If the auto-industry watchers are right, the X-90 is part of the next marketing revolution from Japan. Rolling into American showrooms starting next month are the funky new hybrids called mini sport-utility vehicles, or “minutes”: tiny playthings that make the Suzuki Samurai seem roomy. The X-90 seats two if they aren’t too big. In December Toyota is bringing over its own micro, four-wheel-drive tittermobile, the RAV4, which boasts a slightly bigger engine and a pair of bucket seats in the back. Ford, Plymouth and Hyundai all dangled their own prospective micro machines at recent car shows, largely to test the public interest. Car and Driver magazine has already called the X-90 and RAV4 “the next big thing.” speculating that they might match the excitement Mazda stirred when it launched its affordable roadster, the Miata, in 1989. When the RAV4 was introduced in Japan last year, it generated 10 times as many orders as Toyota could fill, with buyers plunking down from about $17,200 to $22,200 apiece (U.S. prices, though not yet announced, are expected to run around $17,000). Its appeal? A Japanese drivers praised the commanding ride and absence of ojisan-posa, or middle-agedness. When Allen Randolph, a 37-year-old restaurant manager, recently spotted an X-90 prototype parked in Santa Monica, Calif., he was just as excited by its youthful lines. “It looks pretty neat,” he said as the Suzuki drew a crowd. Even the less daring RAV4 turned heads, young and old, as it suited along southern California highways.
The X-90 and RAV4 are being shrewdly pitched to a primary market of aging baby boomers. As the American car industry edges into its second century, almost anyone who can drive probably has a car. And the modest rise in the driving age population is not enough, analysts say, to keep car sales robust. So carmakers are trying harder to figure out what drivers really want, and deliver it. “If you are really good at it,” says Bryan Bergsteinsson, vice president of the pickup and sport-utility-vehicle team for Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., “you anticipate what the consumer desires before they may realize they really desire it.” Both vehicles promise the sweet juice of youth, but without the bitter aftertaste of guilt. Both are also nimble blends of sporty abandon and subcompact good sense. And their manufacturers waste no time playing up their split personalities: aluminum alloy wheels and dual airbags.
Combining the design DNA of compact cars, Jeeps, trucks and wildly popular sport-utility vehicles, the X-90 and RAV4 are playfully indulgent. The two-door X-90 and RAV4 are 145.9 inches long–3.4 inches shorter than the two-door. Geo Metro, the smallest car sold in the United States. Toss in a 16-valve four-cylinder engine and a five-speed manual transmission, and the X-90 and RAV4 ride like dune buggies on steroids–but with room in the back for the week’s groceries. “The idea was to bring a vehicle out that wasn’t necessarily directed toward any age group but would appeal to people who were young at heart,” says Gary Anderson, American Suzuki’s vice president of sales and marketing. Consumers in their 40s and 50s, he notes, are no longer seen as “semi-retired or dead.” But if the “young at heart” approach isn’t enough. Toyota is also hedging its bets with something else: the diminishing economic prospects for Generation Xers. While it is not unusual for a baby-boomer household to have several cars–a sedan, a weekend runabout, maybe a minivan to haul the kids–many post baby boomers can afford only one. The mini-utes cover all the bases. Toyota believes that with the RAV4’s more powerful two-liter engine and folding back seat, it’s vastly more versatile than its two-seater Suzuki rival. But of course, none of this will matter much if American drivers, forever tossed between the fab and the fad, decide the next big thing is, well, big.
