Think Small--It May be a Trend

When it rumbled onto the market in 1999, the Ford Excursion instantly and breathtakingly symbolized the ever-expanding girth of American excessiveness. Seven feet tall and 19 feet long, it held nine people and looked like a Range Rover on steroids. It didn’t fit into most parking spaces, or garages, but it slid right into a world order fueled by dot-com millions, CEO worship, Martha-mosaiced swimming pools and triple-shot lattes.

Three years later, many pillars of that world have buckled under the weight of their own excesses, and the Excursion, it seems, may now be joining corporate double-dipping, 24-year-old Internet billionaires and Martha Stewart in the cultural deleted-items basket. Triple-shot lattes remain fairly popular.

Ford, which will not confirm or deny reports out of Detroit that it will discontinue the manufacture of its $45,000 uber-SUV, would not pull the Excursion just because some people thought it was ridiculous or, at 10 miles per gallon, scandalously wasteful. Ford would pull the Excursion only because it wasn’t profitable. Which means perhaps not enough people are buying it. Which means that in an arena often considered a bellwether of the economy, the question of “How much is too much?” has finally been answered. Half a city block, for a car, is too much.

Americans finally are pushing away from the table in other areas as well. Like the pilot whales dying on Cape Cod, big business is beached and blowing hard. The CEOs of Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco and Rite-Aid have gone from titanium-card members to social pariahs, as a Republican president, flanked by Democrats, on Tuesday signed legislation to bring the corporate sector back into the realm of American jurisprudence. Larger-than-life personalities have suffered more than minor deflation--Alan Greenspan has misplaced his omnipotence, Colin Powell is tidying up his resume, Martha Stewart bared her teeth on TV and Mike Ovitz, once considered the most powerful man in Hollywood, is “spending time with his family” in the wake of a series of failed business deals and a bout of foot-in-mouth disease.

On a more individual level, the gleaming, fat stock portfolio, which loomed large in public priority and imagination during recent years, is, in most cases, withering along with many grandiose dreams of early retirement and large lives of leisured luxury.

During the past several years many pundits and economists have commented on the supersizing of the American Dream. Ever since Lewis and Clark noted to then-President Thomas Jefferson that, hey, there might be a lot more there there than we first thought, Americans have prided themselves on thinking big. Anything not originally available in extra-extra large--cows, corn, breasts, profit margins, pickup trucks--we are more than happy to genetically alter, augment, inflate or redesign.

Not everyone likes this character trait. Internationally, it is said to have contributed to the hatred that felled the World Trade Center--perhaps the most visible symbol of our size-matters psychology. Domestically, we fret over side effects ranging from spiritual emptiness to obesity in children.

But now it would seem that Americans are reconsidering the importance of size. The possible loss of the Expedition is just part of a post-SUV trend toward smaller luxe autos--precious versions of Mercedes and squeezed Cadillacs race around with the Mini Cooper and the Toyota Matrix like so many high-priced Matchbox cars, while the “biggest” development is the new Bentley GT coupe, which seats four.

But it goes way beyond wheels. The fast-food industry, which invented the term “supersize,” is being publicly blamed for the excess weight that contributes to 300,000 deaths each year and costs the country $117 billion in health care. Critics are calling for legislation that would require restaurants to cop to the often quadruple-digit calorie count of every meal.

Meanwhile, individually packaged, single-serving snack and breakfast foods, developed for children on the go, have expanded into adult fare and become the fastest-growing segment of the food industry. Many restaurants now offer half-portions as a remedy for the 2-inch growth of the average restaurant plate.

As the housing market booms, buyers find themselves forced to settle for fewer square feet. Which is often how a scaling-down trend begins.

“Houses will probably get smaller,” says Linda Castrilli, a trend director at Consumer Eyes in New York. “People get less and so they assume they need less.”

All trends are cyclical, says Castrilli, so it isn’t surprising that after the pumped-up ‘90s, a new trend favoring the sleek and compact would follow. Big, statement-making purchases like SUVs were popular for a while, she says, but convenience is the new buzzword, and “people are realizing that those big clunkers are just hard to get around in.”

There is a backlash against big, she says, a swing to the smaller end of the stick. “In things like cell phones and stereos and makeup, it’s always been, ‘How small can you get it?’ ”

We’ve pared down culturally, too. Grim, if slightly manipulated, reality has replaced the over-the-top nighttime soap opera on television--glitzy “Knots Landing” is out, low-budget “Big Brother” is in. The new version of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” is MTV’s “Cribs,” a look at the often less-than-palatial digs of rock stars.

Money, of course, is at the bottom of everything. Consumer confidence dropped precipitously as the economy, perhaps the biggest whale on the beach, threatens to go from relapse to terminal. Faith in the power of MBAs to steer the ship is waning, and the public is returning to more traditional, less highflying symbols of success.

Proponents of simplicity have always provided an undercurrent to the living-large trend, but lately their murmuring has gained volume. Even Oprah Winfrey, who is not so much a captain of industry as her own industry, promotes simpler living. In a landscape less littered by enormous SUVs, inflated expectations and oversized personalities, that message might become even more clear.