Horsepower vs. Hybrids

International auto shows often are a study in contrast.

With the possible exception of the biannual Tokyo Motor Show — where Japan's auto makers sometimes demonstrate the nation's famous team-oriented philosophy by banding together to broadly ascribe to some arbitrary “theme” — auto makers usually attend the big auto shows meaning to promote their own distinct agendas.

At no time in recent memory has the bizarre job of promoting what customers want, while simultaneously espousing what customers need, been more apparent than at last month's 2003 North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

No sooner had an auto maker displayed its current interpretation of outlandish horsepower than 10 minutes later, a different unveiling focused on the latest save-the-world hybrid-electric vehicle technology. Later, the process might be reversed. More than one auto maker hyped both sides of this curious coin: Bad-boy horsepower king at an off-site Sunday powwow, environmentally aware, concerned corporate citizen at a Monday press conference.

Journalists stood, mouths agape, as General Motors Corp., at Detroit's glam Opera House, pulled the sheet from the gloriously audacious Cadillac Sixteen, a concept car so grand in scale it paled DaimlerChrysler AG's still-to-be-launched Maybach limousine, until now the crown prince of the auto industry's current fascination with wretched excess.

The same scribes who whooped and jostled like soccer hooligans when GM Powertrain vice president Tom Stephens unveiled the Sixteen's 1,000-hp, 13.6L V-16 engine, clapped politely the next afternoon when Stephens outlined GM's wide-ranging plan to put as many as a million vehicles with some degree of HEV technology on the road by 2007.

GM's hybrid announcement came less than 24 hours after it showed a corral of Chevy, Pontiac and Buick concept vehicles; three of the four made a minimum of 400 hp. There was the curvy, Ferrari-esque Chevy SS sedan (6L V-8, 430 hp); the Buick Centieme crossover (twin-turbo 3.6L V-6, 400 hp); the Pontiac G6, precursor, let's hope, of the all-new Grand Am (supercharged 3.5L V-6, 285 hp) and the Chevy Cheyenne independent rear suspension pickup (supercharged 6L V-8, 500 hp). How's that for mixed messages?

Few makers seemed immune to this powerplant bi-polarism. Ford Motor Co. trotted out its next-generation Mustang: vaguely retro, slightly pudgy, but nonetheless sporting its own 400-hp supercharged 4.6L V-8. And there was the 427 concept sedan, a rear-drive “family” car with nothing less than a 7L (427 cu.-in., get it?) V-10 making 590 hp. Not as imposing as Cadillac's Sixteen concept, the 427's message was the same: “big engines rule.”

Ford's “good cop” to offset the 427 was the odd Model U concept, a “Model T for the 21st century.”

The Model U, made with many natural materials, is propelled by the world's first supercharged, intercooled, hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine. Based on Ford's global I-4 architecture, the 2.3L engine — which gets the equivalent of 45 mpg (5L/100 km) and produces near-zero carbon dioxide emissions — is augmented by Ford's latest take on hybridization, the Modular Hybrid Transmission System (MHTS), where a high-voltage electric motor replaces the torque converter found in a conventional transmission. A pair of hydraulic clutches allows the motor to operate independently, or in tandem with the hydrogen ICE.

On to the eclectic collection at the other hometown display, that of DaimlerChrysler AG. Here, after DC officials made a passing reference to the plan to offer in the U.S. a Mercedes-made turbodiesel to increase fuel economy of the gas-slurping Jeep Liberty, they spoke breathlessly of imminent applications for the all-new 5.7L Hemi V-8, most prominently displayed in the brash but nicely detailed Durango Hemi RT concept (345 hp).

Also showcasing the Hemi engine was the station-wagon-meets-NASCAR Mag-num SRT-8 concept, a solid preview of DC's next-gen rear-drive large-car platform that borrows liberally from Mercedes. Not satisfied with that display of muscle, DC Chief Operating Officer (and briefly, boss of Mercedes' AMG in-house high-performance tuning unit) Wolfgang Bernhard rolled out straddling the outrageous Dodge Tomahawk, a 4-wheeled motorcycle powered by the 500-hp, 8.3L all-aluminum V-10 of Viper fame.

Chrysler Group not only is studying the feasibility of limited production (how's $250,000 sound?) of the Tomahawk concept, but it has a debut date in mind: the Woodward Dream Cruise held in Detroit at summer's end.

After all the horsepower/hybrid doubletalk, there was a deluge of other interesting products and concepts at the Detroit show: