A SWIFT switch to design

Posted: Saturday, Jan 14, 2006 at 0000 hrs IST
Updated: Saturday, Jan 14, 2006 at 0000 hrs IST

Font Size

Feedback

Discuss

M&M set to roll out bikes in 2010 VW pitches for 10% market share by ’14 Skoda to realign products in India Maruti mulls smarter, greener 800

: India's automotive sector has never reacted as strongly to design as it has in the last 3 years. One of the biggest design successes in recent times, the Maruti Swift, is already India’s 4th largest selling car on a monthly basis. The Tata light commercial vehicle ‘Ace’ has had a runaway success, the Hyundai Santro sales picked up considerably after its design makeover and the car buyers took their own time to give thumbs up to the boxy Maruti Wagon R whose sales have grown only in the last 18 months.

These are all signs of a market that is giving more significance to design now. “The success of the Swift is primarily because of design,” says Dilip Chhabria, chairman, DC Design Pvt Ltd. According to B Bhaumik, senior general manager, production & development, Mahindra & Mahindra, ‘‘Earlier, we were 25 years behind. We must be now five years behind the rest of the world. Indian auto design and style is maturing very fast. We have to. The middle-class in India is extremely price-sensitive. Therefore, we tend to work on our design models from price backwards.’’

India has never been a force in designing automobiles. Cars like the Ambassador that symbolised this country were originally designed in the UK. But barring the indigenously developed Tata Indica and the Mahindra Scorpio, the Maruti Swift was the first car to be jointly designed by the Maruti team in India and the Suzuki team in Japan.

Has India become a design sensitive market for automobiles? It would appear that it could finally made the grade as foreign car makers are beginning to involve Indian designers at the concept stage of car development.

According to the chief general manager, engineering, Maruti, I V Rao, ‘‘The Swift has been conceived to be a global car, styled in Europe and simultaneously manufactured and launched in Japan, Hungary, India and China, give or take a few months last year.’’

The basic design was, however, evolved and worked on by the Maruti design engineers and the Suzuki design engineers parallely. The Maruti engineers were stationed in Japan for different durations and worked together on emission norms, fuel economy, drivability and road worthiness (the fact that India has plenty of speed-breakers is also factored in).

For the first time, a design evaluation was done with this model in terms of evolving the ‘‘rear seat comfort’’. Zen, the earlier model from the Maruti stable that comes in the small car luxury segment, was designed entirely in Japan. Rao mentioned that when 800 cc was launched, the body design concept was different.

There are several drivers to the automobile design concept in the maturing Indian car market-including comfort, safety and pricing.

Car as a living space

As people spend more time on the roads, the car is increasingly become a living space and customers have begun to expect the comfort of a home in the car. According to Roberto Piatti, managing director, Stile Bertone, an automotive design company, based in Turin, Italy and one of the keynote speakers at the styling and design conclave at the Auto Expo, ‘‘The car becomes a home, by integrating in its metallic frame those ‘homely’ sensations, which are typically domestic. Soft, uninterrupted surfaces, warm colours, natural materials; controllable concealed lighting, guaranteed communication by radio, television, video, navigation systems; sensations of relaxation and harmony.’’

Auto companies are beginning to test their ideas with concept cars that are highly design-oriented but they still cater only to a niche market, feels Pankaj Jhunja, head, design studio, Dilip Chhabria Design. He says concept cars are ‘‘happening’’ in market research strategy in Europe and the UK to garner feedback.

Global luxury car makers feel India is responding positively to high-end design going by the number of launches at the 8th Auto Expo in the Capital including Audi, Skoda and Honda, among others. Marcel Hamon, head, sales Eastern Europe, Asia and CKD markets, SkodaAuto, said: ‘‘SkodaAuto is a lifestyle choice. The Indian market’s awareness of automobile design can be seen from the fact that the sales of our cars have gone up. We have a very classical, a very clean design.’’

‘‘India today offers great opportunities, great possibilities of combining Italian creativity and design with a strong Indian capability of engineering development, for products made in India which are successfully exportable all over the world,’’ says Piatti.. ‘‘We hope that the solid values which are typical of our Piemontese culture and the desire to be ‘propositive’ to forsee the shapes of the cars to come with new concepts and have the courage to subvert the basic themes and go against the flow if necessary,’’ he added.

Michael Weber, Audi’s country manager, India, says: ‘‘India is becoming more design-oriented in terms of automobiles. Audi is more of a lifelong product as it is a mass product. We aim for the sporty and sophisticated look.’’

Rise of luxury cars

Aspiration has fanned demand for luxury cars in India. The demands on design by this set of customers is quite different. ‘‘In the luxury car segment, people are pretty keen on how they want their interiors done, of the way it should look - cool, appealing, utilitarian and comfortable,’’ says Mr Katchalia of Navnit motors, dealers of BMW and Rolls Royce.

Customers of top-end cars look for the feel, comfort and technology in the automobile they are buying. DaimlerChrysler India’s director corporate affairs and finance, Suhas Kadlaskar says, ‘‘In a top-end luxury automobile like the Mercedes, a customer wants the best of everything including design, comfort, safety, latest in technology and delivery in the least possible time. As far as customisation for individual customers is concerned, each of them can select the combination in the car interiors that they want including colours, upholstry etc.’’

Recent years have woken up automobile makers to the realisation that bolder, out-of-the-box designs would gain better customer acceptance than safer designs. Taking cues from customer preferences, hopefully, more and more mainstream cars will go the irrational way.

DESIGN OVER THE DECADES

• 1920s The first cars of the late 19th and early 20th century were more functional and designed for motorised movement.
The Rolls Royce Silver Ghost of 1906 was a six cylinder car that stayed in production until 1925. It represented the best engineering and technology available at the time .
• 1930s Most of the technology used in automobiles had been invented and the number of manufacturers declined sharply as the industry consolidated. Ford, Citreon, Hudson, all went in for coupe models. The combination of style, speed and endurance was the key to success. Stylish hoods became the norm.
• 1940s Stealth and camouflage brought on elements of design such as curved glass, well-contoured and streamlined bodies. When civilian production restarted after the war, tail fins inspired by aircraft was introduced in models such as the Buick,Cadillac and Oldsmobiles. The hard-roof made its appearance.
• 1950s The obsession with the jet age transformed into the American muscle car that remained a rage from the 1950s to the 1970s. Engine power and vehicle speeds rose, designs became more integrated and artful, and cars spread across the world. Europe took to the mini. The VW Beetle survived Hitler to shake up the small car market in the Americas.
• 1960s America worried about foreign competition as European makers adopted higher technology, and Japan appeared as a serious car-producer. General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford tried radical small cars, like the GM A-bodies, but had little success. Conglomerates like the British Motors consolidated the market.
• 1970s Small performance cars from BMW, Toyota, and Nissan took the place of big-engined cars from America and Italy. The 1973 oil crisis, automobile emissions control rules, Japanese and European imports, and stangnant innovation wreaked havoc on the American automobile industry.
• 1980s This was the beginning of the modern era. Once the automobile emissions concerns of 1970s were conquered with computerised engine management systems, power began to rise rapidly. Vehicle design becomes less of a differentiator as attention shifts to safety, emission standards and fuel efficiency.
• 1990s In the 1980s, a powerful sports car might have produced 200 hp. Just 20 years later, average passenger cars have engines that powerful, and some performance models offer three times as much power. Math-based design came into its own in the 1990s.Alias software used for the first time in the ‘80s to create 3-D computer models and to mill reduced-scale became a norm.
• 21st Century The modern era from the 1980s to 2005 has also seen rapidly rising fuel efficiency and engine output. The 21st century saw the truly global production of automobiles. With technology allowing greater speed in design, time-to-market is reduced. Also sourcing of components became globalised. Prototypes at auto shows start assessing customer preferences across international markets. The heavy four-wheel driven, sports utility vehicles (SUVs), gained in popularity. Producers from Japan and the US have been struggling as the Korean Hyundai and now bankrupt Daewoo took performance to new heights.

Name		Message
Email ID
Subject

Latest News

Print Edition

Events

A SWIFT switch to design

Post Comments