The 2018 Prius C is here and it now features body cladding around the wheel arches and a little bit of silver up front that does a skidplate impression. Alongside the Chevy Spark ACTIV, it is my deepest regret to announce that crossover styling is replacing the sporty look. Welcome to the automotive design trend I’m referring to as the Actionpack.
We saw the Trackpack design age come through lowering cars, adding faux-diffusers, faux-vents, faux-spoilers, faux-carbon fiber, big wheels, and blacked out out trim all in the name of making cars look as if they could survive a track day. Sporty was all that mattered and the term “functional” was qualified by numbers so small no one could ever test them.
“The new Hodor Recorder is 12% stiffer!”
“The Bord Concentrate RS-TUV’s rear spoiler adds 3% quicker upshifts errr, I mean higher downforce!”
“By replacing all the chrome trim with cheaper black plastics, the all new Iota Crunchy XSE now has 22% more steering feel than past Crunchys!!”
So much bull just to de-content cars and sell them to you at a higher price through Convenience and Technology Packages. Cars can’t even make it up driveways or over speedbumps wihout risk of tearing off the bottom third of the front end.
People need to replace their factory tires at 30,000 miles and then they find out those Michelins/Pirellis are $200 or more on their 200 hp family car. You have AWD so make sure to replace all four! Where you once spent $600 on tires every 70,000 miles, you now spend $1,100 every 40,000 miles because handling is everything!
When Chevy told you the new Malibu had a 4G connection you weren’t supposed to shout, “Wooow, that’s a lot of grip!”
We all knew that eventually people would react against this Trackpack design trend. Don’t want the factory 20' rims on your Civic? No worries, big wheels and rubberband tires are going away and being replaced with smaller wheels and plenty of tire sidewall. We will need to add some bodycladding around those wheel wells though...
Does the sound of scrapping every time elevation suddenly changes by half an inch make you squirm? We’ll shorten up that overhang and take off that faux-front spoiler and give you a faux-skidplate. You need it!
Tired of “falling” in and out of your Mustard3 because it’s too low to the ground? We will happily raise up the floor, seats, and roofline to make that easier for you! We’ll even make that roof a bit longer and claim that back window airspace as cargo capacity improvements.
Dont even worry about the lifts, all we are doing is taking cars back to where they were 15 years ago. Soft, high riding, comfort-centric, easy to run, low stress objects compared to all these cars that want to convey the most engaging highway merging you could ever experience.
Upkeep? Just 10% of the resale value. You wanted luxury, well money and time are luxuries.
From Trackpacks to Actionpacks, watch as automotive design continues the same ebb and flow that ALL design trends go through. The key is how do you hide it? One way is changing the market perception. People still freak when they get leather in a vehicle you step up into all while thinking it’s more expensive! Utilitarian is an asset. Especially for those that build the cars...
People want leather everything so badly automakers resorted to running a sewing machine over the plastic dashboards. That big chunk of hard plastic on the bottom of the door is unacceptible! Well yeah, if you are sitting low enough to touch the bottom of the door then it’s a touch point now!! However, get people to sit higher, get touch points out of reach and people won’t even notice what materials are there. Better yet, tell them it’s a more adventure or “active lifestyle” focused vehicle and all of a sudden cost cutting becomes utility. Complexity becomes simplicity. Crossovers become everything that even the enthusiasts ask for in regular cars. But don’t tell them that!
People go from, “I can’t believe a $35,000 car doesn’t have heated-ventilated-massaging seats,” to exclaiming, “I can wash out this $55,000 truck with a garden hose? This 2023 F-200 is perfect!!”
Prepare your body...cladding, the Actionpacks are about to strike!