The black impact on car designs: the urbanization of the auto industry includes big grilles, big wheels, big rims and big bucks

Ebony, Nov, 2007 by Frank S. Washington

If, indeed, a picture is worth a thousand words, the following image speaks volumes about the urbanization of the American auto industry: Gracing the cover of DUB magazine, Big Boi, half of the hip-hop duo OutKast, was swathed in bling. He had a 120-diamond bracelet wrapped around his wrist and a matching Rolex Oyster watch on the other wrist. A custom-made pendant with 75 more diamonds, dangling from a 32-inch diamond-encrusted white gold chain, hung around his neck, and his black boots were covered with skull and crossbones. Even his white-on-gray pit bull had a white gold chain latched to its collar. And the backdrop for this flashy duo was a Buick. A Buick!

It wasn't just any Buick that Big Boi, aka Antwan Patton, was leaning on. It was a 2007 Buick Lucerne that had been "tricked-out" with purple suede seat inserts and matching suede headliner. The car had custom headrests, with the skull and crossbones logo of Big Boi's Purple Ribbon Records label. The Lucerne had been lowered 2.5 inches in the front and three inches in the rear, and it sported 22-inch wheels.

And it is making the rounds of DUB's 7th Annual 15-city Custom Auto Show & Concert Tour.

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What the tricked-out Buick represents is every automaker's need today to reach out for a stamp of approval from urban America. Why? Because urban America is now the acknowledged arbiter of what's cool in the U.S. auto market; and just about everybody will buy what's cool.

In short, the urbanization of the auto industry is about billions of dollars worth of sales. "For the longest time, the core of the automotive industry was buried in suburban middle America, right smack dab in the middle of Michigan," says Marques McCammon, general manager of car and truck sales at Saleen Special Vehicles in Troy, Mich. "They really didn't connect with the urban industry. They shied away from a lot of the urban influence because they thought it tended to be negative. The reality is Blacks and Latinos may not be the consumer audience, but they are definitely the image audience."

For sure, African-Americans are the cutting edge of urban America. But the word urban is fast disappearing as a synonym for Black. Urban is now a lifestyle practiced mainly by Blacks and Hispanics but also by Asians and Caucasians. Urban includes art, fashion, food, jewelry, music, style and trends. And it varies from city to city. Urban in San Antonio is different from urban in San Francisco. "The urban culture has got many different layers to it," says Ed Welburn, head of design at General Motors. "It's such a broad term. It applies to so many different things."

But no matter the location, the operative thought is young when experiencing urban culture. It's this youthful exuberance that has made its way into automotive design in the form of bigger wheels, more chrome as jewelry, side vents, portals and bolder styling. And this trend is not a sideshow; it has become the mainstream.

Hip-Hop Design

In 2004, Chrysler's 300 sedan was the first public acknowledgement of the urbanization of the auto industry. Its big grille, big wheel, big car, lots of chrome styling was daring and admiringly called hip-hop design.

But something more significant occurred three years earlier. BMW's redesigned 7.-Series arrived to virulent criticism from mostly White, mostly male, mostly middle-aged automotive journalists. The criticism was so harsh that BMW rushed a cosmetic change to market and quickly promoted the car's designer out of the line of fire. But what went unreported was that amid the venomous criticism, the new 7-Series outsold the model it replaced by 60 percent during the first two years of its life cycle.

BMW's new 7-Series was embraced by African-Americans says a BMW spokesman. And that fact led to its overall popularity. This generation 7-Series is on track to outsell the model that it replaced during its full eight-year life cycle. Its popularity also signaled that no longer could a small, one dimensional, mostly suburban clique determine what is acceptable in mainstream automotive America. That undertaking is now shared--if not led--by urban America, which itself is fueled by African-Americans.

Arguably, African-Americans' embrace of the Cadillac Escalade and the Lincoln Navigator resurrected the former brand and kept the latter one around. With all the chrome trim and big wheels, it's obvious who those automakers are targeting with the new Escalade and the new Navigator. Small sporty cars can be attributed to "rice rockets," a term that some people still consider to be an ethnic slur. Even so, it is American slang for small Japanese cars that are modified, customized and tuned for performance or racing. Several popular films have been based on them. American and European automakers now have "rice rockets" of their own.

And let's not leave out Hispanics. With their Southern California Low Riders, they popularized late-model cars and perhaps fueled today's retro designs. Shows like "Pimp My Ride," and publications like "DUB" are a direct outgrowth of the cultural impact of Blacks, Asians and Latinos on the auto industry, and the popularity of the trends that come out of these communities.