

"It will be a different silhouette than anything you've seen before."

Just what that "missing link" is -- and how close Ford and other automakers are to reaching it -- remains a mystery. Automakers keep their research secret.

But analysts have said companies are researching several new vehicles that are loosely based on minivans and station wagons. They also are planning hybrids of cars and sport utilities -- and many of the new vehicles could be on roadways within five years.

"What you're going to see is a filling of the niches and a blurring of the boundaries," said David Cole, director of the Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation at University of Michigan.

Some of the new creations could surface in January at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Chrysler Corp, for instance, plans to show off a peculiar new hybrid of a Jeep Wrangler and a sports car.

"It's just a concept vehicle, but it is typical of this cross shopping of categories," said Trevor Creed, Chrysler's design director.

Reports have said Ford plans to build a car-like, mini sport utility in 1999. But the automaker has refused to confirm the reports.

At General Motors Corp, a spokesman in the Cadillac division confirmed that Cadillac is considering the production of a car- like sport utility, called a Luxury Activity Vehicle based on the Catera.

Of course, researching new vehicle lines is nothing new for automakers. Chrysler was first to introduce a minivan in 1983, spurring a host of similar vehicles and millions of sales since.

Sport utility vehicles have been around since the 1940s, but automakers' new versions in recent years have attracted urban yuppies and made SUVs among the top-selling vehicles in the United States.

Creed said the rate of experimentation has accelerated in recent years as consumers increasingly demand a broad array of choices. "Everything is being blended," he said.

Ford designer J. Mays, who is replacing the soon-to-retire Telnack at Ford, said car and truck designs are blending together so much that consumers may not be able to tell the difference in 10 years.

"They're meeting in the middle," he said of cars and trucks.

Wes Brown, an analyst with Nextrend, said automakers want to be ready with new vehicles as baby boomers' tastes change.

"We're going to start to see these boomers tire of the sport utility concept and get into something that is a little more comfortable to drive," he said.

Also, with minivan sales leveling off, Chrysler and GM are looking for ways to revive the market, Brown said. "That's where we may see some rather revolutionary concepts."

Cole said that as automakers increasingly rival each other in quality, they will use new vehicle lines to distinguish themselves.

"There's always something that's going to appear and be that differentiator," he said.

Some automakers already are touting products that they say break from traditional molds. Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc's Lexus division will launch in March the RX 300, which Toyota says will be the most car-like SUV on the market.

Mike Michaels of Lexus said the RX 300 will suit baby boomers who rarely leave city streets or highways. "The usage of the SUV has really, really changed, and we think the breed has to change to the way people really use them," he said.

Subaru of America Inc classifies its new Forester SUV as a car and boasts that it meets federal car safety standards. "We say that it is really the best of both concepts, a hybrid utility vehicle," said Richard Marshall of Subaru.

Among the greatest successes of a hybrid SUV so far is the Mercedes-Benz M-Class, which looks like a sleek truck but is supposed to drive like a car. The German automaker has sold more than 7,200 of the SUVs in the United States since September and last month increased its 1998 sales projections from 33,000 to 40,000.

C. Robert Beltz, who lives near Flint, owns an M-Class and said it is tough like an SUV for dirt roads and snow, but handles much like a car.

"It has a lot of qualities of sitting behind the wheel of a Mercedes car," he said. "It is especially quiet."

Jim Hall, an analyst with AutoPacific Inc, said automakers have always changed their products to meet consumer demands and will continue to do so. Those that don't will meet the fate of the once-popular station wagon.

"It didn't evolve," he said. "It became a perpetuation of mom's car. If wagons had evolved, they'd be here."

Still, while vehicles will evolve, Hall said talk of a "missing link" is far fetched.

"If products out there evolve, there's no need to cook up weird, exotic hybrids."

-- Associated Press