The Code 130R is one of two Chevrolet concepts testing the market among Millennials.
Baby Boomers, step aside. There’s a new generation of car buyers entering the market and Chevrolet wants to win them over.
They’re the target audience for a pair of distinctive concept vehicles General Motors’ largest brand is debuting at this year’s North American International Auto Show. Small, high-tech and fuel-efficient, they’re decidedly not the sort of products that Chevy has traditionally thrown at the Boomers, today’s largest automotive buying group.
“There’s a pretty significant shift in how people are viewing automobiles and transportation, in general,” suggests John McFarland, Chevy’s senior manager of global marketing.
McFarland says he and other members of his team have already met with over 9,000 Millennials in the process of developing the two concepts, dubbed Code 130R and Tru 140S, that are making their debut at the Detroit Auto Show. Whether they actually connect with potential buyers in the youngest buying group remains to be seen but they could be in production in less than two years, TheDetroitBureau.com has learned.
The "affordable exotic" Chevrolet Tru 140S concept.
As with virtually every maker in the market, Chevy has realized technology is a key selling point today, from active safety to onboard infotainment systems. And that’s all the more true among the Millennials, who have shown a surprising indifference to automobiles in favor of iPhones, iPads and other high-tech alternatives for their spending power.
So, no surprise, Chevy designers came up with the idea of smaller, more fuel-efficient concept vehicles that allow motorists to actually link up like a sort of Facebook on wheels. This connectivity has both a fun and a practical side, Chevrolet officials insist. It could permit a driver to track down friends or pass recommendations for a hot restaurant or club. It would also be useful to interlink connected vehicles to keep tabs on traffic or weather conditions.
“They do things in herds,” contends Clay Dean, GM’s director of advanced design. “They don’t do things individually.”
Research suggests that Millennials are about six times less likely to get a driver’s license than Boomers were at the same age. More problematic for Chevy, in particular, they’re not especially domestic car oriented – though the maker is betting that if it can crack their code it might overcome this bias. That could be critical as Chevy and its domestic rivals cannot afford to lose the Millennials the way they failed to win over much of the Baby Boom – driving the ascendancy of the Japanese.
“We don’t think any brand understands these consumers,” at least not yet, added McFarland, but he noted that along with their devotion to things high-tech, the newest generation of young adults is “very passionate” about the brands they like, whether an Apple or a Nike.
They also believe that brands should directly connect with them, something Chevrolet did in preparing the Code 130R and Tru 140S concepts, setting up a series of non-traditional consumer clinics and other meetings with potential Millennial customers around the country.
“Kids just aren’t buying cars in Japan,” notes Dean. “We wanted to find out if that’s happening here.”
The preliminary evidence suggests that once Millennials get their license they do, indeed, buy cars, so Chevy is using the two concepts to see if it can deliver the right mix of design and product attributes.
“There’s no silver bullet for Gen-Y,” Dean cautions, “no single youth car,” so the two prototypes are targeting different potential niches.
The Chevrolet Tru 140S, a 4-passenger, 3-door liftback, takes aim at the “Affordable Exotic” segment. While it looks fast and delivers a good level of functionality, it is “more poseur than do-er,” with an emphasis more on fuel economy – targeting something over 40 mpg – than actual performance. If it were to come to market today it would be priced in the $19,000 to $24,000 range.
The second concept, the Code 130R, would target a similar price range. Think of it as “Functional Muscle,” and “links back to Chevrolet’s rich performance heritage,” suggested General Motors North America President Mark Reuss, ofnthe rear-wheel-drive prototype, a 2-door, 4-passenger model which slots into the compact segment. Notably, it does not share the same platform as the 3-door liftback Tru 140S.
The two concepts will make the rounds of the auto show circuit this year – but will also be brought to as many as 15 more youth-oriented events, helping generate feedback, Dean says, “that we hope will lead us to better conclusions.”
One thing Chevy researchers anticipate is that young buyers will want the potential to make a lot of custom modifications – though that may be less about tuning engines than it was when the Baby Boomers were buying their first sets of wheels.
How soon might Chevrolet put one of these concepts – or something like them – into production?
There already are full business cases in place for both the Chevrolet Code 130R and Chevy Tru 140S, according to advanced designer Dean, so, “We could move very fast if given the go,” which he hints could mean a production version of one or both show cars could reach market in as little as two years.