"You'll see a lot of Chappo in all of our new products."
To anyone who's only eyeballed the Chappo concept car and not had it explained to them, those words from Shiro Nakamura, design director of Nissan Motor Co., Ltd, would send Nissan stock value skittering towards the nearest sewer grate.
After all, Chappo was generally regarded to be the ugliest vehicle at the Geneva Motor Show a few weeks back.
Then Mazda Motors showed off a sketch of a very similar vehicle at a media backgrounder in NY that it's thinking about building called the Secret Hideaway and explained it a bit, and the fog started to lift.
Chappo and Secret Hideaway aren't design exercises, you see, and Nakamura's not talking about building Altimas and Maximas that look like this, he's talking about Chappo as a packaging concept.
Nissan calls Chappo, which it will put on display at the 2001 New York International Auto Show, an "innovative city car design concept on display to judge North American consumer reaction."
Nakamura says that, "With its asymmetrical, two-box exterior and an interior designed as a virtual living room on wheels, the Chappo explores a possible direction for personal 'social space' vehicles of the future."
Chappo's interior was conceived not just for driving, Nakamura explains, "but as a social space where young people will want to meet and relax. It reflects the need of future generations who will demand increasingly personal and diverse solutions to lifestyle and recreational needs."