Auto show: Welcome to Bizarro World ( The Michigan View 1.10.11)

Posted by hpayne on January 10, 2011

In 2010 the American truck was resurgent.

Sales of American trucks leapt 18 percent as the segment regained over 50 percent of market share. As financial fears and $4 gas prices receded in the rear-view mirror, American buying habits returned to normal: Americans prefer SUVs that ride high over smaller sedans. Cars shed 6 percent of market share and hybrid-electrics’ share plummeted 17 percent.

So when the North American Auto Show opens in Detroit Monday, automakers will emphasize . . . small cars and green hybrid-electrics?

Welcome to Bizarro World, the annual Detroit auto show press week where what’s inside the walls of Cobo has little to do with the real world outside. With some 5,000 practicing members of the Green Church – liberal journalists and their Washington Democratic allies – roaming the show floor, the automakers will entertain them with politically-correct talk about building small cars to meet federal 35 mpg standards to combat global warming.

Outside, temperatures are expected to drop to below-normal temperatures of 11 degrees with snow in the forecast in the midst of a brutal Detroit winter that has city shelters taking in 25 percent more homeless than usual. And one year ago, the Climategate scandal pulled the mask off the global warming science fraud.

The show’s Alice in Wonderland quality is an annual ritual. At this decade’s start for example, for example – while SUV sales roared – General Motors rolled out a 108 mpg concept called the Precept and Ford promised an 80 mpg family car by 2003 (financed by the taxpayer-funded $1 billion USCAR program). Neither car ever came to market, but boy did they wow the press pews.

The green propaganda is loudest this year from America’s two partially-nationalized automakers, GM and Chrysler, which were rescued by Washington in part because Obamacrats wanted Detroit to make the expensive electric cars they fancy.

GM will roll out its new sub-compact twins – the Chevy Sonic and Buick Verano – built in the taxpayer-rescued, UAW-staffed Orion Township plant. The cars will make nary a profit. Indeed, the tiny cars come to market after a year of big losses for subcompacts with even Honda’s vaunted Fit sales off 20 percent.

Fortunately for taxpayers, GM trucks from its Chevy and GMC lines flew off lots in 2010 (GMC sales rate was double that of GM’s sedans). And with a profit of $5,000 a copy and up, they helped the company repay millions in taxpayer loans.

Chrysler offers another stark contrast in reality vs. perception. Just down snow-covered Jefferson Avenue from its global-warming fighting show command post in Cobo Center, Chrysler’s Jefferson North plant is operating at full capacity churning out giant Jeep Cherokee SUVs (mpg: 18) which saw sales skyrocket in 2010.

So successful is the Cherokee that Chrysler CEO – and Fiat chief – Sergio Marchionne has ordered that the SUV be the platform for a new wave of trucks from Alfa Romeo and Maserati. Yet Chrysler will shy from telling this success story before the Green press, and will instead roll out a new version of its Chrysler 300 sedan Monday.

To be fair, automakers must offer a full range of vehicles in order to meet consumer tastes should gas prices return to $4 a gallon- as most automakers eventually expect. But the effort to hide SUVs – the market success story of 2010 – is still striking.

From Ford (an electric Focus) to Toyota (more members of its Prius hybrid family) to Hyundai (the little Veloster), major manufacturers will preen low-profit green. Manufacturers know that value of press reports that paint it with a green halo rather than an “immoral” triton and devil horns. And by producing cars that help meet Washington’s fanciful 35 mpg average fuel efficiency riles, they also avoid ugly headlines about government fines and public hearings.

Auto show marketing is cynical, but manufacturer are not stupid. When the show opens to the public on January 15, carmakers will roll out their full menu of SUVs and large sedans for the public. Indeed, visiting press week and public week are a study in contrasts as the public swarms the SUVs that the holy Greens reviled the week before.

Welcome to the Detroit Auto Show press week. It’s a parallel universe.

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