Old mobiles car makers join the grey revolution

The advantages of making cars user-friendly for older drivers is becoming ever more apparent to car makers so used to chasing the younger car buyer with swooping lines and improbable dynamics. They are being forced into a rethink.

“Car makers don’t like to admit they are making cars for people who are middle aged and older. Their advertising is targeted at the young. But the fact is that customers are getting older,” says Graeme Fudge, a spokesman for Mazda. “It is an enormous challenge everyone in the industry is going to have to embrace. It is an unpsoken truth that older customers are bigger in numbers and in spending power.”

In September, Mazda will launch the M5, a medium-sized MPV with large sliding doors for easy entry and exit. “The vehicle is designed with ease of access in mind for people who are not as supple as they once were,” says Fudge. “You have to be a contortionist to get in and out of some cars.”

Mazda’s targeting of older drivers is part of a successful marketing strategy — it tripled sales in the three years to 2004, the fastest growth of any manufacturer. It is no coincidence that the average age of its customers is 40-45, well above that declared by most car firms.

Other car makers are catching on, and young car designers are being taught to study the ways of the older generation. “I tell my students to study how their parents and grandparents behave — how they move, how they grip things, how they see things,” says David Browne, head of transport design at Coventry University, a key recruiting ground for future car designers. “It is becoming ever more important to understand these issues.”

While British-based companies are just beginning to take on board the importance of attracting older drivers the notion is already far advanced in Japan, where the problem of an ageing population is even more acute than in Europe. The proportion of over-65s in Japan will rise from 20% today to 30% by 2030, meaning more than an extra 10m older people.

The diminutive Suzuki Wagon R+ (sold as the Vauxhall Agila in the UK) became the bestselling small car in Japan in the 1990s, thanks in part to its popularity with older drivers. The little Suzuki, which looks disconcertingly like a telephone box on wheels, has spawned a craze for tall, boxy vehicles that are grey-market friendly: tall means easy to get into and boxy means easy to park.

Suzuki is not alone. Concepts such as the Mitsubishi Se-Ro features swivelling seats for easy entry and a dashboard that converts into a table, while Toyota’s NLSV concept boasts electric sliding doors, a floor that is at step height and a roof high enough to stand up in, allowing an older person literally to walk into the car before sitting down.

Neither are these innovations all in the future. Rear-view cameras that mean older people do not have to twist their heads and torsos to look behind when reversing are being introduced on a range of Nissan and Toyota models.

At next month’s Geneva Motor Show, Honda will display its 2006 Legend saloon featuring an Intelligent Night Vision System that uses heat sensors to detect pedestrians in the road ahead. Anything that assists night vision is particularly valuable to older drivers because medical research shows that the rods in the eye that determine vision in poor light are usually the first part of the eye to deteriorate in the over-65s.

Nissan already offers the Note in Japan (which will go into production in Sunderland in 2006 as the Tone) with a package of controls specifically aimed at drivers who are not as mobile as they used to be. The car boasts a system whereby the accelerator and brakes can be operated with the hands rather than feet and an electric seat that can be swivelled to the outside of the vehicle and lowered or raised by an electric motor via a wireless remote control to aid access and exit.

Already available on General Motors models in the United States is the eCall system, which will be fitted to most European models by 2009. It is an emergency call facility that can be activated if the driver becomes ill. Other innovations set to appear include seats that rise when the doors open, making it easier to step out of the car, simpler dashboards, and controls with switches that are chunky and colour-coded.

So it seems the future will not turn out as previously advertised. Forget all those sci-fi images of 21st-century streamlined sports cars whizzing down empty highways. Instead we will be stuck in traffic jams in four-wheeled cubes with roofs high enough for elderly gents to wear a top hat.

And despite all the advertisements aimed at attractive young people, the future design of cars will in all probability be determined by the needs of their parents.

Page two: ‘I’ve aged in this car and I know exactly what’s up with it’

()I’ve aged in this car and I know exactly what’s wrong with it

Roland White dresses in Ford’s ‘old suit’ to find out what the mature driver is up against

As challenges go, this one didn’t seem all that challenging. Could I climb unassisted into the front seat of a Ford Focus? Pah! It was the work of a moment, and to be honest I thought I’d carried it off rather stylishly.

But Andy Jamison of Ford, who set the challenge, is something of a details man. “See how you gripped the steering wheel to steady yourself,” he said. “And the door. You probably wouldn’t do that normally.”

Getting into the front seat was a breeze compared with putting the key into the ignition or turning round to look out of the back window. And as for finding Terry Wogan on the car radio, forget it.

This, apparently, is what it’s like to be an older driver. Your eyesight has deteriorated, your joints are stiff, your muscles are weaker, and your reactions are slower. Cars, you think bitterly in the half hour it takes to load a few bags of shopping into the boot of your Mondeo, are designed for young people by young people.

It is for this reason that Ford has invented the ageing suit. The average car designer at Ford is only 25 years old, but after a go in the suit — part of the training schedule — they will have an idea of the problems of their ageing customers. That’s if they haven’t already read the research.

The company began gathering data in the mid-1990s on the problems of ageing. It discovered that, for example, muscle strength and joint movement decline by about 25% between the ages of 20 and 60. But the biggest setback for the elderly driver is sight. “Under night-time driving conditions approximately one third of drivers who wear spectacles would fail to meet the minimum driving vision standard of 20/40,” says a Ford report. No wonder many older people avoid night driving.

Older drivers take longer to change focus. If they can see the traffic in front of them clearly, they might have problems seeing the instrument panel. Many older drivers also find it more difficult to divide their attention between tasks. Many accidents involving the elderly are apparently at junctions, where they have to think about many things at once.

But back to the ageing suit. If we are honest here the word “suit” might be overstating the level of couture involved. This is a pair of Ford overalls with a few weightlifters’ supports to constrict movement in the joints. The supports are strapped to the ankles and the knees, there is a large girdle tightened around the waist to make it difficult to move your back, and a similar collar around the neck which makes it difficult to turn around. The wrists are strapped and a pair of surgical gloves makes touch less sensitive.

It is the final touch, though, that really makes a difference: a pair of yellow-tinted glasses. I could hardly find my way to the car, let alone know where to put the key.

But physical frailty is by no means Ford’s biggest challenge. The trouble with older people — and I speak here with some authority, as somebody with four years to go before the qualifying age for Saga mini-breaks — is that they don’t think of themselves as old. The generation who reached their teens in the 1960s aren’t elderly, dear me no, they’re just teenagers with bad backs and the occasional hip twinge.

“The over-55s don’t consider themselves old,” says Jamison. “So what we are doing is designing cars for the general population but keeping older people in mind.”

For example, the door handles on the new Focus are larger and easier to use than they once might have been. The tailgate is lighter. The dashboard is simple and easy to read. These are changes the older driver will appreciate and the younger driver probably won’t notice.

So what do older drivers want in a car? Well, not bifocal windscreens and denture holders next to the glove compartment, for a start. According to a Ford study they want a small-to-medium-sized car that’s safe, reliable and comfortable with good visibility. “Seeing while parking was rated as one of the most difficult tasks,” says the report.

Let’s keep the problems of the over-55s in some perspective here. Nigel Mansell is 51 and could no doubt somersault into the front seat of a Ford Focus from a standing start. But according to United Nations forecasts there will be 472m people over the age of 65 by the end of this year. And that’s a lot of cars to sell.