Will we see a resurgence in rear-wheel-drive cars?Julow: Certainly it's going to be on a different paradigm than the musclecars of the '60s. It will be a higher-tech, more sophisticated approach than what was the case then and even what is the case of the truck version today. It's hard for me to imagine the car version of the Dakota R/T. It's just too simple and too straightforward, and I would think in the car business it would have to be more sophisticated. But who can say? Certainly there's a niche that existed in the past that isn't being covered today. At least not by very many cars and only at the extreme of the price range.
Will the market sway more toward 4WD cars or truck-based 4WDs?Julow: As the market expands, you'll see a lot of volume coming toward car-based sport/utilities. I'm not so sure you see that in trucks. I see the Dakota Quad Cab as more of a truck where you still provide customers with a lot more function, trailer tow, payload, power, and engine choices. But on the sport/utility side, a more-passenger-car vehicle makes sense.
Do you think there is a market for a decontented 4x4?Julow: Not at the content level that we launched the base-model '84 Cherokee. The world has moved forward since then. Quality radios, air conditioning, and automatic transmission are expected. You couldn't sell vehicles now without these. My guess is that no, there's not a market for a vehicle as decontented as a base '84 Cherokee, and we didn't sell very many of those either. But is there a market for a lower-priced sport/utility? Certainly, I think there's a lot of competitors that are exploring that right now: Suzuki, Kia. I'm not sure they have the right product answer, but you have to believe that people are still driving cars because they are less expensive. If you got down into that $18,000-$25,000 range with the right answer, you could do some decent volume.
Anieros: I think that there is a market for that sort of thing. Young people are so interested in a vehicle like that as their first vehicle as opposed to 15 years ago when they wanted some sort of sports car.
How does styling factor into future vehicles?Julow: It's what the customer wants. We wandered away from that in the mid '70s, when we were so focused on fuel economy and emissions that we almost let the CAD-CAM pump out the sheetmetal. Everything we've seen says that never, never underestimate how much personal image a customer invests in their automobile. There is this notion that most of the market is just looking for basic transportation to get to work and back. Not at $20,000, they're not. They want to park it in their driveway and wash it and have people come by and ask them about it. The styling piece of that equation is extremely important, almost overriding some more rational pieces of that business.
Anieros: Do we want to design vehicles for what's good for people, as if we know, or do we want to give them the opportunity to have fun in the purchase of and ownership of an automobile? We really do want them to feel good about it. They may have had a bad day at work, but when they get in their vehicle, crank up the stereo, it's a nice day, and all of sudden it's like a cocoon.
Will we see more retro-styled vehicles?Anieros: That's an interesting word, retro. I don't know that I dislike it or like it. Some people dislike it immensely because it sounds like, well, you've run out of ideas and you're just looking backward for inspiration.