A while back in my Damn Good Design series, we looked at the much-maligned Pontiac Aztek and explained how the poor thing started out as a promising idea with a reasonably snazzy concept, only to completely shit the bed by the time the production version appeared. GM wanted a sexy multi-purpose vehicle that combined the handling of a Camaro and the practicality of a Blazer. Instead of the best of both worlds, they ended up with the worst of all worlds, because the Aztek was doomed to use the platform of a minivan. The design of the version you could buy was compromised from the very beginning.
GMs problem was they were beholden to market research that told them they needed to make more innovative and exciting cars, without really understanding what this meant. Like their cross-town rivals Ford, they were wedded to a management style that attempted to apply quantitative measurements to qualitative characteristics, leading to nonsense statements like the one made by then CEO Rick Wagoner that 40% of GM’s new cars would be “innovative.”
Thus, despite it crashing and burning in early customer clinics, the Aztek was greenlit and progressed into development. GM convinced themselves because the Aztek hit all their internal metrics and there wasn’t anything like it on the market, it would be a smash hit, and they didn’t want to hear otherwise.
The Aztek Was Not a Bad Idea
Identifying a gap in the market or using existing vehicles as an analog for your ideas are both valid ways for product planners and car designers to come up with proposals for new types of vehicles. When I was student, Jaguar was expensively attempting to become a British BMW. The 3-series rivaling Jaguar XE had finally launched, and so penning smaller, hatchback Jaguars along the lines of a Mercedes A-Class or BMW 1-series was a popular project among my less imaginative peers.
I was never entirely convinced of the merits of this idea, but later when J. Mays was my teacher, he instructed me to identify gaps in a manufacturer’s range: Don’t look at what they have, look at what they don’t have. When I worked at Gaydon, I proposed repositioning one of the existing models as a Land Rover version of something well-loved from another manufacturer’s past. It made perfect sense to me on a number of different levels, but obviously such heresy couldn’t be countenanced. But that’s what designers are paid for: Part of the role is to have ideas and then turn them into compelling visuals so others higher up the decision-making food chain can judge their merits from a business point of view.
There was nothing wrong with the Aztek as an idea: a chunky, robust-looking vehicle with a fun-to-drive on-road bias that was rugged enough to handle some light off-roading. The market at the time offered full-fat body-on-frame SUVs like the Blazer or smaller compact unibody crossovers like the CR-V or RAV4, so it’s not hard to understand GM’s thinking: The Aztek would be something to slot in between these two extremes. The easy and typical GM way of doing things would have been to give the Blazer a Pontiac-style glow-up similar to how they crapped out the Oldsmobile Bravada, but the GMT330 platform was on its last legs and the American car-buying public had long since started seeing through such nose and tail badge engineering jobs. Besides such a lash-up wouldn’t have been “innovative” and a traditional SUV like that would not really have fit in with a Pontiac line-up whose tagline at the time was “we are driving excitement.”
Let’s assume then (and we don’t know really if this was true or not) there was no business case for the Aztek without basing it on a minivan platform. The numbers guys punched all the data into the GM-finance-o-tron 5000 and putting a new body on the GMT330 platform wouldn’t have worked. It was too old, too agricultural to give the desired driving characteristics and economy figures, and it wouldn’t have supported the interior room and flexibility the concept promised. If the Aztek was going to be greenlit, it had to be on the existing U platform.
Let’s See If We Can Fix It
So although it would be relatively straightforward to remedy the proportional crimes of the Aztek by simply setting fire to the thing and starting again, that’s not what we’re going to do.
Drawing something fantastical and then complaining that engineers and accountants have screwed up your perfect form is not really what being a car designer is about. Being a designer means being a problem solver: How do we make this thing we are working on as good as it can be within the constraints we’re operating under? In other words, totally redrawing the Aztek to make it closer to the original brief of a Camaro interbred with a Blazer would be an easy cheat.
What I’m going to do is make changes based on what I suggested in my earlier article. To try and improve it while keeping the underlying platform and hard points. Could a few relatively simple tweaks turn the Aztek into something that looks a lot better that wouldn’t have put customers off? Is there something better lurking under there, or was the whole thing a fool’s errand from the start?
Here are the annotated images highlighting the basic problems from the original article:
Although the proportions are not great thanks to the underlying hardpoints not being ideal, there are ways to mitigate the damage. Although getting the underlying shape correct is important, you can get away with a slightly awkward volume if everything else works to help the design out.
The Aztek is basically what designer wankers like me call a monovolume. Although it’s not the sexiest outline to ever leave a designer’s sketchpad, the one-box shape doesn’t automatically mean you end up with an ugly car. The original version of the Renault Espace and Dodge Caravan might not be objects of lust but they have a pleasing functionality and honesty about what they are. Even the GM Dustbusters were interesting and tried to move the category forward. The problem with the Aztek is the details: the glazing, stance, and graphics are all misjudged, which exaggerates the problem with the shape rather than hiding it. So let’s try and fix them.
First of all, here’s an unaltered side view.
Starting at the back, I’ve removed the underbite rear bumper, smoothing it off. This has two benefits: It removes visual weight (and actual physical weight I guess) from the lower part of the car, making it look lighter on its wheels and 2. It increases the departure angle, making it look more capable off-road.
I’ve sized the wheels up slightly, and very slightly moved them up into the wheel arches. This fills the arches out better, improves the stance (the way the car sits on the road), and better balances out the overall height. It no longer looks quite so tippy toes.
Let’s move round to the front:
Have You Had a Nose Job?
Again, this isn’t a great angle. Or rather, it’s a good angle for making the car look better but not for illustrating what I’m trying to show, which is the sogginess of the front lighting and grille (known as the Down the Road Graphic or DRG). The base of the hood is quite a bit higher than the base of the screen (almost certainly one of the hard points that was dictated by the platform). But if you look at where the hood meets the windshield on the far side of the car, you can see there is a big gap there – this means we can lower the height of the rear of the hood, so it doesn’t dive towards the front quite so aggressively.
I’ve flattened the line of the hood out and pulled the lighting and grill up. If you’re struggling to see the difference, look at the gap below the main grill to the black lower bumper, and the gap between the headlights and the indicator units. I’ve also pulled that lower bumper in a bit, so it no longer juts out like a teenager’s lower lip when you tell them they’re grounded.
I normally hate yellow. It works on exactly one car (the 1971 Buick GSX), but it is the Aztek’s “hero” color. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find images without the body-colored cladding we could use. So I’ve added grey trim to the strake on the lower doors and removed the paint from the door handles. This helps break up the vast expanse of yellow on the bodyside, saves a bit of money (which I’ll be spending later), and looks more robust. I’ve also helped the seller of this car out by removing the scratch in the front bumper (below the headlight in the original image if you can’t see it).
Yes. And a Butt Lift.
My main problem with the back of the car apart from that horrible bumper, is the position of the split in the tailgate. I think it’s just too low, adding the feeling of bottom heaviness affecting the whole car. I’m going to pull that up so it meets the feature line in the bodyside and get rid of the bumper.
The split on the vertical section between glass and yellow bodywork is now closer to thirds, rather than the 50-50 split it was originally. Thirds are a more pleasing visual composition, which is why the rule of thirds exists in photography. Moving this split up also has the additional benefit of lining the bottom of the tail lights up with the feature line on the bodyside, making for a cleaner and more harmonious look. Finally, the money I saved on not painting the door handles and lower strake I’ve spent on giving the Aztek a proper fuel filler cap.
In all of the three altered images, I’ve also tweaked the lower line of the third side window (the one between the C and D pillar) to make it higher and more sympathetic to the line of the rest of the Daylight Opening. I kept going over and over my changes here, each time thinking I hadn’t moved it up far enough. And I’m still not sure I’ve got it right. It’s one of those things in the studio you would iterate on a full-size model over and over, probably printing out tens of different full-size versions to stick on the clay. I was tempted to angle it slightly, but that wouldn’t really have been the fashion at the time.
Given the constraints, I think these (relatively) minor changes make a big difference. Whether they would have made enough difference to overcome the Aztek’s stiff purchase price and cringey marketing is another matter entirely, but to repeat a line I recently made in the comments: a good design can save a bad car, but a bad design will certainly sink a good one.
And anyone in the comments who says “It’s the same image” will instantly earn my scorn. Don’t make me get on a paddle steamer again.
Authors note: It will not have escaped your attention we had a monumental publishing omnishambles gentle editorial imbroglio last week. Now I’ve removed the knives from my back and scrubbed the bus tire tracks off my torso here’s what happened: David was out doing Important Business Stuff. Matt was in London trying out a fallback career as a London Cab driver. That left Jason and Peter at the controls. Jason as usual was out of his mind on bathtub bourbon and illegal Mexican painkillers he still insists are for medical reasons. I know it helps to be wasted to work here but some of us are trying to be professionals. And Peter was … where was Peter? Who even is Peter? I don’t think that guy actually exists outside of being an AI chatbot in Slack.
I wrote something that was published (I just upload my content into the mainframe. I don’t have control over making my stuff appear on the site – for the moment my power is limited). David returned, saw the article, and promptly gave birth to several new kittens. Faced with having to alter the piece as he saw fit or rousing me from my coffin at 3 am UK time to make a few tweaks, he broke out the editorial chainsaw (it’s kept next to the battery removal chainsaw in the Autopian chainsaw cupboard).
Needless to say, when I awoke and saw what had transpired I immediately bought a first-class ticket on the next transatlantic paddle steamer so I could let my views be known in person. In the spirit of full transparency then, here’s the footage of David and I discussing the matter in the Autopian war room:
I’ll leave it to your imaginations to figure who is who.
The very name needed to go.
Should have been named Grand Safari, like the old wagons.
The market wasn’t as obsessed with branding and heritage back then.
I always picture the descendants of the Aztec people holding a press conference after the Azrek debuted and saying “hey, we had nothing to do with this.”
After the power struggle is over and he is Lord of The Manor, I shall be watching for the banner change to Adrian Clarke’s Autopian.
It’s got a certain ring to it.
The changes make it somewhat easier on the eyes.
GM is almost always scared of sufficient commitment to enable success.
The Aztec as realized could have been the “non-mini van” and been available in sedan delivery to luxury trim. Hitting a wider market and making it a normal on the landscape, not a weird anomaly.
Our design department had an Aztek redesign challenge. This was my entry:
https://i.imgur.com/ZllTovC.jpeg
It is cooler than Adrian’s 😛
I laughed out loud, that’s amazing
But…but, where the hell does the tent fit??
Haha this is terrific.
That original back bumper design was awkward and your changes are an aesthetic improvement, but yours eliminates the functional purpose of the original as a loading step.
You can stand on the bottom half of the tailgate.
I agree, the changes didn’t make it any less ugly IMHO, just removed some of the functionality (besides the loading step removal, the smaller opening makes the tailgate glass useless for anything bigger than a sandwich, and raising the front of the hood hampers visibility).
The Aztek is ugly in the same way the new giant-bucktoothed bimmers are, not in the hilarious way of the Mitsuoka Orochi. I could easily daily the Orochi, every time I’d approach it it would make me laugh and every time I’d get out I’d turn around to look at it and laugh some more. The Aztek (or the new BMWs) would just make me nauseous.
I’ve moved the split up maybe 50mm, so it shouldn’t make any difference to the functionality.
Yellow is an awesome color for a car 🙂
I won’t disagree on the GSX but I love Giallo Fly Yellow on a Ferrari….
I hate yellow Ferraris.
Classic Fiat 500 in Portofino Giallo. Fight me.
Tell me where and when and I’ll send one of the staff.
Potofino Giallo is the Fiat color code but since it was inspired by the sunset on the Amalfi Coast that would be the only proper place to assess its merit. I’ll supply the car if Autopian will provide transport.
GM did a little design repair to the Aztek by making the Buick Rendevous. It still has the horrible rear bumper, but it must have resonated with some people, as I think they sold a lot more of the Buicks vs. the Pontiacs.
Came up in the comments of the previous piece, but the Rendezvous had more power, a third row and was better marketed.
Now I would like to see the drawings of the reimagined Land Rover please. Ideally in an article
I don’t hate the Aztek. It’s something. Maybe, like it would have sold better if they just got their target market right and tuned the kit in it instead.
Aztek should have been aimed to minivan-sick families who want something offroady but still need to pack kidlets in the back. Not, as it was, young folks who couldn’t afford the sticker price of a new SUV, let alone a fairly large one. It should have shirked all the silly campy-extras they had for it too, and made it purely basic transport in base-trim that would be affordable to those minivan-sick families. It could have sold like Dodge Journeys, and milked for a decade+ like the Dodge did.
The Aztek’s windows aren’t a problem and, in fact, I’d argue they were better in the original: I love a big greenhouse. I’d rather be inside of a Subaru Forester than a Range Rover Evoque any day of the week if I had to pick two silly extremes on beltlines.
I only tweaked the third side window and the rear windshield.
As always, love me an Adrian article. I’m not a huge fan of the Aztek, nor am I a hater of the Aztek, but I do like the tweaks – especially raising the bottom of rear side window. That window has always looked awkward to me, but until now I could never quite identify why.
You can’t fix perfection
Sad to say but Dodge learned from the mistakes and made a superior version in the Journey. I realize the auto “journalists” liked to crack fun at a journey even after they sound in mass quantities, but I digress.
An AWD 3.6 Journey with a built in tent and cooler for a center section would have certainly endeared me to them a little more though.
Journalists in not understanding real car buyers shocker.
Journey won people because it was big, cheap, and wasn’t a minivan. It was everything a minivan was, without the stigma or sliding doors.
Having known many Journey owners, it was a fantastic car on paper – especially at that price – but the ownership experience was pretty dismal.
Would have been better more wagony. Because more wagon, more good
Also, I loved the original version of the article. It was uncomfortably spicy. Like a good taco
Great job fixing the exterior! Now, about that interior…
I think those of us that try to beat back the tide of progress in the name of physical controls superiority forget that in the early aughts, for every Honda benchmark in ergonomic excellence, there was a GM ocean of identically sized and shaped gray injection molded plastic-fantastic buttons. I’m afraid there’s no fix for that without completely gutting it and starting from scratch.
I like a lot of Bruno Sacco’s work but I also hold him responsible for plastic lower body cladding. Why Pontiac made it such a big part of their design language is a mystery to me, like “Hey we have Mercedes Benz design for cheap!”?
I assume it’s a cheap way of covering up shoddy manufacturing like Mopar’s vinyl roofs. The Honda Element is the only car that it looks good on.
It can be used for all sorts of reasons. It’s not cheaper because you’ve still got painted bodywork underneath, so it’s an additional cost. I recently found out it was done on the Mk3 Granada/Scorpio/Merkur Scorpio because that car had to use the Sierra suspension and was slightly under wheeled, so the grey cladding was to break up the bodywork a bit to hide that.
It breaks up the profile. A fantastic example of cladding used well is the first-gen GMC Acadia, where the lower end models painted it black and used it to break up the mass of the car and make it look lighter, while the Denali versions made it body color and it looked like a fat pig.
Two tone paint is great! Three tone is good too!
I just don’t like cars wearing Rubbermaid recycling bins.
A longer hood, an LS engine and RWD would have done some wonders here….. more so than putting lipstick on that pig.
I’m in the LARGE minority that always liked the Aztek. It was quirky, fun, and even though built off a minivan, wasn’t that bad to drive. Me exwife’s aunt had one. We had an Olds Silhouette. Ours had a much more cush ride (air ride ftw) but the AWD and “sportier” suspension in her Aztek, it was much more fun to drive. As much fun as you can have in a tall not-crossover.
I mean it had a cooler as a center console and a tent as an option…it was cool before it was cool.
Like the Multipla, it feels like one of those cars where the people who liked them, really really loved them.
Mmmmmmmmhultipla
Leeloo Dallas Multipla!
Sorry, I still don’t like it LOL
I agree! However, “Butt lift” was very good, but the rest of it still looks hideous. IMHO.
I don’t like it but I respect the exercise – make it less hateful to the ol’ eyemeats, and I think he’s succeeded there. I remember reading a big writeup on the cursed conception of the Aztek, and it was design by committee absolutely made manifest. A lot of Adrian’s fixes – not to discredit what he’s done – are “follow one damn line in a couple of key places.”
It looks terrible, but it’s not as terrible, imo. I think if it had been as reworked here, it’d be a funky classic instead of the still-malign object lesson in poor design.
Thoughts: I understand that moving the doorhandles would be expensive but there is just something about the doors where everything is in the wrong place, part of the reason it looks so slab-sided. Higher up door handles – maybe on the feature line – seems like a way to change where the eye focuses. Dark lower cladding – albeit dark lower cladding that’s actually styled in a simple manner rather than weirdly shaped like the real one had – might also work.
I remain of the opinion the earlier models with the lower cladding look better for precisely this reason. Sadly I couldn’t find any images of one of those I could use.
I think the cladding got a lot of the stick partly because it was shaped really weird, partly because it faded on the truck to the dealer, and partly because it kind of drew attention to how under-wheeled it was in the back.
I said it in the original article. The problem is not the cladding, it’s the typical penny pinching way GM did it.
I never hated it and actually wanted it to go car camping
The back almost looks, dare I say it, good now. Well done.
Whom, amongst us here, could not use a good “Butt lift” ?
okay, maybe it’s just me? (╹◡◠)
Fascinating article, and it does seem to make it much better, though I really wish you had lost the grey graphic on the side of the car. Too much like an RV or a German Microlight aircraft.
On a different point, you refer to the Jaguar XE. I think this was Jaguar’s second attempt at a “3-type Jaguar”, the first was the X-type, or Mondeo in a dubiously posh frock.
It was, but the XE was apparently them doing it properly this time. Nothing winds up X-Type fans quicker than calling them a posh Mondeo. I have seen full blown arguments on Twitter about it, even to the extent of quoting parts count.
it is of course hilarious and I will keep doing it.
The new rear view looks like a CRX on growth hormone.
Damn, I was just going to say this. Kudos on beating me to the punch. 😉
That’s a surprisingly small number of changes for a massive overhaul of design. Fantastic!
I agree with this take. I care not what losing the rear bumper does to the function, because it looks so very much better.