Platform sharing used to be simple. You slathered a Toyota in leather and fake wood, filled every crevice with sound deadening, swapped out a few body panels, and stuck a Lexus badge on the trunk. Or, if you were GM, you might have skipped a few steps and gone right to the upscale-badge part. But today, nobody operates so simply or crudely.
Most manufacturers’ portfolios are filled with vehicles that share significant parts of their makeup. In some cases, one basic layout begets multiple body styles and sizes, sold by several brands at vastly different prices in markets all over the world. It must be working, as the largest global players are increasing the numbers of vehicles sired from common platforms.
The advantages of this approach for the carmakers are obvious: economies of scale, not just in manufacturing but also in design, engineering, and regulatory compliance. For the consumer, it means smaller, less-expensive cars are often built to a higher standard if the platform trickles down from a more premium product. But all this winning carries its own hazard: Recalls ripple across many more models and vehicles than in the past, amplifying the fallout from a quality problem.
What follows are graphs projecting the 10 biggest-selling global platforms for 2015 and 2020, as calculated by the industry analysts and forecasters at IHS Automotive.
Truckless
With sales of 1.5 million units, GM’s full-size truck platform (GMT 800/900) was the second-most popular platform in 2005. But the rise of markets outside the U.S., principally China, has shifted the numbers toward small cars. The projected top 10 for 2020 are all small-car platforms.
Accord-ian
One feature of modern platforms is that they can stretch to accommodate different wheelbases and vehicle lengths spanning two or three segments. Thus, Honda is expected to use the same platform for both the Accord and the Civic by 2020.
Platform vs. Architecture
Although often used interchangeably, platform is technically the broader of the two terms, describing a set of vehicles with common “hard points” or specific dimensional parameters, typically constituting the engine bay, fire wall, and crash structure. Architecture refers to a platform’s derivatives, either different evolutions of the platform or dimensional variations.
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