Mid model life cycle face lifts

These days it is very common to hear that a car company is face lifting a particular model mid way through the model life cycle. The usual model life cycle for Japanese model is about 5 years and for European models is 7 years. Usually mid way through the model life cycle approximate 3 years after the initial introduction of the model, the car will receive some sort of alteration.

The usual alterations are as follows:-
- cosmetic changes to the bumpers, head lights, tail lights
- tweaks in the ECU for more power (not all car companies do this)
- minor changes in the interior (maybe colour tone or upgrade in audio system)
- addition of Day Time Running LED lights (seems like everyone is copying Audi)
- change in wheel design
- upgrade of ECU program to eliminate earlier bugs
- alteration of traction control system (rarely happens)

The objective of having a mid model life cycle face lift is to freshen the look and remind the consumers that the car is now newer looking. The plan is to attract back the buyers to the showroom. Nearly all car companies just do cosmetic facelifts as this is much easier to do and it isn't expensive in terms of development cost.  Most car companies they have already planned their mid model life cycle when they launch the car, some will even have ready ECU program upgrades to increase performance just to make the face lifted model more exciting and interesting. Competition in the car market is very fierce and once the car model starts to look old and newer models are introduced by competitors, the car companies have to think ahead to capture back the sales.

A car is like any other product, it will start to look old or dated when something new is introduced. Keeping up with the competition is always a difficult task.

Peugeot 308 - first face lift

Peugeot 308 - second face lift

It is rare to see a car company face lift their car models twice but in the case of Peugeot, that just happened. Underneath the cosmetic changes the car model is still the same.

Another company that also did two face lifts during the model life cycle was Nissan (Tan chong in Malaysia) which did it for the old Nissan Sentra. This model was first introduced around year 2000 and has gone through more than 1 face lift. This same model is still current available for sale making it one of the longest running model on sale in Malaysia. The question why this model is still for sales after so many years is down to the distributor's aim to maximise their returns on assembly line capital investment. Doing multiple facelifts over a long production period could mean two things. 1. the model is very boring and old; 2. the  model is practically bug free since the model has been in production so long that any and every possible bug has been rectified.