Strategy: GM Focuses On Style In Torrent Drive

General Motors, in desperate need of some good SUV karma, hopes to get it with its latest crossover, Pontiac Torrent, the second Pontiac SUV after its ill-fated Aztek bowed five years ago. GM aims to grab buyers leaving truck-based utilities in droves for sport wagons, and other crossovers, now mostly made by imports. GM truck-based SUV sales are down 11%, through August, per Global Insight, Lexington, Mass. GM's truck-based utility sales were down 27% even before the employee discounts drive.

The effort, via Leo Burnett, Detroit, touts the Torrent as a designer crossover, diverging from the standard pitch for crossovers as a feature-focused SUV or family hauler. But it conforms to a brand effort the company launched this year to show off its '06 model vehicles for their sleek lines with ads set to hip music.

A spot breaking this week shows the halo-car Solstice, G6 coupe and Torrent in a highly stylized urban setting, with a Torrent rolling through a black landscape of buildings lit by clouds of electricity and multihued cinders.

Mark-Hans Richer, Pontiac marketing director, said Pontiac expects to get a lot of first-time SUV buyers "as well as some folks trading down because of fuel economy issues. We aren't going to sell it on functionality or utility. We will sell it on style and more of an urban character."

Analysts say Torrent faces too much competition. "The Pontiac brand image has deteriorated enough that it will be difficult to be convincing and credible to younger buyers," said Wes Brown of research firm Iceology, Los Angeles.

Tor Myhren, Leo Burnett's executive creative director, said the strategy is "high design you can afford. In the 21st century, whoever wins the battle of design will win the war."