Tendencies Of Design Policies For Japanese Passenger Cars

When establishing a new design policy for passenger cars, it is essential to investigate the tendencies of past design policies and resultant achievements reflected on actual cars. Our study has been focused on the quantitative analysis of these tendencies with the aid of various multivariate analysis method.

Our investigation covers the past 18 years, from the mid-1960s when motorization was established in Japan until 1982. During this period more than one overall model change was carried out for 19 kinds and 70 models of Japanese passenger cars. As a result, it has been confirmed that design policies vary greatly among makers though they are quite sensitive to social factors such as oil crisis. Actual cars, however, have not always been so directly affected by an intensive innovation effort in design policies.