세계 SUV 브랜드 차량 디자인의 영향요인 분석

Background With the advent of the 21th century, the global automobile industry has become faced with great changes amid environmental effects of internationalization together with the birth of big global companies resulting from large scale mergers. One of causes for such change is fierce competition in the global automobile market to satisfy consumers" needs. Recently, sales amount of sport utility vehicles (SUVs) are steadily and rapidly on the rise compared to other types of cars and large automobile manufacturers are putting up SUVs as important strategic goods as if reflecting such trend. On the other hand, research to analyze design environment and figure out consumers" needs in the area of vehicle design is lacking compared to other commodity industries. Research which systematically approached SUV design from diverse perspectives is also rare. Therefore, car designers are poor in reflecting diverse external influential factors which affect commodities to SUV styling.
Methods This paper involved most representative SUV brands in North America, Europe, and Asia, which are major car markets. This study aimed to analyze the effects of social, functional, and technological factors on SUV specifications and designs according to temporal changes from before and after the second world war to the present. Relevant data were collected through academic papers, magazines, books, and Internet data.
Results This study divided the periods spanning from the early stage of SUV production to the present into four to five periods with Jeep, Land rover, and Ssangyong brand as the subjects and analyzed the factors which affected SUV industry and design by each era in terms of sociability, usability, and technology and analyzed technical dimensions and shapes of representative models. The SUV design in the early stage was a transport means with flexibility and mobility as a functional tool appropriate for a war situation. Thereafter, SUV reflected functions necessary for reconstruction and agricultural production. Together with social stability, each SUV brand had developed unique styling until the end of 20th century. Recently, as technological convergence and sharing are made globally and the problem of resource becomes serious, SUV design is evolving into eco-friendly design oriented toward convergence of scientific technologies, energy saving, and environmental protection. Today"s SUV design pays more attention to usability and sociability necessary for commodity design than technological factors.
Conclusion According to analysis of global representative SUV brand markets throughout the history, they show similar developmental process due to the global events such as wars and oil shocks. On the other hand, social, technological, use factors are affecting unique, independent brand culture formation.
In the future SUV industry, the current design trend reflecting global collaboration through resource sharing among companies and the resulting convergence of diverse technologies, energy saving, and environmental protection, and individuation is expected to continue for the time being.