MOTORING; In the mirror of the past

Even car makers, those most modernist of manufacturers, are playing the heritage game. The reason? To beat the Asian tigers who don't have any glorious past to evoke. Phil Dourado on the post-modern motor

SO, IS your car a jelly-mould Euro-motor, a generic-looking Japanese model of efficiency or a German muscle machine? If it was bought new in the last few years, then at least it probably looks modern, since the late Eighties and early Nineties saw the replacement of the "three box" approach to car design (luggage space, people space, engine space) with aerodynamic curves. But looking modern is no longer enough. It's finally happened. The post-modern car is here.

The past has steadily seeped back into our other cultural forms, from Randall and Hopkirk re-runs on TV to The Brady Bunch at the cinema. But that most determinedly modernist of industries, whose very economics depend on accelerating our buying decisions through persuading us that next year's more aerodynamic and gadget-laden model makes ours and every other set of wheels on the road seem outmoded, has finally succumbed. For the first time in its history, the car industry is dipping into its past to persuade us to buy into next year's model.

In the US, Chrysler has just unveiled the Atlantic, self-consciously grilled, badged and curved to mimic Thirties' roadsters. In Europe, carmakers, led by Rover and BMW, now build in classic "cues", as designers term them, borrowed from the past. These visual signals are designed to tug at our sub-conscious so we're drawn to a car without really knowing why. They're what Ken Greenley, professor of transportation design at the Royal College of Art, calls "subliminal visual messages".

"The classic example most people noticed with us is the return of the Rover grille," said Denis Chick, Rover's product communication director. "But the effect also comes through in other cues: recessed rear number plates surrounded with chrome, stainless steel kick plates in the sills as you open the doors, the two flute lines running down into the headlights. These are all carefully designed into our models so that when you see a Rover coming towards you it is clearly a Rover, not any other modern Euro-car."

Some commentators in the car industry, taking their own cue from this year's re-launch of the Sixties' design classic, the MG (now known as the MGF), and the continuing surge in popularity of fresh-from-the-factory but classically designed Minis, anticipate a stream of old marque revivals. Car industry magazines claim that BMW's chairman, Bernt Pischetsrieder, is about to unleash on us new variants of classic marques currently owned but unexploited by Rover, including Riley, Austin-Healey and Wolsley.

"We have no plans to re-introduce any of these marques," insists a Rover spokesperson. But the stories persist, fuelled by Pischetsrieder's admiration of English car design of the Thirties and his own family heritage; his uncle was Sir Alec Issigonis, who designed the Mini in the Fifties.

So, where is this retreat from modernism coming from? Why are European car-makers in particular harping on about their heritage with all this visual "cueing"? Because they see it as the Achilles heel of the dominant Japanese and fast-rising Korean car industries, that's why. Europe's industry has a heritage to hark back to, runs the argument, and they don't.

Europe and the US have copied the production methods pioneered by the Japanese in the late Seventies. As a result, every new car, not just Japanese ones, will soon come with a three-year, 60,000-mile warranty and no fear of rust. Quality is now built into most new cars. "The Italians still have some reliability trouble, but they're improving," says Royden Axe, the managing director of Design Research Associates Ltd, a design consultancy used by many of the giant carmakers. So the fact that your new car is unlikely to break down in the first week, leaving you stranded on the M40, is becoming a given rather than an advantage owned exclusively by Japanese and expensive German car manufacturers.

"As the practical needs of the driver are taken care of, this leaves style and soul in the design of the car as the differentiator, which is drawn from its heritage. And it's widely assumed Japanese cars don't have it," says Denis Chick. "That's seen as our great strength. No matter how hard they try, Japanese designs tend to be dismissed as bland."

This is ironic, because Nissan, for one, has had great success in marketing "retro" look cars such as the Figaro to a niche market in Japan that laps them up, loving the round headlights and bakelite-look dials. Outside Japan, the Japanese retro cars are dismissed as novelties, with the exception of Mazda's MX-5. This, fumed one European designer, is simply "nicked from the Lotus look of the Sixties".

But companies such as Rover are choosy about what bits of their heritage they present to you with their new classicism. Mention the Seventies in general and British Leyland in particular and you're likely to be shown the door. Models like the Montego, which are associated, some would say tainted, with the company's dog days, are still made because the demand is still there. But they leave the factory without a Rover badge on them, as semi-detached, unacknowledged members of the family. Their sin is to be from the wrong era.

"European carmakers lost their way in the 1970s in particular," says Royden Axe. "BMW and Mercedes are the only two that successfully played the heritage card and kept their identity while others lost theirs. Almost everybody in Europe is getting back to the heritage factor now, partly because they think that the Japanese aren't able to compete in this territory."

They're trying the same trick in the US. But Chrysler, for one, suggests that unease with the pace of change in everyday life and a desire for traditional values is the key. A yearning for comfort and security associated with the past is where the appeal of cars like the Atlantic lies, according to Chrysler's Mike Mihaelich.

"We changed the Chrysler badge to its old-style ribbon seal and built in cues and ornamentation with a Thirties feel," he says. "Buyers think 'I'd like to cruise around in the kind of car my dad and grandfather relaxed in.' They're looking for reassurance. It suggests the best of the old to them. I don't want to criticise the Japanese, but the prevailing look is cookie-cutter design. People say they can't get the feel right. We can."

Despite its potential as a trump card over Japanese and Korean carmakers, Axe feels the post-modern look won't be with us for long, because it has emerged for much simpler reasons than the fin de siecle angst put forward by Chrysler. Car design, like politics, has temporarily run out of ideas, he says. "This is the first time in automotive history that car designers have looked back for inspiration," he says. "Maybe it is a natural reaction to the pace of progress. But it's just a passing phase until something new comes along." Nissan and Toyota will keep their fingers crossed that he's right. !

POST-MODERN APPEAL - DOES YOUR CAR HAVE IT?

Who's got it

Rover, BMW & Mercedes. Any Italian coachbuilt car, but not many of the mass production models. "The French makes, Renault and Peugeot-Citroen, had a distinctive style in the Fifties, lost it in the Seventies and Eighties, but are now winning it back," says Royden Axe, the automotive design guru responsible for, among other things, the return of Rover's grille. Citroen's enduring 2CV is more pre-modern than post-modern.

Who's almost got it

Mazda, with the Xedos ('It's almost there... almost," says Axe), and with the massively popular retro MX-5 ("but the MX-5 doesn't really count, because everyone knows its heritage is 'borrowed' from the old Lotus Elan look," says Denis Chick of Rover.)

Who hasn't got it

Ford, except maybe in the dials and polished wood trim inside top-of- the-range new Escorts and Mondeos.

Vauxhall, except maybe the upmarket Omega. "We don't have a brief to celebrate the past," Vauxhall say.

Every Japanese car (except the occasional Mazda)

The new breed of Korean imports (except under the bonnet, where SsangYong trades on the heritage of its Mercedes engine).