An Early Double Delivery

The auto industry is presenting consumers with twins next month in an early launch of the 2003 model year.

But instead of sharing the joy, proud parents General Motors Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. will be fighting it out in the court of public opinion to see which cute face buyers will like best.

It’s a marketing contest not usually so visible to car buyers: two cars, the Pontiac Vibe and the Toyota Matrix, sharing almost all the same automotive DNA but sold as competing products to the same basic audience.

GM and Toyota did it before with the Prizm (sold first under the Geo brand and later as a Chevrolet) and its twin, the Corolla. But GM did little to market the Prizm, so it spent its life as the Corolla’s weak sister: a great buy for those in the know, though many shoppers preferred to pay the Toyota’s premium price to have the more prestigious brand and higher resale value.

This time around, GM and its Pontiac division are intent on a full-scale marketing program, using the Vibe as the first vehicle in a program to polish the brand’s faded image.

To succeed, Pontiac must position the Vibe as an alternative to the Matrix. Pontiac and Toyota both say their cars are aimed squarely at the youth market, but Pontiac hopes to gain an advantage with that audience on the basis of pricing and exterior styling.

Vibe pricing starts at $16,900; Toyota is expected to price the Matrix closer to $18,000. And though their innards are identical, the Vibe has a slightly more aggressive exterior, thanks in large part to a trademark Pontiac prow filled with intake scoops.

The look points the way to a new era of Pontiac styling, cleaner and without the overabundance of clunky ribbed plastic body cladding that has become a brand hallmark. Indeed, the Vibe could be seen as Pontiac’s apology for the ungainly Aztek, a cross between a minivan and a sport-utility vehicle whose awkward styling has gone down poorly with buyers.

The Vibe and Matrix join Chrysler’s PT Cruiser among the new breed of “crossovers” that combine attributes of passenger cars with those of SUVs or minivans.

Both entries are five-door hatchbacks with sleek, almost fastback-style roof lines; chair-height seating that gives the driver a commanding view of the road; and interior flexibility usually reserved for minivans. Features include fold-flat seats (including the front passenger seat) and a unique cargo hold-down anchors that slide along a set of parallel tracks in the floor.

Optional features include a navigation system, a first for an entry-level vehicle from GM or Toyota.

The Vibe and Matrix come in basic 130-horsepower front-wheel-drive models with a choice of four-speed automatic or five-speed manual transmission. Each product line also has a 123-horsepower all-wheel-drive version (a rerouted exhaust system robs the base engine of seven horsepower) and a performance version with a powerful 180-horsepower four-cylinder engine and six-speed manual transmission.

Both the Vibe and Matrix are built on a modified Toyota Corolla platform. Despite the badges on the Pontiac, both use Toyota engines, transmissions, all-wheel-drive systems, suspensions and brakes. Even the interiors are identical--although the look is more Pontiac than Toyota, right down to the Delco audio systems and deep-set gauges and red lighting on the instrument panels.

But where Toyota’s reputation for quality and reliability will be a great marketing tool for the Matrix, analysts say it would be marketing suicide for Pontiac to boast in its ads of the Vibe’s Japanese heritage.

That probably will be done subtly, by salespeople talking to potential customers at Pontiac dealerships.

Even then, “it will be hard for Pontiac to explain that the Vibe is not a vehicle built to Pontiac standards but to much higher Toyota standards,” said industry analyst Rex Parker, a vice president at AutoPacific Inc. in Tustin. “How can you do that without denigrating the rest of your products?”

Early word from analysts and automotive journalists who have driven the vehicles is that both should do well in the market.

“I see no reason they both can’t sell all they can make; there’s a significant market opportunity for each,” said Parker, who prefers the Vibe’s styling, which he sees as more exciting than Toyota’s sleeker, more subdued exterior.

Don Esmond, Toyota division general manager for Toyota Motor Sales USA, said the sales goal for the Matrix is 70,000 a year, or full capacity for its factory in Ontario, Canada.

Pontiac is aiming for 55,000 annual Vibe sales in North America, most in the U.S. The Vibe will be built in Northern California at the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. facility in Fremont, which is jointly owned by GM and Toyota but run pretty much as a Toyota plant under that company’s rigorous quality-monitoring rules.

GM, which has been trying for years to boost sales of its North American-made vehicles in Japan, also will export an undisclosed number of right-hand-drive versions of the Vibe to Japan, where they will be badged and sold as the Toyota Voltz.

Esmond said that the Vibe and Matrix were engineered simultaneously with the Corolla in Japan and that Toyota’s engineering department asked both Pontiac and Torrance-based Toyota Motor Sales for input, “for the kind of flavor and themes we wanted to see in this hatchback format.”

Toyota’s Calty design studio in Newport Beach designed the Matrix and Toyota Motor in Japan then asked Pontiac how it wanted to change its version, Esmond said.

The story is a little different when told by Pontiac. The Vibe’s chief engineer, Bob Reuter, acknowledged that the platform and engineering are Toyota’s, but GM designer John Mack said his shop started with a clean sheet of paper for the Vibe design and wasn’t reduced to merely remodeling the Matrix.

Whichever version is correct, there is no mistaking the close relationship when the two cars are parked side by side.

What might be different is the buyer profiles.

Both companies will be marketing the sport versions of the vehicles--the Vibe GT and Matrix XRS--to a predominately male audience. Pricing for the 180-horsepower model--$19,900 for the Vibe GT and probably a bit more for the Matrix--is likely to keep the buyer age profile in the high 20s and above.

Otherwise, as the two companies target the youth market, “youth” will be relative.

The average Corolla buyer is 44, and Toyota would be happy if sales of the base Matrix could lop just a few years off that.

Pontiac, though, is shooting for the 28-to-35 crowd, said brand manager Craig Bierley. The company lacks an SUV in its lineup and sees the Vibe as an attractive alternative for younger sport-utility shoppers.

Toyota offers the RAV4 as a compact, entry-level SUV and isn’t looking to take away sales with the Matrix.

Instead, said Esmond, Toyota will market the base Matrix to young couples and families who are uninterested in SUVs but are looking for more room or sportier looks than a typical entry-level sedan would provide.

There’s one other unknown as the two face off.

With typical products, Toyota shoppers don’t cross-shop Pontiacs, and Pontiac fans don’t often look at Toyotas. It’s unclear, though, whether that will hold true with the Vibe and the Matrix.

Still, any degree of competition and comparison is likely to be far more a help to Pontiac than a detriment to Toyota.

“Toyota knows that you can sell a young car to an older buyer but not an old car to a younger buyer, so this is positioned well for them,” said Parker, the AutoPacific analyst. “And people cheerfully pay a premium for Toyota’s quality and reliability, so any price difference shouldn’t hurt.”

What will happen, he suggested, “is that this finally puts Pontiac back on the consideration list for a lot of people who previously wouldn’t have considered a Pontiac.”

Times staff writer John O’Dell covers autos for Highway 1 and the Business section. He can be reached at john.odell@latimes.com.