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Carmakers try brand linkage to reach more buyers

February 16, 2007 on 9:52 am | In |

DETROIT: Inside the cavernous Cobo Convention Center where the Detroit auto show is held each year, it is easy to lose your way among the hundreds of new models. But at the show this week, the feeling seems magnified by the cars themselves, which in some cases appear, at first glance, to be sitting in the wrong display area.

Consider the sporty new Nissan Altima coupe, whose sleek design looks a lot like the Infiniti G35, a car that Nissan Motor’s luxury division sells for thousands of dollars more.

A short walk away is the concept version of a Honda Accord coupe, with crisp, muscular lines and an aggressive stance that would look far more at home across the Cobo center aisle in the display for Acura, Honda’s upscale brand.

Confusion over models from the same automaker has historically been a problem for U.S. auto companies, which have been under pressure through the years to build different versions of essentially the same vehicle for their various brands. By contrast, Japanese carmakers, which were far smaller than their Detroit competitors, deliberately kept their lineups lean. But now these foreign companies are introducing models at the high and low ends of their respective brands that may cause some unintended double takes among consumers.

European carmakers may be getting in on the act, too. Bayerische Motoren Werke makes Mini Coopers, but it will eventually be competing for similar buyers and budgets when BMW brings its 1- series cars to the United States. This trend call it brand bumping essentially describes what occurs when car companies move a brand or a nameplate in a new direction, generally further up or down in price, in hopes of creating a new identity and attracting more buyers.

Because it is hard for automakers to make big moves with cars that have clear identities, they often have to do this a step at a time, through new designs or by adding more powerful engines.

“You’re moving the car halfway out of one brand slot and into another brand slot,” said David Davis, editor of Winding Road, an online car magazine. “It does have the effect of moving the car up one level to the next price class or the next size class.”

The phenomenon is different from “badge engineering,” in which auto companies take what is basically the same vehicle and sell it under one or more nameplates, making cosmetic changes to the front end or taillights or putting on another name.

That practice reached comedic levels in the 1980s when Lincoln poked fun at a series of look-alike cars from General Motors in one of its ads. And Japanese companies fell victim to the problem a decade or two ago themselves, when they were branching out from their original mass-market brands to luxury models and had to use the same car and truck platforms until they could develop unique ones for their new brands.

One reason for this new shift in branding is that auto companies want to keep growing and they have, for now, run out of new types of cars, like sport utility vehicles and crossovers, that have fueled growth in the past.

“We’re sitting in the lull,” said Wesley Brown of Iceology, a marketing firm.

That is why companies like Honda and Nissan are putting more thought than they once might have into developing stylish coupes like those on display here, even at the risk that buyers might choose them instead of more expensive models.

When Nissan wanted to start selling a two-door coupe, it clearly turned to its Infiniti division for inspiration to design the new Altima coupe. That new Altima is part of Nissan’s effort to lift its American sales, which fell in 2006 after having risen since the start of the decade.

Many say the similarity between the cars is striking. Autoblog.com, a Web site, has called the Altima coupe the “poor man’s G35.”

To be sure, the two cars may not compete for buyers very long, if at all. Nissan, which plans to begin selling the new Altima coupe this summer as a 2008 model, has already released sketches of the next-generation G35. It will also be sold as a 2008 car, although Nissan has yet to say when the new Infiniti coupe will reach showrooms (sketches of the new G35 suggest the changes may be subtle to everyone except car buffs).

For their part, Nissan executives insist that there are clear differences between the brands. Their lineup has just two vehicles with similar architecture, the Nissan Armada and Infiniti QX56, both big SUVs. The Altima Coupe is a front-wheel-drive car; the G35 is rear- wheel drive (though both will be available in all-wheel drive).