Henry Payne

The 2020 Hyundai Palisade cuts a noble figure at Stratford Hall in Virginia. (Photo: Henry Payne, The Detroit News)

The year’s most anticipated bargain is the 2020 Corvette C8, a $60,000 mid-engine supercar offering the same performance thrills of European sports cars costing four times as much.

But on a more utilitarian front, the three-row Korean twins — the Hyundai Palisade and Kia Telluride — are just as remarkable.

Introduced, respectively, at the 2018 Los Angeles and 2019 Detroit auto shows, the Palisade and Telluride wowed with good looks and high-tech interiors. But as these vehicles have come to market, the automotive world is realizing they offer game-changing value.

Both feature luxury styling, that — when paired with their standard content — should make anyone question why they are paying tens of thousands more for a three-row luxury sport-utility.

“What’s the most impressive three-row SUV you have driven this year?” a group of successful female entrepreneurs asked me at a social gathering this summer.

“The Hyundai Palisade or Kia Telluride,” I responded.

They were horrified, having expected the answer to be a Range Rover or Volvo XC90 or Audi Q7 — vehicles they aspired to as successful business people.

“Not a Kia. And how dare they use the name ‘Telluride’?” scoffed one.

I get it. Brand matters.

I tested a Kia Telluride earlier this year, so let me catch you up on the Hyundai Palisade first. I’ve put a lot of miles on it in Metro Detroit and on a long-distance trip through Virginia.

I parked it at an Oakland County shopping center next to a Cadillac XT5 SUV. Both Koreans have cribbed heavily from Cadillac’s vertical design style. Except for its badge, the Palisade looks like a luxury ride. It has gorgeous LED headlight piping. More taillight LED piping out back. Chrome-lined grille. Big, beautiful, 20-inch wheels. P-A-L-I-S-A-D-E spelled out across the tailgate.

How much would you pay for this? In a Toyota Highlander, the Limited Platinum trim will cost you $47,000. The Ford Explorer Limited costs $50,000. The loaded Hyundai Palisade SEL only asks $43,155 of your wallet.

Out of the instrument panel a pane of glass extends across the Palisade’s dash, enveloping the infotainment touchscreen like — well, a Mercedes. On the touchscreen, I tap Talk Mode. A speaker allows conversation with third-row urchins back there. Clever.

The huge center console under the touchscreen houses redundant control buttons and a fancy, electronic button-shifter fashionable these days on everything from Corvettes to Hondas. You get used to it — and it opens acres of space (more on that later).

That’s right. For $43,000.

In back of the front leather thrones of the Hyundai Palisade are two more rows of leather-wrapped luxury. Access to the third row is as simple as pressing a button on top of the second-row seat, and — VROOOOMP! — the seat slides forward (another page from the Pilot’s book).

The best buys in class, the Korean twins’ closest competition is one another.

The Kia Telluride’s tidy Cadillac-meets-Range Rover exterior design gives it a leg up on its Hyundai sibling. It consistently turns my head on road — a tribute to a Kia design team that has been hitting home runs from the wee Sportage ute to the sexy Stinger muscle car.

To compare the two, I stepped up to the fully tricked-out $47,605 Hyundai Palisade Limited and $48,100 Kia Telluride SX (comparable competitors were well over $50,000) and drove them for a week.

The Palisade Limited gains a luxe-like 12.3-inch digital instrument display (the Telluride SX sticks to analog gauges). Both Koreans get neat tricks like head-up displays and cameras under the mirrors to give drivers one more look at their blind spots (in addition to mirror-based blind-spot monitoring) before changing lanes. The Palisade’s bigger digital panel allows for even better viewing with this feature.

Interior technology like voice commands are premium-class good. The Palisade’s console is beautifully thought out, rivaling a Ram 1500 pickup for space and convenience. The Telluride’s upright shifter matches Kia’s sporty image, but the Palisade’s button-shifter opens up lots more storage space like that sliding console drawer.

Waiting in a three-hour Virginia traffic delay (caused by an 18-wheeler accident on a two-lane bridge), I made the Palisade my office. I plugged my laptop into the 12-volt rear console plug and charged my phone in a USB port. I munched on a box of Chick-fil-A nuggets in the console drawer next to two cups.

The Koreans both use a 3.8-liter, 291-horse V-6, which is just right for this three-row class: excellent low-end torque mated to a smooth shifting, 8-speed box.

If you have a need for speed in this class, then the raucous 400-horse, $59,000 Ford Explorer ST is unique. But the bargain Palisade or Telluride look like premium utes from a class above — for $30,000 less.

That’s $30,000 can put toward your bargain Corvette C8.

2020 Hyundai Palisade

Vehicle type: Front-engine, front- or all-wheel drive, seven-passenger SUV

Price: Base price $32,595, including $1,045 destination charge ($43,155 SEL and $47,505 Limited as tested)

Powerplant: 3.8-liter V-6

Power: 291 horsepower, 262 pound-feet of torque

Transmission: 8-speed dual-clutch automatic

Performance: 0-60 mph, 6.8 seconds (Car and Driver); tow capacity, 5,000 pounds

Weight: 4,387 pounds

Fuel economy: EPA mpg, 19 city/24 highway/21 combined

Report card

Highs: Luxurious interior, versatile console

Lows: Polarizing face; trigger shifter has learning curve

Overall: 4 stars

2020 Kia Telluride

Vehicle type: Front-engine, front- or all-wheel drive, seven-passenger SUV

Price: Base price $32,735, including $1,045 destination charge ($48,100 SX as tested)

Powerplant: 3.8-liter V-6

Power: 291 horsepower, 262 pound-feet of torque

Transmission: 8-speed dual-clutch automatic

Performance: 0-60 mph, 7.0 seconds (Car and Driver); tow capacity, 5,000 pounds

Weight: 4,255 pounds

Fuel economy: EPA mpg, 19 city/24 highway/21 combined

Report card

Highs: Knockout exterior, three-row ease of use

Lows: Less versatile console and a few dollars more than the Palisade

Overall: 4 stars

Ann Arbor – The book on the Chevy Corvette has long been that it’s the poor man’s supercar. Accept compromises in handling and interior comfort and you can afford a Ferrari-like performance machine for under $100,000.

Throw out the book.

I have driven the all-new, 2020, mid-engine Corvette C8 for the first time, and it is a supercar without compromise. These are early days as the C8 comes to market, but the C8 holds the promise of a supercar paradigm shift: affordable, Porsche Cayman-like handling with the raw power of exotics costing four times as much.

The world’s elite auto car makers should be very afraid.

I will be able to give more detailed critique early next year after a more extensive on- road/on-track test, but on first impression at the North American Car of the Year jury test over twisty Ann Arbor roads and Interstate 94, the car is fundamentally sound from the inside out.

“This is a Cayman with cargo room,” I told chief engineer Ed Piatek a couple of days later in Road Atlanta where Chevy introduced the C8.R race car model.

Since we first learned of a mid-engine Corvette in the works, expectations soared. Could it marry the brute force of a small-block Chevy V-8 with the nimbleness of a Cayman? Could Chevy render a pleasing, mid-engine design? Would there be any money left for a livable interior? Yes, yes, and yes.

Start with the handling. I have raced mid-engine, Porsche and Lola sports cars all my adult life. From Le Mans prototypes to Indy Car, the world’s fastest cars are mid-engine. It’s why Corvette’s Pratt & Miller race team has craved a mid-engine vessel to go up against the likes of Ferrari and Porsche that also locate the engine aft of driver.

Let Corvette race driver Tommy Milner explain. “The driver is more centrally located in the car, so we get immediate feedback from understeer or oversteer,” he said in introducing the race car version in Road Atlanta last weekend. “The car rotates around the driver.”

I felt it on the first tight, 90-degree corner on Washtenaw County’s Huron River Road. With the engine behind me, the lighter front end instantly rotated to the corner apex — the rear following like the tail of a dart.

Walking around a naked, cutaway chassis of the C8 at Road Atlanta, chassis engineer Ed Moss explained that the precise handling is much more than just putting the 6.2-liter V-8 behind the driver. Like the C7, the C8 is built around a stiff central spine to allow for easier driver egress (carbon-fiber tub cars like Lambos use tall, wide side sills for stiffness, but are a nightmare to crawl over). But unlike C7, C8 uses 20 — count ‘em, 20 — aluminum castings to complement that spine where C7 had but 4.

For the first time, the mid-engine car uses coil-over springs and shocks for state-of-the-art suspension like European supercars (previous-gen Corvettes used cost-saving, composite “leaf” springs).

Supercar tech, Corvette price. The 3,600-pound Corvette will never be as maneuverable as the lighter, 3,100-pound Cayman. But, then, the C8 has Lambo-like power that the wee Porsche can only dream of.

And it puts it down effortlessly. I experienced auto launch control in a Cayman three years ago. Bury the left brake foot. Bury the right throttle foot. Let revs stabilize at 3500 RPM. Release brake.

FOOM! Cayman shot forward like a rocket. Just like a McLaren 720S. Just like a Lamborghini Huracán. Just like the Corvette C8.

I did multiple launch control starts in the new ‘Vette (starts at $64,995 with Z51 performance package) on unpopulated Michigan country roads. Stable. Blindingly fast. Motor Trend clocked the C8 at a staggering 2.8 seconds — the same as the $288,000, 710-horse McLaren 720S I tested last year .

Credit the engine weight over the rear wheels providing inherently better traction. And a Porsche-like, dual-clutch auto transmission.

Try that in a front engine C7 and hold on for dear life. With the engine in front, the rear tires hunt for traction, squirming nervously.

“It’s having less weight on the front axle, sitting closer to the front axle and having all the weight on the rear. It helps you with standing starts, helps you coming out of a corner,” said Corvette program chief Tadge Juechter when I first saw the car at the Warren design dome in July.

Motorheads like me can babble on about C8 handling dynamics until sundown, but the interior is the real revelation. The Corvette is nicer inside than a $300k Lambo or a McLaren. The standard car is roomy, techy, and coated in leather.

I’m a big fella’ at 6’5” and was sedan comfortable. Curiously, for a big sports car meant for long-distance driving as well as track days, the C8 lacks adaptive cruise control.

Otherwise, the driver-centric cockpit is state-of the-art — an amalgam of the best supercars in the world. The digital dash reminds of McLaren with its configurable drive modes (I like Track Mode and its racing tachometer). A Formula One-like square steering wheel allows unobstructed instrument visibility. The console — “beach-front real estate” as engineer Piatek likes to call it —  is a masterpiece of space management. Chevy’s excellent touchscreen infotainment is within easy reach.

Then Corvette pairs an efficient, Acura-like “trigger” shifter with the Drive Mode dial for easy operation. Corvette faithful may struggle to learn the trigger at first (I use a three-finger approach), but once mastered it’s intuitive.

Only a central sleeve of buttons interrupts this digital vibe. The concept is taken straight out of the last-gen Porsche 911 and allows for easy climate control.

Corvette designer Kirk Bennion and his team have wrapped this technical tour de force in a mid-engine shell that is nicely portioned  — and looks wicked on the road.

Details have been sweated over right down to the, er, smell. Climb into the ol’ C7 and you got a nostril-full of the polymers used to make the dash and interior inserts. It smelled like a poor man’s supercar. For the C8, the engineers “pre-baked” the materials to eliminate odors.

I got an hour in the C8 this time. Stay tuned for much more. Corvette is just getting started.

2020 Chevrolet Corvette C8

Vehicle type: Mid-engine, rear-wheel drive, two-passenger sports car

Price: Base price $59,995 including $1095 destination charge ($88,895 with Z51 package as tested)

Powerplant: 6.2-liter V-8

Power: 495 horsepower, 470 pound-feet of torque (with $5000 Z51 performance package)

Transmission: 8-speed, dual-clutch automatic

Performance: 0-60 mph, 2.8 seconds (Motor Trend); top speed, 194 mph

Weight: 3,600 (est.)

Fuel economy: NA

Report card

Highs: Good interior ergonomics; intuitive handling

Lows: No adaptive cruise control; Trigger transmission takes getting used to

Overall: 4 stars (out of 4)

Since it hit the showrooms, the sixth-generation Mustang has topped the Camaro everywhere but on the track. Media comparisons have consistently given the Chevy the handling nod. Ford got so sick of hearing about its rival’s track superiority that it went and made a Corvette-inspired Terminator.

The 2020 Ford Shelby Mustang GT500 is a front-engine Corvette in drag.

It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen from the Blue Oval’s pony car stable. Forget the GT500s of old — they were crude, solid rear-axle, straight-line hammers. This Mustang is more supercar than muscle car. Nostalgic for the front-engine Corvette now that the mid-engine weapon has dawned? Take a look at the GT500. Like the supreme 755-horse Stingray ZR1, the GT500 supercharges its V-8 to a mind-blowing 760 horsepower.

For road-sucking downforce, it’s available with a ZR1-like track package that includes a huge carbon-fiber rear wing and front splitter and wicker. It has Recaro seats, magnetic shocks, launch control, electronic rear-differential and a quiet mode for long road trips. Tires? Fat Michelin Pilot Sport 4S or near-slick Pilot Cup 2 that stick like glue. Heck, the GT500 even reached into the mid-engine C8’s toolbox and mated its supercharged tornado to a lightning-fast, dual-clutch seven-speed transmission from Tremec.

The 650-horse Camaro ZL1 and winged ZL1 1LE is Camaro’s top-of-the-line. The GT500 is its match, plus 100 horsepower.

The Mustang is a relentless, apex-carving cyborg on track. Despite its heavy V-8 up front, it defied the law of physics (or more precisely, mastered them) around Las Vegas Motor Speedway’s 2.4-mile Outfield Road Course. Thundering through the tricky high-speed “bus-stop chicane,” I overcooked the entry and braced to bounce over the next apex curb. Nope.

A quick flick of the steering wheel, and the GT500 stayed on course. It’s a 4,000-pound rhino in tennis shoes.

“That’s the 550 pound-feet of downforce working,” Ford racing driver Billy Johnson told me later. Johnson — who knows a thing or two about supercars, having piloted the mid-engine GT at Le Mans the last four years — was deeply involved with GT500 development long before it debuted at this year’s Detroit auto show.

This is a muscle car with degrees in aerodynamics, materials and mechanical engineering. If Tony Stark hadn’t invented Iron Man, he would have flown around in a GT500.

Thundering around corners through Red Rock Canyon Park in my Twister Orange tester, I could see the necks of road-side tourists already turned in my direction — What in Moses is THAT? I didn’t keep my foot in it for long for fear of attracting every cop in the southwest.

If you want to have fun on public roads, ignore the GT500 and buy the nimble, turbo-4-powered Mustang High Performance Pack I reviewed last month. Its 332 horses are plenty for the street. Affordably aimed at the Camaro V-6, it’s entry-level performance for the enthusiast.

Not that anyone with $71,395 in the bank account will listen to me.

The GT500 will be coveted by the Woodward cruiser crowd. It has serious road presence. Its huge front jaws can swallow Toyota Priuses whole. The fascia is a sci-fi work of art; even the headlights remind  one of Hollywood’s Terminator. Heat exchangers stuff every crevice to feed the nuclear reactor inside. The GT500 eschews adaptive cruise-control because there’s simply no room in the grille for radar.

Option the GT500 with signature Shelby stripes (white or black) for added effect. The standard version comes with eight-way leather seats, digital instrument display with configurable drive modes, lap timer, lowered stance and multiple exhaust modes.

But so does the GT500’s little brother Shelby GT350. Indeed, the 526-horse GT350 was designed by Ford Performance chief troublemaker Carl Widmann and his merry band of engineers as the driver’s car of the pair. The GT350 is more raw, more viscerally engaging.

Available in manual only, you can row the GT350’s normally aspirated, flat-plane crank (just like a Ferrari!) V-8 to a goosebump-inducing 8,250 rpms. Downshift into turns and it’ll produce more tailpipe flatulence than Shrek. If you want to swagger around town and shred the occasional rural road, buy the GT350 for $10,000 less.

But if you want to know what a front-engine muscle car is capable of on track, the GT500 is your weapon.

Howling down Las Vegas Speedway’s front straightaway — the dual-clutch tranny firing off millisecond shifts — I thought the Shelby might join the F-16s taking off from nearby Nellis Air Force Base in flight.

But stomp on the Brobdingnagian Brembo brakes — with red calipers the size of Thanos’ Infinity Gauntlet gripping massive 16.5-inch rotors — and the striped rocket is brought immediately back to Earth. Brake fade was non-existent.

Then this otherworldly cyborg really showed off its skills.

The Tremec downshifted rapidly — WHAP! WHAP! — as I rotated into the corner with trail-brake oversteer. A manual GT350 can’t pull this off with nearly the precision.

Unleashed again, the V-8 roared, the landscape rushing by at warp speed. It doesn’t make the same high-rev music as the GT350, but it’s still a glorious sound. I never turned on the radio in a day of driving. We spent the afternoon doing 11-second quarter-mile launch-control hole shots down Vegas’ dragstrip.

It doesn’t come cheap. Equipped with the $18,500 track package, racing stripes and bolstered Recaros to keep you upright under high G-loads, my tester cost an eye-watering $94,385.

The Ford Mustang shoulders a lot of responsibility these days. It must not only beat the Camaro and Challenger in the muscle car race, it must also carry the Blue Oval’s electric car aspirations with a Tesla-fighting Mach E performance ute coming next year.

Being top dog in the former assists with the latter. Thus the 2020 GT500, the best Mustang ever.

20202 Ford Mustang GT500

Vehicle type: Front-engine, rear-wheel drive, four-passenger sports coupe

Price: Base price $71,395, including $1,095 destination charge ($94,385 as tested)

Powerplant: 5.2-liter, supercharged V-8

Power: 760 horsepower, 625 pound-feet of torque

Transmission: 7-speed dual-clutch automatic

Performance: 0-60 mph, 3.3 seconds (mfr.); top speed, 180 mph (governed)

Weight: 4,171 pounds (about 4,080 with carbon-fiber track package)

Fuel economy: EPA mpg, 12 city/18 highway/14 combined

Report card

Highs: Intimidating styling; track hero

Lows: Will land you in jail if driven hard on public roads; gets pricey

Overall: 4 stars

Waiting at the Pittsburgh airport arrivals curb to pick up my son for a race weekend at Pittsburgh International Raceway, I was approached by one of the fiercest cops I have ever seen. Built like Mt. Rushmore and just as tall, he bristled with more weaponry than an Army battalion. Double-barrel shotgun, twin hip holsters, a billy stick.

Good lord, what had I done?

“Is that the new Corolla?” he thrilled like a kid on Christmas morning, ogling the 2019 Toyota hatchback tester I had driven from Detroit. Phew, he just wanted to talk cars.

Yes, yes. I know what you’re thinking. He wanted to talk about Corollas? But Toyota’s seventh generation is not your typical Corolla appliance.

Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda has let it be known that he wants his Toyota and Lexus brands to have more curb appeal, and nothing is immune — not even his entry-level egg beater. For decades Corolla has been a perennial best-seller in the class thanks to its bulletproof value equation. Pick up a Corolla in the appliance aisle and it will run forever — as reliable as a collie and never asking anything in return save the occasional fill-up at the pump. Corolla’s reliability has won over generations of buyers.

But it has never made anyone’s heart beat faster. Until now.

The Corolla was the dog of the stable. Homely, with uninspired styling inside and out, it was the acknowledged value leader — but that didn’t mean you wanted to drive it.

With the new Corolla, Toyota is rewarding its generations of loyal subjects with a snazzy hatchback XSE they can finally enjoy for driving as much as it’ll save them in the wallet. My new cop friend was not the only admirer on my Pennsylvania round trip. More than a couple cars shadowed me on the Ohio Turnpike.

At the race track, a longtime Corolla owner strolled by. “Can I sit in it?” he asked.

Begin with the racy grille anchored by the Toyota logo. The lights sweep toward the fenders like winglets, while the whale-like grille below could swallow an ocean of krill. The lines roll backward across a raked windshield to an aggressively sloped rear window that gives Corolla the appearance of speed even when it is standing still. The look is capped off by a dramatic roof aerofoil.

My test package was wrapped in a dramatic “Blue Flame” wardrobe that reminded me of the BMW Z4 toy I recently tested — or the Skittle row of bright blue, green, yellow and red Dodge Challengers you’ll see lined up at the Dream Cruise. Yes, this new Corolla wants to be noticed.

Riding shotgun, Mrs. Payne instantly configured Apple CarPlay for crisp directions on our multi-state journey. The rest of the console is less clever — storage space, for example, is awkwardly shoved deep under the console buttons — but this is also the result of dramatic lines that envelope the stick shift.

Stick shift, Payne?

Yes, the new Corolla hatch even courts the few, the proud motorheads who want to row the box — my speed-addled, 20-something sons included — the target demo of this $25K value pack. The six-speed tranny even offers adaptive cruise control — rare in a stick.

Throw the Corolla into a cloverleaf and its stiff, new Global Architecture (which also undergirds the much-improved Camry) begs for more throttle. You want more, and that is where the 168-horse Corolla comes up short.

For while the 2019 Corolla is the best ever, it must compete in a ferociously competitive class that has not stood still while Toyota baked its tasty new muffin.

There are hatchbacks galore in this segment, and they are all nice bargains with a little more character than the Corolla. There’s Corolla’s chief rival, the Honda Civic, which loads the segment with more model flavors than Baskin-Robbins. There’s the Sport hatch (in manual, natch), and the Si coupe, and for the really ambitious, the brawling Type R.

And then there are my class favorites, the athletic Mazda 3 hatchback and VW Golf.

Their neat, conservative stylings are attractive and timeless. And they will run circles around the Corolla. The Mazda boasts 18 more horsepower from its 2.5-liter four, while the Golf’s turbo 1.4-liter pumps out a stump-pulling 184 pound-feet of torque.

With a used market full of 228 horsepower Golf GTIs, my sons figured they would go that route for a new Corolla price, but with much more room and raciness to show for it.

That said, it’s good to see Corolla in the game. For the first time in memory, Corolla is a car that turns heads. Makes the heart beat faster. Begs to be driven.

Just ask the smiling cop approaching you at the airport.

2019 Toyota Corolla Hatchback

Vehicle type: Front-engine, front-wheel drive, five-passenger compact hatchback

Price: Base price $21,220, including $930 destination charge ($25,686 XSE as tested)

Powerplant: 2.0nlin-liter ie-4 cylinder

Power: 168 horsepower, 151 pound-feet of torque

Transmission: 6-speed manual

Performance: 0-60 mph, 8.2 seconds (Motor Trend); top speed, 114 mph

Weight: 3,000 pounds (est.)

Fuel economy: EPA mpg, 32 city/42 highway/36 combined

Report card

Highs: Modern interior; fun to drive

Lows: Engine lacks kick; cramped rear cargo

Overall: 3 stars

Louisville, Ky. — Tightening federal fuel economy regulations are forcing difficult choices on automakers as they try to balance the conflicting desires of customers and government agencies.

Consider the 2020 Ford Escape made here in Kentucky. The compact SUV is perhaps the most important vehicle in the Blue Oval’s lineup outside its best-selling F-150 pickup. Aimed at the most popular, non-truck segment in the industry, the comely new Escape shoulders a heavy load for the Dearborn-based brand.

It must not only compete against mega-selling Japanese competitors while trying to retain sedan customers as Ford ditches its car lines. It also must navigate a thicket of fuel economy rules by introducing an expensive, battery-powered hybrid drivetrain strategy.

“Absolutely, each year the regulations get tougher,” says Ford SUV marketing director Craig Patterson. “They become more difficult to meet starting in 2010. This is a 2020 — so the Escape has been four or five years in the making to meet the regs.”

Ford is not alone. Its chief Japanese competitors are using a similar strategy to meet regulations with hybrid SUVs made in the USA. Toyota has long been synonymous with hybrids, but with its 2019 RAV-4 it is aggressively marketing hybrids across its best-selling compact ute line. Indeed the hybrid, assembled in Kentucky, is about 15% of RAV4 sales this year and has often outsold the brand’s iconic Prius hybrid.

U.S. regulations, controversially imposed by the Obama EPA a decade ago while Detroit automakers were begging for government bailouts, demand that each class of vehicle meet rising mpg numbers depending on their physical footprint. The smaller the car, the tougher the standards.

“This is one of the reasons that Ford’s bond rating got downgraded to junk,” says long-time Wall Street auto analyst Joe Phillippi of Auto Trends Consulting. “You take these business challenges to the ratings agencies and they will not be happy.”

Ford abandoned its first-generation Escape Hybrid in 2012 due to slow sales. Introduced in 2005, the hybrid was encouraged by then-CEO Bill Ford Jr., a passionate environmentalist who remains executive chairman of the Blue Oval, as well as government incentives that paid customers to buy gas-electric hybrids.

“That vehicle was a bit of a science project for us,” smiles Patterson.

But with mpg regs tightening, the hybrid is back for 2020. Once a niche product, this go-round Ford needs the hybrid to sell in volume to satisfy EPA edicts that require its fleet average 54.5 mpg by 2025.

So it has introduced a hybrid powertrain not in a highly equipped green machine with a $10,000 premium over the base model as with the 2005-12 model, but as the mainstay, $28,290 SE drivetrain in the Escape lineup with a premium just two grand over the $26,080 S base model. The ute doesn’t even get a Hybrid trim name — instead adopting Ford’s popular “Sport” badge.

“If there were no regulations, the hybrid would probably not be the solution for the Sport model,” says Patterson. “We’d be looking for other solutions that are more efficient to deliver that sporty feel. It’s the regulatory environment that pushes you to do things that consumers don’t want — or don’t want initially.”

Patterson says that, unlike previous Ford hybrids like the first Escape and recent Fusion, the 2020 Escape hybrid has been designed from the ground up to carry a battery — meaning interior space isn’t compromised by a battery pack.

With the same interior space as the gas version, a healthy, 198 horsepower, and a big bump in fuel efficiency (media here saw a healthy 35 mpg fuel economy), Patterson says the hybrid model will appeal to more than just tree-huggers.

He expects the hybrid drivetrain — which will also be available, standard, on the up-trim Titanium model — to garner a whopping one-third of customers. Sales and regulatory problem solved? Maybe.

Analyst Philippi says the Japanese makers are more established in the market as hybrid sellers — and boast the segment’s best transaction costs, a critical advantage when stuffing a car with more expensive battery tech.

“We’ll likely see a barrage of low monthly lease rates in order to sell the hybrids,” predicts Phillippi. “You’ve got to be able to get the customers out the door to hit your regulatory numbers.”

Further complicating Ford’s push to match the Japanese makers’ segment-leading, 400,000 sales numbers (the last Escape sold 272,228 units in 2018) is the brand’s withdrawal from the entry-level, compact and subcompact sedan segments once occupied by sub-$20,000 Focus and Fiesta models (Ford offers an entry-level, subcompact, $21,000 EcoSport SUV).

Those segments typically pull in first-time buyers — buyers who then, assuming a good ownership experience, choose a more expensive car like the Escape or mid-size Explorer SUV as they gain income/family members. Toyota and Honda have been masters of this strategy by hooking buyers with their best-selling, entry-level Corolla and Civic sedan models.

But the EPA rules were particularly difficult for Ford’s small cars to make.

“It’s what made the business difficult for us to continue” making small cars, says Patterson. “As regulations get higher and higher it gets more challenging to do compact vehicles. The compliance is (easier) for trucks.”

So Ford has plowed more money into its F-series pickups which make big profits and help mitigate tighter Escape margins caused by higher-cost-to-manufacture hybrids. EPA’s encouragement of trucks over smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, says Patterson, is one of the unintended consequences of the federal mpg laws.

“If you go all the way back to the SUV boom, the initial regulations did not cover SUVs,” he says. “That’s what really launched the initial body-on-frame vehicles like Explorer. Those customers were unwilling to make sacrifices necessary to drive a fuel-efficient car.”

Green groups like Greenpeace are determined to reverse that trend to fight global warming, and held a press conference at this week’s Frankfurt auto show calling for an SUV ban.

Some automakers like VW pushed back, but Ford resisted comment. Ford Jr. has been friendly with Greenpeace in the past. Indeed, company insiders say the chairman is a key reason Ford has embraced climate regulation even as the Obama EPA’s own numbers show the 54.5 mpg-by-2025 standard would reduce global temperatures by a negligible three one-thousands of a degree (0.003) Celsius of warming by 2100 (within the margin of error).

“Global climate change is real,” the company said in a statement. “We are investing more than $11 billion to put hybrid and fully electric vehicle models on the road by 2022.”

Even as Ford hopes its Escape SE Sport and Titanium trims will help sell hybrids, EPA rules further discourage Ford from offering its signature ST performance trim. An Escape ST would help bring customers in from the discontinued Focus and Fiesta STs to the similarly-sized Escape.

But EPA penalizes fuel-hungry performance.

“I’d love to do a Escape ST and it makes a lot of sense given the SUVs we have as well as customers coming out of Focus and Fiesta. Those are customers most likely to do that,” says SUV marketing chief Patterson. “But … if you do it with a gas engine it really harms overall corporate fuel economy.”

Ford has another trick up its sleeve, however. It will soon introduce a second SUV in the compact segment — paralleling Escape — but with a more off-road temperament. Dubbed by journalists “the baby Bronco,” it would rival the Jeep Cherokee and — like Jeep — bring higher transaction costs.

Greens may frown on another SUV, but Wall Street might warm to the greener dollar margins.