Winners And Losers at the Detroit Auto Show

San Jose Mercury News, Calif

Matt Nauman

January 8, 2004

DETROIT - Two iconic American cars with a combined 90 years of automotive history had magic moments just a few blocks and a few minutes apart this week.

The 2005 Ford Mustang and the 2005 Chevy Corvette were the stars at the North American International Auto Show, which opened with three days of news conferences, parties and gamesmanship.

At the elegant Detroit Opera House, just after whitefish appetizers and some stunning guitar solos, Chevrolet dramatically unveiled its sixth-generation Corvette. A fire-red coupe drove onto center stage after General Motors executives solemnly extolled the sports car's historical significance and technological advancements.

Inside the car sat GM's earnest Chairman Rick Wagoner and an unidentified blonde woman. (Wagoner got out. She didn't.) "Nothing compares to Corvette," he said. "There's a little bit of Corvette in everything we do at GM."

The event was carefully orchestrated, but nonetheless significant. The car, which gets more power, fixed headlights for the first time since 1962 and a slightly morphed body style, remains GM's flagship model in an age of huge SUVs and fancy luxury cars.

At about the same time, 350 Ford Motor execs and reporters were finishing portabello Wellington with Michigan spaghetti squash among other dishes. Then, as cavernous Cobo Arena darkened, a bit of videotape filled the screen. In it, a slot-car track took on a life of its own as various Mustang models passed a Corvette and eventually sent it careening into a billboard.

Stepping from a silver Mustang GT that drove on stage were Ford scion and Chairman Bill Ford and legendary racer and car-builder Carroll Shelby. After welcoming Shelby back to the Ford family, Bill Ford showed off the new Mustang, the new GT super car and a new Shelby Cobra concept with a 605-horsepower V-10.

It, too, was carefully orchestrated, and also was significant. The Mustang, despite Ford's global reach that now includes Mazda and Jaguar, remains everybody's all-American pony car.

Don't think for a minute that Ford and GM didn't know what each other was doing Sunday night. Like the car industry itself, the Detroit auto show is a high-stakes game of winners and losers.

This week, both Ford and GM, and especially their old stand-bys, the 'Stang and the 'Vette, were winners. They came in as the most anticipated new models, and came out as the most significant, if for no other reason than that their respective companies care so much about them.

Here then is my list of winner and losers at this year's Detroit show, America's most influential show, the place where automakers show their cards, uh, cars, that'll be seen this year and beyond.

Winners:

-OLD CARS. The Corvette, the Mustang, the GT and the Shelby Cobra all got modern interpretations that showed proper respect for the past. Chrysler showed off a rear-wheel-drive 300C sedan that evokes the big-engined, big-bodied Chrysler letter-series cars of the 1950s. Chevy's SSR roadster-pickup pays homage to past models, as does the new Pontiac GTO and the Chevy Nomad concept. Even Chrysler's PT Cruiser, which added a convertible model at this show, has its aura firmly planted in the past. Throw in the Mini Cooper and Ford's Bronco concept and you might get the idea that car executives are straining their necks as they look back to the past to create the future.

-TOYOTA'S SCION. On sale since summer only in California, Toyota's youth-targeted Scion brand goes nationwide in 2004. And it got a big push at the Detroit show. First off, Toyota revealed a third model, the slick tC sports coupe. It'll join the xA tiny wagon and the xB box-on-wheels.

In seven months, Scion sold 11,000 cars in California. Of those, according to Jim Farley, its president, 500 were registered in 40 states other than California.

"The buzz is arriving in advance of our cars," he said.

Three-quarters of those buyers are new to Toyota. Half are under 35. Nearly six out of 10 are men. Scion was created to bring in new, young, male buyers.

By 2005, Scion plans to sell 100,000 cars annually nationwide.

Like the xA and xB, the new tC that goes on sale in June, will be "well, well under $20,000," Farley said.

But the brand's crowning achievement might have been its spot atop the front page of the home-town Detroit News on Tuesday morning. In the land of the Big Three, that's considered a coup for a Japanese coupe.

-DESIGNERS. The Detroit show was a coming-out party for Ed Welburn, GM's new vice president of design. He helped introduce the new Corvette and the Pontiac Solstice roadster, and conducted countless interviews. "Everyone wants passion, cars to get excited about," he said. His goal, he said, is to make GM the industry's design leader.

Welburn's counterpoint at Ford, J Mays, was prominent, too. Under his leadership, Ford showed off such diverse models as the aggressive Shelby Cobra, the much-improved Volvo S40 sedan and hip, surprising concepts from Range Rover and Lincoln.

The work of other designers - GM's Bryan Nesbitt, DaimlerChrysler's Ralph Gilles and VW's Murat Gunak, who created the Pismo Beach-inspired Concept T dune buggy - all put their profession on center stage.

-SUVs. Much was made about Ford, GM and Chrysler getting serious about making cars that'll compete with Japanese models. They did show off models that seem destined to be more competitive, but don't believe that sport-utility vehicles aren't the industry's new bread-and-butter.

Several new SUVs were unveiled. The Mariner is Mercury's version of the next-generation Ford Escape. The redesigned Nissan Pathfinder borrows styling cues from its younger, bigger brother, the Pathfinder Armada full-size SUV. The Jeep Wrangler Unlimited is larger than the regular Wrangler, while the Lexus RX 400H gets Toyota's innovative gas-electric hybrid propulsion system.

Another half dozen SUV concepts, most noticeably the very cool Jeep Rescue, were exhibited.

And SUV sales continued unabated. Lincoln, which added the mid-size Aviator, sold twice as many SUVs in 2003 as in 2002. Toyota reported that its mid-size Highlander had its best sales year, while the (also) mid-size 4Runner had sales up 42 percent from 2002.

-Hybrids. Toyota's Prius won North American Car of the Year honors and early sales of this second-generation model have forced Toyota to build more. Toyota showed off its hybrid Lexus RX SUV, which goes on sale late in the year to be followed shortly by the Toyota Highlander hybrid SUV. Ford's hybrid-powered Escape SUV is finally ready and was available for test drives at the show. GM will start making parallel-hybrid versions of Silverado and Sierra big trucks in the spring.

Analyst Joe Phillippi expects the Lexus RX hybrid to get fuel mileage in the mid-30s. "That's impressive," he said.

Losers:

-Volkswagen. The company retained its title as the most popular European brand in the United States, but its sales fell 8.2 percent to 389,469 cars and trucks. 2003 saw the U.S. introduction of two models, the critically hailed Touareg sport-utility and the Phaeton luxury sedan, that were much more expensive than other VWs.

In Detroit, it showed off two concept cars, but otherwise announced small changes to its existing models. A new version of its Golf small car is on sale in Europe, but its no-show in Detroit makes it unlikely it'll arrive here as a 2004 model. VW, which also owns Audi and Bentley, has shifted its focus and risks losing its reputation as the affordable European choice.

-Isuzu. Barely relevant these days, Isuzu sold just 30,633 vehicles last year in a market of 16.7 million cars and trucks sold. How bad are things for Isuzu? They were the only automaker downstairs in massive Cobo Hall.

-Asian trucks. GM exec Bob Lutz expressed skepticism with the media's fascination with the coming wave of Asian trucks. Despite the well-done Nissan Titan - it was runner-up to the redesigned Ford F-150 for North American Truck of the Year - Lutz might have a point.

In Detroit, both Honda and Mitsubishi showed off truck concepts. Honda's was a sport utility truck, with the Japanese automaker proudly noting that it was out-of-step with the rest of the truck market. Mitsubishi was out of the ordinary, too.

And Toyota showed off a massive truck it called the FTX concept, but its over-the-top exterior and modern interior that had the look of Swedish furniture gave no clue (hopefully) to how the next-generation full-size Toyota pickup will look when it comes out of Toyota's next Texas truck plant in 2006.

Certainly the Big Three worry about the growing interest in truck from Asian automakers, but the specific models shown here by Honda, Mitsubishi and Toyota didn't exactly start anyone quaking with fear.

-Auto show-biz drama. In the old days, say, 1992 when the Detroit show was still in the early stages of earning its international reputation, it was full of surprises. Neither journalists nor rival car-company honchos knew what was coming. These days, most cars are shown early to writers, who agree not to publish what they know until the day of the show. Back then, introductions were splashier, too.

This year, the introductions were more restrained. Loud music and flashing lights, of course, but not flying cars or auto execs pretending to be Mr. Rogers. Well, there was Chrysler Group head Dieter Zetsche making a few moves at the end of a song-and-dance number with six black-clad female dancers to celebrate the arrival of folding seats in the company's minivans, but that hardly qualifies.

-Lincoln. Sales were up 6 percent in 2003, the first increase since 2000. And Lincoln did show off three concepts - a luxury truck, the Mark X roadster and a very slippery looking Aviator sport utility. Still, Lincoln remains years behind Cadillac, its American luxury rival, which decided to update its lineup and kick up its image several years back. As a result, Cadillac had its best year since 1990, selling 216,090 cars and trucks. Two new Cadillac models, the XLR roadster and the SRX sport-utility, were North American Car and Truck of the Year finalists. Lincoln sold about 159,000 vehicles.

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(c) 2004, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.). Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service