Peugeot Has What The Car Industry Currently Lacks: Courage—Just Look At The RCZ

The first class of Marketing 101 always says that you've got to understand the tastes and requirements of customers in order to create a product that serves the intended market segment, and then cater to the kind of consumer profiles to which your product will sell.

Case in point: we will soon have the new Gillette 15 blade shaver, since customers always yell "Moooaarrreee blades!!!" And perhaps we'll have a 13-in-1 shampoo since questions are always asked if customers would like a shampoo that cleanses, straightens, darkens, massages, while offering vitamin A, B, C, D, E, H, B12; hell, maybe even DHA so that they can get smarter just after a hair wash! Milo 3-in-1? "We want 150 sachets and for it to remain at the same selling price!"

We see this day in day out, decades after decades, companies asking their customers what they want before pouring in all their R&D funds for it. However, as we may notice, all that customers ever want - or the so-called 'insights' derived from customers’ point of view - is that they want more from existing products. Point blank - more.  

Handphones with 2 megapixels? How bout 5? 8! 12!!! Buy one free one? Buy one free four! Isn't it so? Imagine this: you're in the business of consumer electronics, you're thinking of jumping into the mp3 player market, and you spend RM60,000 to get a consumer survey from AC Nielsen, obtained from interviewing 300 'relevant customers' for you - yes, each costs RM200. What do you think they'll come back with? Hmm ... mp3, wma compatibility, 10gb, or maybe 20gb. What else? Okie, maybe 1 or 2 suggestions to integrate a camera, and maybe another few suggestions to have USB slots and SD card slots so that they can transfer songs. Sounds alright? But does it differ from any mp3 jukeboxes out there? Unlikely.

Why? Because consumers are stupid that's why. They don't really know what they want. All they see are existing products around them, and all the feedback they give is the "future upgraded version" of what they see in the market.

Will any consumer come back suggesting a slim mp3 jukebox with a 3.5" colour screen with calendar, calculator, notepad, address book, camera, picture viewer, video playback, and Bluetooth and Wifi connectivity? And then there are widgets on the device which you can move around, using your fingers to control the user interface, pinching and turning pictures with two fingers. And an online store where consumers can login one time with their credit card and purchase original songs - those that they like instead of an entire album - at 0.99 cents per song? You can have long-term savings while preventing the collapse of an entire music industry in which companies like BMG and EMI or Sony Music are struggling to combat online file sharing?

Why then is there the iPod from Apple? Why is it that Apple is able to score hits after hits, bulls-eye after bulls-eye with their new, never-yet-seen products? Because they make products with passion, with a desire to produce the best, something that no one has seen before, something beyond the thought of conventional wisdom. All they're thinking is to do what they think is the best they can muster. They're not thinking about market success or money, they're not thinking about making money off customers, asking for opinions as the other companies do. All they have in mind is a focus, a desire to produce what they deem beautiful, what they deem good, despite the immense courage required to venture into uncharted waters.

Just take a look at the Peugeot RCZ. Like the original Audi TT, it is groundbreaking. It's just beautiful, it's shaped like nothing else, it's even very likely the wet dream of a single (or many) designer(s) within Peugeot. Considering the breast-cleavage-shaped roof, the rear, the front, the very costly engineering work needed to produce the car, the designer is very likely to be called into his bosses' office, on the receiving end of a mouthful for designing something so "impractical". The story would likely continue on with something like this:

Mr Peugeot RCZ designer somehow believed deep down he can pull this off. By using the platform of the Peugeot 308 Turbo, that excellent 1.6-litre direct-injected turbocharged Prince engine, and that familiar six-speed transmission, he might be able to produce a cheap, fun-to-drive, great-to-look-at car that puts the sexiness back. Mr RCZ designer then threw a tantrum, shouting at his boss, demanding to have the design seriously put into consideration for production.

Then the first meeting came, and the accountants wanted to trim down his designs, wanted the bulging roof to be toned down to save on production costs, wanted that crazy hood opening line that goes down to the fenders to be trimmed as well. Mr Peugeot RCZ designer shouted "How about adding rear seats, a set of rear doors, and a boot? So that it'd be practical and everyone will buy it?" The accountants promptly agreed. Then Mr RCZ put up the 308 sedan, and subsequently the Toyota Vios. See? Now this is cheap to produce! There's no flair in the design, there's no shapely butt, there's nothing significant, but there's plenty of space, plenty of room, and you know what? There's plenty of such competitors in the market as well! Is this what you want? Is this what this meeting is all about?

Mr Peugeot RCZ designer then continued. "We can sell this. The customers haven't seen anything like this, but we're pretty damn sure this is something great. We can invest on the exterior to generate the wow factor, then cost savings can be made using the same underpinning of the 308 Turbo: the steering, the engine, the transmission, the drive shafts, the interior - everything can be ported over. This then will become a car that's sporty, beautiful, nice to drive, frugal, and cheap to maintain. Then we sell this at a slightly premium price compared to the 308 so that there's real world value to this car. It'll generate plenty of positive PR, it'll get the automotive magazines going crazy. Hell, it'll even save us a couple of millions on positive PR coverage! We can pull this off, we know it deep down within. Seriously."

And that's what this is, it's reasonably fast, reasonably comfortable, reasonably practical with two seats and two torso holders behind, there's a boot. There's also Bluetooth, dual zone climate control, a leather wrapped dashboard dyed to look in a plastic grey colour (not sure why, but it is leather nonetheless), and some wonderfully sculpted GT seats (not exactly bucket with huge wings, but more like those from a luxurious grand tourer). And as expected, it drives almost exactly like a 308 Turbo, except it's lighter, stiffer, corners harder and faster. That's it.

But then as soon as you step out of the car, look at it, and take a pause for a few moments of your life. Your eyes caressing the little details, that roof, that nicely sculpted body (yes, it's way prettier than an Audi TT even though it's clearly inspired by it). And it's hard for you not to imagine the hardship the designer of the car went through to get it into production. And you realized at that moment, he wasn't really thinking about money, he wasn't really thinking about market success or failure, he wasn't really planning a series of plots, of motives that might translate into a quantifiable return. He's just trying to make it as pretty as possible, in a quest to derive satisfaction manifested usually by wide gaping mouths and stunned speechless moments.  He must have been aiming for that immeasurable sense of achievement to have created something unique, regardless of whether anyone is going to buy it.

This is courage, this is producing something from passion instead of economics, this is the spirit every car maker, who has now earned at least a bit of respect, must have had at one point of time. The Honda Beat, the Toyota Sera, the Mazda Eunos Cosmo, the Subaru SVX are all such masterpieces that perhaps flopped when it came to sales figures, even though they still generate positive goodwill for the brand ten, twenty or thirty years after they were discontinued. Courage is the whole point of it. The Peugeot RCZ may not sell in great numbers (even though they're doing very very well with their bookings) compared to something more run-of-the-mill like the 308. Wide gaping mouths and speechless moments are aplenty whenever a RCZ passes by, and that counts for something.

Will consumer surveys ever help work out something like this? Something so intangible? Something driven by passion instead of money and economics? No way. Consumer surveys only contribute to creating money-generating items, not money-losing masterpieces. Steve Jobs, the creator of iPod and the mind behind Apple’s success, himself said "Consumers never knew what they wanted."