ANDREW HAMILTON reports from Detroit
Downtown Detroit is a melancholy place with no people in the streets, probably heeding advice that walking isn't safe. Amazingly though, this same downtown Motown puts on a glitzy flamboyant automobile show every January which pulls in not just hundreds of thousands of Americans in love with cars, but motor executives and journalists from every continent.
For a couple of weeks when more often than not the temperatures are sub-zero, Detroit rises and shines and acknowledges its pivotal influence in making the US mobile.
Inside the massive Cobo exhibition centre it was warm and bright, and that in a sense reflected the mood. The good, or maybe bad, news is that American motorists aren't really downsizing, taking account of their worsening economic environment.
Nobody in Detriot was speculating about a possible doomsday scenario, arising from a war with Iraq. For now, the good times are still rolling: petrol, at about a third of Irish costs, may be a litle more expensive but it's still cheap and affordable. Habits of a lifetime are not about to change.
Cars are essentially the stuff of motion but Detroit 2003 gushed with emotion. It happened when Ford trotted out the lead stallion of its stable of 15 new production and concept vehicles, the highly evocative Mustang GT concept.
Ford's youthful chairman and chief executive, William Clay Ford junior, thought Mustang embodied "the spirit of youthful freedom" since its birth in the 1960s. "Now we are tying new designs to old memories."
Powered by a 400 bhp supercharged V8 six-litre engine, the two-seater Mustang GT is poised to lead Ford's recovery charge in its centenary. The engine is mated to either a six-speed manual in the coupe or five-speed automatic in the convertible.
With such a formidable power train the new Mustang will doubtless have a fondness for fuel. So too will Cadillac's Sixteen, a monstrous V16 ultra luxurious saloon that was presented as a 1,000 bhp concept car. The buzz question was if General Motors would build it. Vice-chairman Bob Lutz gave an apparently positive hint saying: "I think the car works, put it that way." Sixteen is being viewed as the American response to European luxurious steeds, that also made debuts at the show, cars like the Rolls-Royce Phantom and the Maybach. The Phantom will sell in the US at around $320,000, while the Maybach is $300,000 and in long wheelbase form $350,000.
Sixteen may not be a sweet proposition at the pumps. Even so, it should do nearly 20 mpg in highway driving, according to GM. Bizarre as it may seem, it comes with an array of fuel saving measures like cylinder deactivation.
More conspicuous is the opulent interior which includes hand-stitched leather seats, handwoven silk carpets and walnut burr veneer inlays. GM engineers say that the V16 is a showcase for technology that will go into future smaller engines.
It was American late night talk show host Jay Leno who did the Maybach roll out. He introduced the huge show audience to Wilhelm Maybach's granddaughter. It was Maybach who worked with Gottlieb Daimler to build the first internal combustion engine car and design the first Mercedes car in 1901. His fame hasn't made it to the US, however. Vox pop interviewers throught Maybach was anything from perfume to a washing machine.
There's a lot of marketing speak at shows like Detroit. At the launch of the Nissan Infiniti FX, the talk was of a guy called Steve who didn't appear. That's actually the name Nissan North American planners gave to the archetypal buyer of their new SUV.
Steve is 40ish, late baby boomer, a trendsetter and a risk-taker. He is a grab-a-coffee-on-the-go type, packing so much into his scheduled day that he rarely has time for indulgences such as driving for the sake of driving.
It probably sounds like a lot of psycho-demographic auto show babble but it shows how much the company researched the market for its latest effort.
Big cars with huge engines got an inordinate amount of attention but there were chinks of light or indications of ecological awareness. Another of Ford's concepts was the Model U, described as a 21st century expression of the Model T.
While the Model T was built to suit a largely agrarian world, the Model U is designed for an urban setting and fast-changing technology. The entire interior - from seats to instrumentation - rests in slots, ready for a quick-change "plug and play" response.
Ford's design boss J Mays had it as the most environmentally friendly car around, and not just in Detroit. "It has a canvas roof made from corn, seat foam made from soya beans, and a hydrogen-fuelled engine under the bonnet."
Maybe a better option for thinking, caring Americans is diesel. That's certainly the view of Volkswagen world chairman Bernd Pischetsrieder. "Diesel has big potential in the US. Hybrids are expensive and not totally efficient. You can get more out of diesel technology."
When gasoline prices rose to nearly $2 a gallon in 2001, the percentage of VW buyers opting for a diesel jumped to 20 per cent, then dropped back down to 8 per cent after gasoline prices declined. American motorists are nothing if not fickle.
THEY have shown other worrying trends, especially for their indigenous manufacturers who are GM, Ford and Chrysler, otherwise the Big Three. For 30 and more years, the Big Three thought they had clearly identified the road ahead.
They followed the baby boomers, the biggest and richest generation of new vehicle buyers in automotive history. It was a matter of giving them muscle cars in their youth, minivans or MPVs to carry their kids and luxury-drenched sport utilities or MPVs to cushion the middle years.
Now the Big Three's share is falling away to Japanese and European importers. The Detroit News thinks they just aren't taking account of demographic changes. There's a rising tide of Asian and Hispanic immigrants entering the marketplace while the size of the average American household continues to shrink and single women command more buying power than ever. Americans are greying at a rapid pace too, demanding cars and other vehicles that accommodate delicate backs and arthritic hands.
The award for the most politically incorrect vehicle at the show had to go to the Hummer H2. The military-style monster, made famous in the Gulf War, gives eight to 10 miles per gallon.
This somewhat irresponsible attitude hasn't gone unnoticed and now the Hummer, one of the worst gas-guzzlers on American highways, is in the firing line of anti-SUV groups, including evangelical Christians who ask "What would Jesus drive?"
The protesters are, maybe, crying in the wilderness. Americans continue to buy SUVs at record levels with sales up 7 per cent last year and 42 per cent over the past five years. GM sold nearly 19,000 H2s last year and with prices starting at $50,000 and near six figures when all the custom features are added, its executives are humming a happy tune. Detroit 2003 was one of the last spectacular pyrotechnical shows of the internal combustion engine but whether it and the American nation are getting in tune for the new order, is highly debatable.