RE: Subaru Gets Serious About Design
Wednesday 14th July 2010
Subaru is set to dump its frumpy image and get serious about making cars that actually look, er, nice in a bid to appeal to a wider audience.
"We want to broaden the appeal to make it accessible to more than a small, loyal crowd," Namba told US mag Auto Week in a recent interview. "We need to add a more contemporary element."
None of Namba's designs are yet on the road, but the recent Hybrid Tourer concept (pictured) is one of his, and points the way for the future look of Subarus. "We have to show the function through design with simple, clean lines," says Namba. "I want a very simple design that exhibits strength."
Subaru Gets Serious About Design
Bold, clean looks are the key to broadening Subaru's appeal, says design boss
Until now Subaru has always been an engineering-led company, with design taking a back seat. The result - apart from flashes of inspiration such as the SVX coupe and some early fast Imprezas - has been some rather frumpy designs and a confused brand image.
Now, Subaru design boss Osamu Namba - who joined Subaru in 2008, a decade after founding his own styling studio - wants to change all that and bring the Subaru brand to the masses with a unified design language.
Subaru's core four-wheel drive and boxer engines will remain, but Namba reckons that Subaru needs to react more rapidly to market trends - and also to inject some style into the styling.
"I don't want it to be just something serious and boring," he says. "A lot of people don't know that Subaru brand. If we can make styling more accessible, it will bring them in."
If you're not fussed about fancy design, but a blown boxer four and all-wheel drive do it for you, there's plenty of affordable Subaru-based excitement to be found in the PistonHeads classifieds.
Discussion
Nothing other than the badge identifies it as a Subaru, if you showed it to me badgeless I'd have guessed it was a Kia concept. Not that thats necessarily a bad thing but surely you'd want some bit of brand identity in your cars rather than looking like anyone could have made it.
ETA: I actually like the current Subaru's, Legacy especially, because they are different
VS
No competition in my eyes
ETA: I actually like the current Subaru's, Legacy especially, because they are different
VS
No competition in my eyes
Edited by patmahe on Wednesday 14th July 12:52
When are the Nips going to realise that they have a long and highly successful history of creating bland unimaginative boxes, punctuated by the odd (very rare) design jewel? It should be plain to them by now that they have no concept of style and should outsource this to people who understand how to clothe a car. Those mock ups (even though they're not Subaru) look worse than the current offerings.
ctallchris said:
Broad appeal = generic 
Agree, try to please everyone but satisfy no-one.I love (hate?) the marketing b
ks and lack of joined up thinking in these CEO press releases."We've spent literally decades building up an admittedly small, but loyal and fanatical following. So now what we fancy doing is making a type of car that historically we are unused to, and in the process piss of said loyal followers!"
it makes no sense whatsoever. Lotus did it last week, subaru this week. next you're gonna tell me that Porsche are planning to make a huge, spectaularly ugly four door and try and make it look like a 911! Oh...wait
Is the car industry in cahoots to basically p
s off every car fan on the planet?The problem Subaru (and many Japanese and Korean car companies) have is their lack of a design tradition or design language. Problem is, whilst under the skin they've often introduced innovations that led the world, on the outside, in order to appear comparable to established Western marques, they've just been derivative.
Take Jaguar for example - a choice of XJ portcullis, XK teardrop or D-Type oval grilles, oval headlights, flowing lines reminiscent of a crouching or leaping jaguar, and a tapering tail. It's a design tradition that guides the creation of every Jaguar. See a successful Jaguar design and you'll know it's a Jaguar without having to look at the badge, because it conveys grace, pace and space.
Or in another way, take Lamborghini. Since the Miura, a Lamborghini has been designed to shock, to not so much move the design game on as to boot it firmly into the middle of next century. See a supercar that looks like it flew here from Jupiter and you'll know it's a Lamborghini. There are no traditional cues as such with the exception of the beetle-wing door, but the design language of Lamborghini has always been one of breakneck progress.
The problem the Japanese and Koreans have is that they spent the best part of 30 years copying American and European cars, then 20 years frantically trying to define their own to varying degrees of success. You can tell most European or American cars by the shape of the grille. Japanese and Korean grilles by contrast seem to change every five years. There's no continuity to establish design tradition and there's no underpinning ethos to establish design language.
When the Japanese and Koreans have created genuinely good-looking cars, they've done a clean-sheet job or brought someone in from Italy or Germany. Toyota 2000GT, Mk2 MR2, Celicas from Mk IV onwards - brilliand designs but with the exception of the slot-grille flanked by indicator lights, no continuity. The Datsun/Nissan Z-cars have continuity of sorts, but they've mainly been done by foreign designers - Albrecht Goertz with the original 240/260/280 and Ajay Pachal with the 350/370. The 300ZXs were done in-house by Nissan and were of course clean-sheet designs.
The only exception I can think of is Honda, whose cars have been consistently good-looking with their vaguely triangular headlights, slim pillars, wedge-shaped grilles and low bonnet-lines, but then again Honda have always been different to other Japanese marques.
Subaru is a case in point. No cars of theirs have every been particularly attractive other than the SVX, which was, of course, a Giorgetto Giugiaro design study. Again, another clean-sheet design from an independent stylist.
Maybe they should have another word with him, get him to create a proper design language for Subaru with a sense of continuity about it.
Take Jaguar for example - a choice of XJ portcullis, XK teardrop or D-Type oval grilles, oval headlights, flowing lines reminiscent of a crouching or leaping jaguar, and a tapering tail. It's a design tradition that guides the creation of every Jaguar. See a successful Jaguar design and you'll know it's a Jaguar without having to look at the badge, because it conveys grace, pace and space.
Or in another way, take Lamborghini. Since the Miura, a Lamborghini has been designed to shock, to not so much move the design game on as to boot it firmly into the middle of next century. See a supercar that looks like it flew here from Jupiter and you'll know it's a Lamborghini. There are no traditional cues as such with the exception of the beetle-wing door, but the design language of Lamborghini has always been one of breakneck progress.
The problem the Japanese and Koreans have is that they spent the best part of 30 years copying American and European cars, then 20 years frantically trying to define their own to varying degrees of success. You can tell most European or American cars by the shape of the grille. Japanese and Korean grilles by contrast seem to change every five years. There's no continuity to establish design tradition and there's no underpinning ethos to establish design language.
When the Japanese and Koreans have created genuinely good-looking cars, they've done a clean-sheet job or brought someone in from Italy or Germany. Toyota 2000GT, Mk2 MR2, Celicas from Mk IV onwards - brilliand designs but with the exception of the slot-grille flanked by indicator lights, no continuity. The Datsun/Nissan Z-cars have continuity of sorts, but they've mainly been done by foreign designers - Albrecht Goertz with the original 240/260/280 and Ajay Pachal with the 350/370. The 300ZXs were done in-house by Nissan and were of course clean-sheet designs.
The only exception I can think of is Honda, whose cars have been consistently good-looking with their vaguely triangular headlights, slim pillars, wedge-shaped grilles and low bonnet-lines, but then again Honda have always been different to other Japanese marques.
Subaru is a case in point. No cars of theirs have every been particularly attractive other than the SVX, which was, of course, a Giorgetto Giugiaro design study. Again, another clean-sheet design from an independent stylist.
Maybe they should have another word with him, get him to create a proper design language for Subaru with a sense of continuity about it.
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff