Word: minivans
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Over the next two years, the Big Three will bring out about 26 new models. Among them: Oldsmobile's four-door luxury sedan, the Aurora -- the industry's first direct aim at the Lexus -- and Ford's front-wheel-drive minivan, the Windstar. But each American automaker still has tough work to do. Chrysler must overcome a reputation for spotty quality; Ford must pump up its profit margins after years of cutting prices to increase volume; and GM, of course, must find ways to turn out new products and restore solid profitability at the same time...
...those suburban Indiana Joneses. The Viper, a politically incorrect, 10-cylinder roadster ($50,000), is the most sought- after sports car in years. And thanks to a redesign, the Chrysler Town & Country and Dodge Caravan ($14,600) have held on to their 50% share of the lucrative minivan market...
...campaign trail Watt traverses his odd-shaped district -- it looks like a road-kill salamander -- in a shiny Dodge minivan, stopping to shake hands, wolf down fried fish and cheese puffs at dinnertime rallies, and spread his message: "We can't continue to widen the disparity between the haves at the top and the have-nots at the bottom." Watt well knows the have-not side of that great divide. He grew up near Charlotte in a tin-roofed home with no electricity or running water. But he went on to law school at Yale and a career...
...which he traveled by Mercedes (so much for buying American) from his pillared mansion in McLean, Va., to the CNN studio where, as one staffer says, "he never actually had to come into contact with the bozos who think the way he does." He has taken up traveling by minivan, begging for donations, and bedding down at Holiday Inns. The speeches he used to give at about $10,000 a pop are being delivered free in overheated living rooms in New Hampshire...
Many of their fetching schemes -- Toyota's inflatable car; Izuzu's moon-unit Expresso minivan; Michael Ma's Tatanka, a sort of 21st century Beetle -- will prove too impractical, too expensive, too weird. But the great achievement of the new California design colony is that such cars are being imagined and prototypes built. After decades of nothing but uninspired nips and tucks, of corporate blandness, of timid styling, automobile designers are being allowed to design again...