Ha! Good article. It sure is hypocritical to "greenwash" while adding more machismo horsepower to sit in traffic jams with.
The final comment by Walsh sums it up beautifully. And sadly.
Horsepower Vs green in Detroit
By: Dan Keegan
Date: Monday, 21. January 2008
To get a measure of how automakers are dealing with environmental concerns, Drivers.com tried a Google approach. We did two searches:
"Detroit auto show" "horsepower"and
"Detroit auto show" "green"Not a very methodical approach but the results had some interesting insights. There was lots of horsepower bragging at the show, and lots of green bragging too. But, while the horsepower search produced 157,000 hits, the green search produced close to a million. Obviously, green is in.
However, the difference in results can't be taken too seriously since just about all of the top hits mentioned 'green' issues in one way or another.
That looked significant, albeit vague. A look at the first 30 or so hits on either search put a bit more shape on things.
"Overriding theme of auto show? There isn't one," declared a headline on the MSNBC web site, somewhat petulantly. "A Power Trip With Green Detours" said a more accusing headline at NYTimes.com. Jack Nerad, executive market analyst for the Kelley Blue Book, agreed. "The overriding theme was that there was no theme," he said.
The China Post reckoned the show was "all over the map."
By all accounts, the 2008 Detroit show was a curious mix of new model presentations which ranged from the Saturn Vue, a gasoline-electric hybrid that can plug in to a household outlet, to the 620-horsepower Chevrolet Corvette ZRI.
"General Motors, will put aside its greener-than-green marketing campaign for a while to make the show's most over-the-top introduction - a 620-horsepower Corvette ZR1 - the fastest, most powerful and most expensive Chevrolet in history," wrote the New York Times' Jerry Garrett.
And, adds Garrett, "Lest showgoers fail to grasp G.M.'s message of horsepower hegemony, the company is also introducing a high-performance Cadillac, the CTS-V, offering 500-plus horsepower."
In other auto show news there's Henrik Fisker's Karma, a luxury Hybrid sportscar that Fisker, a former BMW and Aston Martin designer, hopes will sell for $80,000. It can travel up to 50 miles (80 km) on electric power alone and is capable of accelerating from 0 60 mph in 5.8 seconds and reach 125 mph. Then BMW is showing off two diesel models, the X5 and 335, which the automaker says are clean enough to be sold in all 50 states.
At the upper end of the market there's 'green' luxury and power, such as Ferrari's is F430 Spider Biofuel (developed "in recognition of growing interest in North America in alternative sources of energy") and a new Hummer with a V6 engine that runs on biofuel. At the lower end there's the Forde Verve, a small, European-style concept car expected in production in 2010,
In all the articles about the 2008 Detroit show reviewed for this article there was little mention of really economical cars such as the Mercedes-Benz Smart car or economy fuel-sippers on the lines of India's Nano.
In fact, the overwhelming impression of press coverage of the show is that Americans will not find it easy to get away from their ethos of power and style. May of the new models mentioned were larger vehicles that used new technology to make them a bit more economical - such as Toyota's Venza crossover luxury sedan-SUV, which has all the new technological toys and features a 3.5-liter V6 (268 horsepower at 6,200 rpm), the Cadillac CTS Coupe (a showstopper with a 3.6 liter, 304-horsepower V-6), and Kia's 2009 Borrego SUV (260 hp V6 or 368 hp V8).
The Borrego has been described by reviewers as a vehicle that has satisfied Kia's appetite to get into to the profitable (up to now) SUV market but "missed the crest of the wave."
Journalists have variously described the Detroit 2008 show as "a power trip with green detours" (New York Times's Jerry Garrett), "Dr Jekyl meets Mr Hyde" ( Lawrence Ulrich, New York Times), and a mix of "All about green and gas hog heaven" (Tom Walsh, Detroit Free Press).
Walsh probably sums up the show better than anyone. "It's a cover all bets gambit," he wrote in his Free Press article an January 14.
"How else to describe a show where the world's automotive giants are touting flex-fuels, biofuels, hybrids, hydrogen, ethanol, electric plug-ins, clean diesel and direct injection while simultaneously making the most noise about two giant pickup trucks, the Ford F-150 and the Dodge Ram 1500, that boast more horsepower and cowboy luxury than ever before?"
"The folks who run the auto companies know one more truism about American drivers," Walsh adds somewhat cynically. " As soon as gas drops back below $3 a gallon, we'll be wanting to park our fat American butts in nice comfy trucks and roomy sedans.�
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Janet,
