04/30/97 - 12:10 AM ET - Click reload often for latest version

Four-door family sedans not the stuff of fantasy

PHOENIX - Not long ago, the market for nimble, rakish sports cars was thought gone.

Devotees began accumulating families and defecting to hulking sport-utility trucks in search of a more commodious automotive adventure stippled with agrarian tones. The death rattle was growing into a depressing chant. Mazda discontinued its RX-7, a scalpel of a car. Toyota axed the MR2, the closest Japan has come to an affordable Ferrari.

Nissan reluctantly pulled the plug on 300ZX, a perennial favorite of auto-enthusiast magazines. Lotus couldn't sell Elan in the USA. General Motors was on the verge of killing Corvette.

But the sports car market has made the automotive equivalent of a trip to Lourdes. The miracle cure is not divine intervention. The reason for the rebound is far more secular, the most ancient and honored elixir in the industry: sexy new models.

Five sports cars have landed in the past year: Jaguar XK8, a redesigned Chevrolet Corvette, three new-from-the-ground-up Germans. More are coming.

The remodeled 1997 Dodge Viper roadster is going into production now. Acura has updated the NSX. Ferrari has decided there are sufficient vital signs to ship its $204,000, 550 Maranello 12-cylinder car to the USA. Mazda will soon offer a redesign of its small Miata.

On their way into hell, sports car makers have found a detour toward heaven.

"A year ago you guys were writing off the market. Now look," beams Fred Schwab, CEO of Porsche Cars North America, as he shows reporters the 1997 Boxster two-seat roadster here. Dealers say waiting lists are two years long.

All the new models have reawakened interest, and sales of sports cars have started back up. Schwab thinks they will hit 110,000 a year in the USA by 2000, almost double the recent nadir. That's a footnote on the sales charts in a country where 15 million cars and trucks are sold in a sluggish year. But it's good business for the manufacturers.

Sports cars, which often sell for $40,000-$60,000, can be very profitable when they don't need rebates. Their animal appeal lures buyers to showrooms who wouldn't bother if family sedans and a few trucks were the only attractions. And sports cars cast a glow onto the makers' other products. "There's a little Corvette in every Chevrolet," that brand's former boss, Jim Perkins, liked to say. Nissan is so convinced the 300ZX is good for business it keeps the discontinued car in its ads.

"This is a manufacturer-driven market. It's almost, 'If we build them, they will come,' " Schwab says.

And build them they have decided to.

BMW has turned over its South Carolina factory to production of the Z3 roadster, kicking out the 3-series sedans once built there. Porsche has contracted with a factory in Finland to build more Boxsters to meet demand. Chevrolet tweaked its Bowling Green, Ky., plant to build up to 50% more Corvettes.

There's an obvious element of striking while the iron is hot. But there's also some evidence it won't cool as quickly as before:

• Used sports cars are getting attention. "Sales are going up, and prices are going up," notes Jack Tomalis, who tracks older European sports cars for used-car price guide Cars of Particular Interest. "There's all this ink on the new ones, and people who can't afford them are going for something that's as close as they can afford."

"There's a real sports car market, especially among people who are 30-ish, the front edge of the Xers. We're the K-car generation. We didn't get to grow up on sports cars as the boomers did, so this is all new and exciting," he says.

K-cars were a line of bland, practical, affordable front-wheel-drive sedans that helped Chrysler survive a brush with bankruptcy in the '70s and '80s.

• Buyers are trading other sports cars for the new ones. That suggests a loyalty that could be healthy for the market. Auto consultant J.D. Power and Associates surveyed California BMW dealers and found that ZR3 buyers were swapping Mazda Miatas and Mazda RX-7s for the new Bimmers. The main car traded on a new Z3 in California - 32% - was some other BMW. All BMW's other models are roomier and more practical than Z3, suggesting buyers are willing to sacrifice to own a sports car. And a fair number of trades were sport-utility vehicles. Sports car fans find some poetic justice there, because the popularity of sport-utilities is largely what siphoned sports car buyers.
• Boomers are ready to have fun. Studies relied on by Porsche show that baby boomers, the generation born 1946 to 1964, now are in their peak earning years and ready to spend on themselves. "After all the guilt that followed the go-go, self-indulgent '80s, boomers are looking for cars perceived as simpler and more fun, that harken to a time when driving a sports car was just plain fun," Schwab says.

Many boomers have raised families and no longer need vans, sedans or big cars, Schwab says. And, not inconsequentially, they are the largest single chunk of the population, about one-third, and stand to inherit $8 trillion from aging parents.

• Sports cars once again are the showcase models. Automakers are getting lots of positive publicity from sports cars and aren't likely to forget that. Miata is a bright spot at otherwise troubled Mazda. Chrysler acknowledges that good reviews of the Viper saved the company's image and bought it forbearance among consumers until the manufacturer could produce the modern sedans and redesigned minivans that proved Chrysler had a future.

Corvette has regained its status as cutting-edge among GM models. "I said to a GM guy, 'If you'd take (Corvette's refinement) and put it on all your products, you'd pick up 1 to 2 percentage points of market share. Whatever those guys are doing, bottle it up and pass it around,' " recalls Joseph Phillippi, auto industry analyst at Lehman Bros.

Jack and Gloria Bookter would agree. The Bookters recently sold their '76 Lincoln Mark IV and ordered a '98 Corvette.

"We haven't had a sports car in a while and I think Chevrolet did a great job with the Corvette," says Bookter, 70, of Seattle.

• Automakers are smarter about sports cars. "The important thing is that there isn't so much money being commited to the (sports car development) programs and the tooling," Phillippi says. That means makers can earn good profits on the relatively modest volumes they plan. They won't lose "barrels of money" if sales slump and rebates are necessary, he says.

Automakers concede that sports cars are toys and could suffer if the U.S. economy stumbles. But they don't foresee that happening. Says John Fernandez, chief engineer of Chrysler Viper team: "These are exotic cars, and you wonder where the saturation point is."

But the best hope for longevity of the sports car market can be found among people nowhere close to buying the cars.

"We interviewed some 10-year-old kids and said, 'Describe the car you'd most love to have.' They drew pictures of their dream car. It's invariably red; it's a convertible. It's on a winding road, by the mountains or the sea," says Schwab. "We don't fantasize about four-door sedans."

By James R. Healey, USA TODAY