The Cozy Coupe is a red and yellow toy car manufactured and distributed by
Little Tikes, an American manufacturer of children's toys based in
Hudson, Ohio
Hudson is a city in Summit County, Ohio, United States. The population was 23,110 at the 2020 census. It is a suburban community in the Akron metropolitan statistical area and the larger Cleveland–Akron–Canton Combined Statistical Area, ...
.
Design
The car's design, described as "a cross between a
Volkswagen Beetle
The Volkswagen Beetle—officially the Volkswagen Type 1, informally in German (meaning "beetle"), in parts of the English-speaking world the Bug, and known by many other nicknames in other languages—is a two-door, rear-engine economy car, ...
and
Fred Flintstone's vehicle", was created by Jim Mariol of
Cincinnati
Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state lin ...
-based Design Alliance, who had worked as a designer at
Chrysler
Stellantis North America (officially FCA US and formerly Chrysler ()) is one of the " Big Three" automobile manufacturers in the United States, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan. It is the American subsidiary of the multinational automot ...
starting in 1952 and engineered by Shirish Patel, Little Tikes' Vice President of Engineering and Product Engineer John Fawcett.
Evolution
First sold in 1979 as one of the first molded-plastic toy cars sold in the United States, it was called the "world's best-selling car for much of this decade" by ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' in 1998, outselling the
Honda Accord and
Ford Taurus.
[ By 1991, the Cozy Coupe was selling 500,000 units per year, making it the top-selling model in the United States, outselling the 399,000 Accords and 299,000 Taurus vehicles sold that year. By 1997, its sales of 313,000 units in the US and another 100,000 sold in the United Kingdom in 1997, would have made it the fifth-best-selling car in the US among real vehicles.][
By 1998, Tom Murdough, the founder of Little Tikes who had left the company to start competitor Step 2, had pointed out that the Cozy Coupe's design was becoming dated, looking "somewhat like the VW Beetle in looks and design", reflecting what was "a great design for its time, but it also looks like it was designed in the '70s." Little Tikes had introduced a number of brand extensions in 1996, including a purple roadster that looks akin to a Plymouth Prowler, a blue minivan that looks akin to a Dodge Caravan, an SUV, two pickup models and the yellow and teal Grand Coupe. While overall sales for Little Tikes increased after the introduction of the new models, the Cozy Coupe lost its spot as the industry's top seller.]J. C. Penney
Penney OpCo LLC, doing business as JCPenney and often abbreviated JCP, is a midscale American department store chain operating 667 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. Departments inside JCPenney stores include Mens, Womens, Boys, Girl ...
had included the updated car in its catalog starting in August 1998, with sales since its introduction doubling the sales in the corresponding five months of 1997. Total 1998 sales were expected to exceed 250,000 units. In 2009 Rakesh Patel, the owner of the first Cozy Coupe ever made, donated the very first Cozy Coupe off of the assembly line from 1979 to the collection of the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum in celebration of the coupe's 30th anniversary.
References
{{Reflist
Products introduced in 1979
Toy cars and trucks