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Do you remember the acute sameness of many of General Motors’ cars from the 1980s? They were satirized in a memorable TV commercial from a competitor, which depicted people going into a parking lot filled with various Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, and Buicks, all desperately trying to find their car, but getting hopelessly lost, because all the cars blended together.
That’s one type of platform sharing: call it “badge engineering.” Change the grille, change the headlights and the taillights, fiddle with the interior trim, stick a new nameplate on the car, and voilà: your Chevy Cavalier is now a Cadillac Cimarron. Ah, the good old days. (shudder)
But carmakers still do it today: the Mercury Milan, for instance, is a Ford Fusion decked out in some European-inspired styling. Take off the Ford Gillette-razor-inspired grille, slap on a waterfall grille and a Mercury emblem, change the taillights, put some two-tone leather upholstery inside, and you’ve got yourself a Milan for not very much more money than a Fusion.
But platform sharing is really about sharing basic components of a car: not just the frame or floorplan (which is what most people think it is), but also suspension, electronics, steering, transmissions, engines, and other mechanical parts.
A Lincoln MKZ shares a platform with a Mazda 6, for instance, but behaves and performs nothing like the Mazda. Similarly, you’d need a good eye to spot the familial resemblance between a Dodge Caliber and a Jeep Patriot, or a Saturn Aura and a Pontiac G6. The handling in a Saturn Aura is tuned to resemble that of a European car, whereas the Pontiac handles in a more American-car fashion. Yet it’s based on the same GM platform.
In times past, for an automobile line to be considered profitable, it would have to sell in the hundreds of thousands of units. Today, with different manufacturing techniques and strategies, cars can still be profitable even if they sell less than 100,000 units.
The key lies in developing platforms with enough “bandwidth,” according to GM’s vice president for global program management, Jon Lauckner. Each platform needs to be designed in such a way as to be extendable to different types of vehicles.
That’s the key to profitability in this day and age. Chrysler can build the Chrysler 300, Dodge Magnum, Dodge Charger, and the upcoming Dodge Challenger all at one plant, using many of the same parts. They may look vaguely similar, but they handle and perform like completely different vehicles—yet share many of the same components. That’s platform sharing at work.
Via: CNN Money
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