Styling is Almost Everything
Canadian Auto Press
If you follow light truck history, you’ll likely remember the most popular compact (well, midsize actually) pickup truck on the market was once the Dodge Dakota. The 1997 through 2004 model was a great looking truck that offered more size for the money than any rival.
Dodge Dakota
It was only upstaged in model year 2005 when Toyota grew its compact Tacoma to compete head-to-head with the Dodge in the newly formed midsize category (although it’s still called compact), a year that simultaneously saw the domestic automaker hit the market with the redesigned 2005 Dakota, and with that entrance it exited the previous generation’s strongest selling point, attractive styling. Sales plummeted to the point that it’s now an also-ran that has been slated for the proverbial axe, while the great looking Tacoma has taken over the lead.
“It’s the natural end of the Dakota’s lifecycle,” said Fred Diaz, president and CEO of the new Ram brand last November when commenting on Dodge’s midsize truck being replaced. “It competes in a shrinking segment. We need to figure out if we can build a smaller, more efficient vehicle that people can use for play and light-duty work. It also has to be more affordable than the current Dakota.”
The Fiat merger opens up new possibilities that could be ideal for a Dakota replacement, or for that matter a next generation Dakota.
“The merger with Fiat has put us in the perfect position to evaluate Fiat’s offerings,” added Diaz. “We could [replace the Dakota] with something in-house but we’re also examining what Fiat has – every model, including Iveco. We’re going to pick the one that makes the most sense to us.”
It is difficult to surmise what Diaz might have been considering when mentioning Iveco, the brand’s only light-duty models appearing to be the full-size Daily/EcoDaily cargo van that would be ideal for replacing the Sprinter van, and the cab and chassis based off of the Daily that could be made into a pickup truck with a lot of work to replace its van-style cabover front end, but Fiat has some small car-based pickups that might fit in well at the lower end, albeit all unibody designs.
The only unibody pickup truck currently sold in North America is Honda’s Ridgeline, and sales dropped off by 51% between 2008 and 2009, with analysts citing its unconventional functionality as part of the problem, so for this reason and the need to make the Ram “brand” more than just a one-model offering (or two if you split up light-duty and heavy-duty Ram pickup trucks), the Dakota might gain a stay of execution.
All said, the argument Diaz makes about the Dakota competing “in a shrinking segment” isn’t necessarily accurate. The Dakota doesn’t compete well against its key competitor, the Tacoma, and for Toyota at least, the market is not shrinking. The Tacoma now commands about 40% of the overall US market while February 2010 sales were actually up 5.7% over the same month last year, despite the brand’s current publicity crisis. This in mind, Diaz might want to consider why the Tacoma, which sells for more than the Dakota, is doing so well.
Another example of Dodge blowing a good thing is the Durango that used to share sheetmetal with the old Dakota, once a great looking SUV and top-seller and now non-existent. Certainly large SUVs have been struggling lately, but Chevy’s Tahoe and Suburban models don’t only sell fairly well, but GM offers duplicates with GMC badging and tarted up versions wearing the crested wreath of Cadillac.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, Dodge went from near oblivion to seriously competitive with its 1994 Ram redesign, the truck that redefined the entire Dodge brand and turned the light truck market upside down. No, to think that styling is merely a key selling point is a mistake. If you don’t have it, styling is everything in the truck market. And the current Dakota clearly doesn’t have it.
Rather than trying to revise the compact pickup truck segment by creating another marginally functional unibody alternative to Honda’s unique offering, Mr. Diaz might want to rethink what was once the market’s strongest competitor. All the Dakota needs is a more efficient powertrain, a higher quality interior, and most important an attractive design. If the new Ram brand creates a compact truck with these qualities, it’ll probably claw its way back to respectability and strong sales.
