Small Cars Seek Appeal Beyond the Cute Factor

AS part of a promotion for the tiny Fortwo in the United States, publicists at Smart arranged a visit for auto journalists to the Computer History Museum in the Silicon Valley city of Mountain View, Calif. The automaker, part of the Daimler corporate family alongside Mercedes-Benz, wanted to point out that in the world of computers, evolution favors the small.

Technological progress and prestige are marked by compression and reduction; compactness is a virtue in high-tech products like cellphones and computers.

But “compact” and “subcompact” carry pejorative overtones when applied to cars, where greater size has long signaled power, prestige and security.

As drivers in the United States grudgingly adapt to higher gasoline prices, automakers seem to be taking a greater interest in building smaller cars that are more than afterthoughts to larger, more profitable models. A look at the vehicles on display at the New York auto show last month suggests that the design of scaled-down models — often called B-class cars by the industry and city cars by marketers — is improving.

“City cars will become increasingly important, even in the U.S.,” said James E. Press, the longtime Toyota executive who is now vice chairman at Chrysler, during a recent business conference at the Levin Institute in New York.

Because cars of this size are sold in many countries, they have also come to be known as world cars.

At the New York show, Ford displayed a design study called the Verve, a version of a new small car that will be sold as the Fiesta, a name Ford has used on its world car for decades. European sales start this fall with an American introduction in 2010.

General Motors has added smaller models from Europe and Asia to its North American lines, including the Saturn Astra, sold by G.M.’s Opel and Vauxhall brands in Europe and Britain. Detroit automakers sell still smaller models like the Opel Corsa and Ford Ka overseas, but until recently there was little reason to consider bringing them to the United States.

The Toyota Yaris and Nissan Versa are world cars whose sales have been expanded to the United States in recent years. A new version of Honda’s rival to those models, the Fit, made its debut at the New York show, only two years after the last-generation model came to this country.

The Fit, which is called the Jazz in other parts of the world, is available in about 100 countries. Now Honda is pitching it for cities: “With an aggressive new face, it’s perfect for the hustle and bustle of metro-centric life styles,” a Honda advertisement says.

The B-class cars are increasing in popularity around the world. The so-called millenials, or Gen-Y buyers, that Ford hopes to attract with the Fiesta are accustomed to products that offer high value in small packages, said Peter Horbury, executive design director for the Americas at the Ford Motor Company.

Ford researchers estimate that small-car sales around the world will grow to about 38 million in 2012, from 23 million in 2002. In the United States, Ford estimates total small-car sales of 3.4 million in 2012, an increase of 25 percent over a decade.

The success of the Mini Cooper in the United States has changed the small-car market for both buyers and sellers. Buyers have come to expect that European automakers will offer models that are well-designed and space-efficient — and buyers will pay more for them.

“The assumption about a product is that if it is European it can be small and expensive,” said Bryan Nesbitt, vice president for North American design at G.M. In a previous assignment at G.M.’s European design studios, Mr. Nesbitt oversaw work on models like the Opel Agila.

But many models that flourish around the globe are not available in the United States. When the World Car of the Year was announced at the New York auto show, it was a small model unfamiliar to the locals: the Mazda 2. In the United States, the company’s numbers go only as low as the Mazda 3.

Americans have coveted the attractive small cars of Europe for years: a recent example is the new Fiat 500, a nostalgic update of a beloved people’s car. Recent exchange-rate shifts will hurt the chances of such cars coming here: the recently announced Volkswagen Scirocco is too expensive to sell in this country, the company says, although its predecessors were hits here.

Sales of South Korean models have relied heavily on low prices and long warranties, but now small models from Hyundai and Kia have grown more appealing. The Kia Koup, a design study that made its debut last month in New York, offers a sophisticated combination of European form and edgy American lines, reflecting the backgrounds of its creators: Peter Schreyer, formerly of Audi and now the chief design officer of Kia Motors, and Tom Kearns, formerly of Cadillac, who is today the chief designer at Kia’s American design studio in Irvine, Calif., where the Koup was created.

The body is solid and chunky; its beltline recalls a Detroit muscle car of the 1960s. A character line that the designers call the “swoosh and check” runs from the front-door line back, providing the car a powerful graphic element that is recognizable from a distance. The Koup looks like a more expensive car, perhaps from Germany.

Saab’s concept car at the show presented a convincing adaptation of syling themes seen on the much-praised Aero X show car to a smaller vehicle. The 9-X BioHybrid could become the smallest Saab, possibly called the 9-1. Like the Volvo C30 and BMW 1 Series, Saab’s offering suggests that even European luxury brands are thinking smaller.

Many new models are likely to arrive in the market slot between the conventional compacts and the very smallest cars, like the Smart Fortwo or Toyota’s new rival to the Smart, the iQ, which will not come to the United States. Volkswagen’s Up family of cars, a set of concepts shown in Japan and Europe but not at the New York show, offers a vision of a global small car that can be dressed up or down, as a fashion designer might say, for markets around the world. A stripped version could sell in emerging economies and a more elaborately equipped one might be offered in Europe or the United States.

The new, smaller cars are taking unconventional forms as well. In the past, many small cars appeared to be merely shrunken versions of larger siblings. Now we may see novel shapes that will be exclusive to small cars.

“We will see more small cars in the U.S. and they will be more different” in design, Shiro Nakamura, design director of Nissan, said in an interview at the New York show. More small niche models will appear, he said. He pointed to the Nissan Cube, due here next year. The boxy Cube, he said, comes from nonautomotive design traditions and is aimed at young people. “It is not for everyone,” he said. “It does not smell of gasoline. It is more product design than automobile design.”

Changes in the design of smaller cars may be part of a deeper change in attitude of the sort that Smart’s trip to the Computer History Museum brought out. The success of the Mini Cooper and the iPod have changed attitudes. Smallness signals cutting-edge technology: “thinnovation” is the cute portmanteau word that Apple uses in advertising for its laptop computers.

The idea of small objects as packed with power may have migrated to the automotive world. But there is a difference: you fit your music on your iPod but you don’t have to fit your legs into it.