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Commentary

Malibu Plus A Dash Of Corvette? Sounds Good, But Why?

I saw a story on Automotive News Monday morning that really caught my eye: Chevrolet is moving to apply to its whole car lineup some of Corvette's design language. 

Here's a perpetual area of interest for automakers, but one that tends to be a lip service exercise, or a Hail Mary pass at worst: connecting the cars for which they are famous with the mid-market, passion-deprived people mover vehicles. What does a sports car have to do with the commuter wheels in the garage? 

From one point of view, the importance of this can't really be overstated, because God knows, a car brand is a brand, and the products have to stand for something, and look like they belong together or what sort of brand do you have? You can't build a brand with ads solely. Really, you should never have to see an advertisement to know what a car brand stands for. You should be able to get it from the cars or talk to the owners. Do you really need to see a MINI ad to get the brand? Really? Okay, that's not really fair, given what MINI is about, and where it comes from and how core the brand icon is to the lineup. 

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But Chevrolet's situation is the opposite. Would it be an exaggeration to say Corvette is to Chevrolet's other cars what Pluto is to the solar system? Pluto's not really even a planet. General Motors Global Design Chief Ed Welburn told Automotive News that "as Malibu and Cruze and Volt come to market, you'll be able to see a subtle link between some of the form vocabulary for all of them and Corvette, including tail lights and hood."

"I always look at the hood of the Corvette and the sectioning, the way it's taut, very lean, very sporty," Welburn said. "That will be a part of really everything we do for Chevrolet." 

First, a brand marketer with an eye for design would wonder why this hadn't happened before, because really, it isn't easy to say, "oh yeah, I can tell this is a Chevrolet; just look at that grill." 

Yes, I'm hard pressed to think of aspects of Chevrolet design language that really define the whole brand lineup. I think the cars look better than they ever have, but I honestly don't think there's a "Chevrolet" look. Dodge has that cross-sectional grill. Ford cars have a fairly consistent look, whether it's Mustang, Fusion or Focus. And although it is polarizing, Toyota has a very strong design language. So do Kia and Hyundai.

So creating a continuous look and personality is important, and a tough task. But while I completely understand a need for a strong brand identity, and I get why you'd want to try to bring Corvette closer to the sun and out of the eccentric orbit it inhabits vis a vis the bowtie, I'm not sure I see the sense in achieving that by applying Corvette design language to the other cars. 

I see it as potentially self-defeating. If you apply enough of the Corvette language to make the family connection obvious you may sacrifice functional design and unity of the whole, or some such. 

Here's an example from my job: I have written some line for a story that I liked so much I was damned if I wasn't going to put it in there somewhere. So I shoehorn it in. But then I have to change something else. Which changes the tenor of the paragraph, so I have to change that. But then the paragraph just sticks out like a hangnail. Etc. 

Here's an even better example: plastic surgery. Someone has his eyebrows done. They look great, but the job screws up the rest of the face. So he has something done with the nose to match the eyebrows. Now the lips look like a pair of moray eels, so he has those fixed. But then the cheeks need to be pulled out to make room for the Botox. No criticism of the surgeon here. He’s board certified. 

On the other hand, if you apply simple Corvette cues to the other cars, and they are simple enough not to mess up the whole thing, then what's the point? Is anyone seriously going to care if the Spark looks like the Corvette? I think it looks the way it should, functionally. 

Corvette has always been an outlier to the brand, but so what? To me it's as much about personality, and that obviously goes way deeper than taillights. Borrowing design language isn't putting the brand in the car. Sure, if anyone can do the surgery Welburn's team can. But why?

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