The US government may have just mandated higher fuel-efficiency quotas for automakers, but you wouldn't know it from cruising the stands at this year's Detroit auto show.
New and redesigned cars and trucks were served up with a heavy dose of horsepower as automakers played the performance card in an effort to rev up the driving public's enthusiasm.
Chrysler's Dodge brand showed off a prototype Dodge Durango sport-utility with an "in-your-face" style and all the muscle of a legendary HEMI Magnum-powered engine, providing 345HP and "blistering acceleration."
The big shoulders are designed to make the redesigned 2004 Durango due out later this year stand out from the crowd -- and the SUV segment is definately a crowded one at last count.
Of course, since the typical SUV driver spends more time on the highway than the byway, the truck will likely also come with a new rear suspension with coil springs for a smoother ride.
The designers at Ford Motor Co showed off a prototype sporty sedan, the 427, complete with a long, low-slung hood styled after the automakers' blue oval sedans of the 1960s at the show's first press day.
GM took a slightly different riff on the same theme, offering up a family sedan-turned sports car in the form of a Chevrolet SS, in additional to an "aspirational," next generation Pontiac equipped with a V6 engine called the Pontiac G6.
The latest redesign of Toyota's Lexus RX 330 sport-ute also got a horsepower make-over and can now boast the fastest acceleration from Omph to 60mph of any truck in its class, Toyota executives said Sunday.
But the performance trend appears to be a largely domestic, Big Three phenonmenon, said Jeff Schuster, head of North American forecasting for JD Power and Associates.
"Automakers are looking to restore a fun-to-drive element that has been largely lacking in the market," he said.
Both Dodge and GM gave a nod in the direction of critics who might carp about fuel efficiency by promising an additional 10 percent fuel economy.
All of GM's concept vehicles were equipped with its displacement-on-demand or DOD technology which electronically shuts down cylinders that aren't being used, conserving fuel.
The technology, which offers the automaker an incremental way of improving fuel economy, will be incorporated in all GM products over the next three to four years, Lutz told reporters.
The move might go some way towards meeting the 1.5 percent increase in Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE standards) that the US government recently announced, said Lutz, but ultimately the driver for greater sales of more fuel efficient vehicles would be higher gas prices, he argued.
With gas prices averaging US$1.30 per gallon American consumers "are not conscious about fuel economy," said Bob Lutz, GM design chief.
"If this country wants to get serious about energy conservation ... the only way to do it is increase the price of fuel. And we're frankly all for that."
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