Automotive Trucks information on net.

You're not likely to see a decal in the back of an F-150 showing a cartoon Calvin doing something not-nice to a Nissan logo anytime soon, but the vehicle manufacturer is rolling out with what is a bona fide "full-size" pickup that should get lots of attention in Dearborn, Auburn Hills, Detroit--and those parts of the country where trucks rule.

GOING BIG

Everyone knows that the light truck market is where it is at right now. And for the foreseeable future. So vehicle manufacturers that are intent on making their presence well established in the U.S. market are concentrating more efforts on pickup trucks. Certainly, Nissan has--for the past few years, certainly since Carlos Ghosn has taken the helm--been rolling out a variety of new products under the house and Infiniti brands that are statements of the company's seriousness. And when it started building a 2.5-million [ft.sup.2] assembly plant in Canton, Mississippi, to build minivans and trucks (job 1 was in May 2003), and then added a 1-million [ft.sup.2] phase II before phase I was completed (with phase II accommodating the Altima in spring '04), the company was indicating the level of its commitment to building light trucks. When the 2003 North American International Auto Show was held in Detroit and the Nissan full-size Titan pickup truck rolled out, the gasps--especially from people who work in Dearborn--were if not actually audible, then most certainly tangible. Nissan is coming to trucks, and it is coming with a product that is designed, engineered, and built without compromise, without apology. In a scene dominated by the Ford F-150--and realize that there is the new generation F-150 for '04--the Chevy Silverado, and, to a lesser extent, the Dodge Ram, the whole issue of a "Japanese" brand with what is ostensibly an "American" product is one that the people at Nissan didn't take lightly. Larry Dominique, Titan's Chief Product Specialist, admits, "Consumers find it hard to believe that Nissan is coming out with real full-size trucks." Not only do the Nissan people associated with the truck openly acknowledge that they are trying to edge into a market that has long been dominated by the Big Three, but they also note that because the various "full-size" trucks that Toyota has produced during the past several years are not perceived to be "full size," their challenge with the Titan is all the more daunting.

"We look at segments; we don't do that much work with demographics because our products tend to stretch across the range of age groups," observes Moray Callum, design chief for Mazda, who adds, "It's usually the car enthusiasts within the segments, and car enthusiasts aren't always in the same demographics. They're 17 to 97." So with that enthusiast brief in mind, Mazda designers go to work, developing vehicles that will appeal to those people, not to some fictitious persona. They don't work alone, however. As Franz von Holzhausen, Mazda North American Operations' director of Design, observes, "We have a process that brings design, marketing and product planning together as a team to develop concepts for our brand." He explains that they look at a "positioning map," one that shows different vehicle categories and where Mazda products ought to be located on that grid. He points out, for example, that the RX-8 was a product that is a result of having identified an open space on the map for a niche-type vehicle, so they developed it.

Another mechanism that is deployed for vehicle development at Mazda is called the "Triple A, or Annual Advanced Activity process," which Callum describes as a gathering of different types of people from throughout the organization who get together and "come up with the new concepts that we feel will differentiate Mazda as a brand." He emphasizes. "It's specifically for new concepts." One of which is the Kabura, which was designed by von Holzhausen, a designer who came to Mazda from General Motors, where he'd managed the design process for vehicles including the Pontiac Solstice (arguably one of the closest competitors to the Mazda MX-5--von Holzhausen, by his own admission, is a driving enthusiast, so it is no wonder that he worked on the Solstice ... and was interested in working at Mazda).