Why it's So Hard to Redesign Cars

I shared fake news yesterday. There. I admit it. I shared the latest fan renderings of the upcoming Jeep Wrangler pickup, which were presented in such a way that made it sound like it was the official design released by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, or FCA, Jeep's parent company. Like many times before it and many times after, this was just a couple renderings of what fans of the Wrangler believe the new small-pickup will look like. My shared content sparked a discussion among friends over two things. 1) Critique of the design and 2) Relevance of fan renderings. I'd like to discuss these two things.

The Relevance of Fan Renderings

This has been happening for a long-time on the internet. The examples that come to my mind from recent memory are the renderings for the new Mustang, MX-5/124 Spider "Fiata", Supra/Z5, F-series Super Duty, Wrangler, Challenger SRT Demon, Bronco, any Tesla, etc. These are all models with large fan-bases, so there are two factors at play here: The first is that manufacturers are slow to release details. If you're excited about a new model coming out, it can feel like an eternity between last years New York International Auto Show and next years new sales year (typically autumn). The second factor is that these fan-bases are all essentially guessing and betting on what the next design will look like. It's not "news" since they're often little more than a collection of rumors and guesses brought to life via someone with Photoshop. However, for fans, they're fun to look at and argue over, so long as people don't take them as official. 

Critique of The Design

I believe redesigning a car is hard. You have to improve upon the old design as much as you can but you also have to make it look familiar with the rest of the brand. An example of this would be the design of the current Mazda MX-5. Mazda had to create something that was an improvement over the older MX-5 but still looked like it was a Mazda, so that when people looked at it next to the CX-3 or the Mazda 6, there was some familial design there. 

I believe that redesigning a very popular car, especially one that has a long history is an even bigger task. When there's a huge fan-base and a long history for a car, I think it just makes the stakes higher. Take the Mustang for example. Any time Ford does anything to a Mustang, you can bet your last dollar that somebody somewhere is going to call it sacrilege. When you're redesigning a car like that with 50+ years of history, you have to walk a tight-rope of keeping familiar design elements from the cars history, while creating something modern AND integrating the brand's current design language (which is why the Fusion, Focus, Mustang, Fiesta and Escape all have similar design cues, such as the grill, the shape of the lights, etc.) Conversely, not too many people get aggravated about Hyundai redesigning the Azera or Mitsubishi redesigning the Montero. Neither of these cars have a long history AND a huge following. 

This issue isn't unique to automotive manufacturers either. Motorcycle companies such as Harley-Davidson and Triumph have been dealing with the same issues for just as long. Harley, for example, has to make new bikes every year, expanding their portfolio to appeal to a wider range of buyers, improve upon existing bikes while maintaining that life-line of history. To over simplify it, they need to make old new bikes feel old and new at the same time, while simultaneously appealing to new buyers. Harley caught a lot of flack from fans when they introduced the V-Rod, which was one of their first mass-produced models to feature liquid cooling in a design that looked more at home on a drag strip than it did on the Interstate. It didn't help their case to their aging fan-base that it was co-designed by Porsche. One one hand, it helped get younger buyers into dealerships. On the other hand it was a polarizing design with some loving it, while others hated it and proclaimed that HD had given up on it's history.

I guess we could summarize all of this as "some people are just babies" and "different strokes for different folks." I just wanted to present the other side of the argument when some people talk about how easy it is to update cars. "Just put $newEngine into it" is not the answer.