Demise of Oldsmobile leaves question of GM’s technology
Five years ago, I was traveling to East Lansing, Mich., to cover the West Regional NCAA hockey playoffs at Michigan State, and I seized upon the opportunity to also arrange a visit at the Oldsmobile headquarters and production plant over in Lansing. It was an interesting and educational experience, because there were rumors that Oldsmobile might be phased out of existence by General Motors. That would be sad, I thought, because Oldsmobile is the oldest U.S. auto manufacturer, and second-oldest only to Mercedes in the world.
Instead, I found a rejuvenated operation, looking ahead at the opportunity to become GM’s technology leader. The Aurora had just been introduced as a reasonably priced near-luxury sedan, and it had bargained hard to get a slightly smaller and unique version of Cadillac’s NorthStar V8 engine. That seemed only fair, because Olds had long been a technical leader for GM, so it designed a 4.0-liter version of Caddy’s 4.6, and it worked very well.
Saturn, also, was new and impressively popular with a new buying public, giving GM an alternative brand within its own house to compete with the excellent vehicles from Japan and Germany. In my discussion about Oldsmobile’s future, an Olds executive repeatedly said advancing the brand would be by “the Saturnization of Oldsmobile.” They caught themselves, each time, and asked me to avoid using that, but it was clear from the number of times I heard it that Olds was planning to modernize itself and head toward the New Millenium by reclaiming its role as GM’s technology leader.
Now we’re into the New Millenium, and the word just hit on Tuesday night: General Motors will phase Oldsmobile into oblivion over the next four or five years. Sad news for Oldsmobile, but also sad for GM, and for consumers. Olds was, more than any other, the advanced-technology arm of General Motors.
Years ago, when GM’s divisions each did their own thing, developed a V8 and called it the “Rocket,” a name that became synonymous with Olds as a high-tech outfit, dating back even back to the 1950s. In the 1960s, Olds refined that concept into its 350 cubic inch “Rocket” V8, while Chevrolet also built its own 350 cubic inch V8. Both had lived long and distinguished lives, with the Chevy more plentiful, and the Olds engine more advanced, with a neat little rotating-valve technique that would ratchet each valve to rotate with every revolution of the engine.
That was important back in the late 1960s and 1970s, because emission rules required engine eccentricities, and the valves often took the brunt of the lean-burning trend by getting scorched and causing large outlays of repair cash from car owners. Besides, it developed more power and became the company’s hallmark. It was so significant that when GM later combined the technology among its divisions, and some people bought Oldsmobiles just to get the 350 V8, they were able to successfully sue GM when it was learned the less-costly Chevy V8 was being installed instead of the Rockets.
In 1980, Rocket-powered Oldsmobiles commanded about 16 percent of all GM sales, second only to Chevrolet’s 49 percent, and better than Buick, and about equal to Pontiac and Cadillac combined. But as of the year 2000, Ward’s Automotive News shows Chevrolet has increased to 53 percent of GM’s share, Pontiac is second at 12.6, Buick 8.2, and then Olds, at 5.8 percent. One of the problems skewing those figures is the proliferation of trucks, which have padded Chevy’s percentage, and inserted GMC’s truck-only branch with 10.6 of GM’s total — more than all but Chevy and Pontiac.
As Olds was plummeting, rumors persisted about the division’s demise, but plans for advancing continued within the proud institution in Lansing.
A distinct problem was the historical perspective, where Olds and Buick — both a cut below Cadillac in luxury, but above Pontiac and Chevy in price structure — had become old-folks cars. The good side of that was that a lot of aging customers kept coming back to buy Buicks and Oldsmobiles instead of those “new-fangled” furrin’ cars. The down side was that as people age, they buy fewer and fewer cars, so the market segment dwindled. Buick has maintained its image among an aging segment, but Olds wanted to break free. Its new campaign was “This is NOT your father’s Oldsmobile.”
That ad campaign came on with the introduction of the Aurora, a new-age sedan with luxury and sportiness. I found it interesting, and from Olds’s sake a little disquieting, that the Aurora had this swooshy logo and the word “Oldsmobile” didn’t appear on the car.
In retrospect, it appears that the new campaign did not capture the fancy of a modern generation of buyers, and Olds lost some of its old-reliables at the same time.
Undaunted, Olds executives made more plans for the future, plans that included an all-new midsize sedan called the Intrigue, to replace the aging Cutlass, and a new compact named the Alero, a new name given to the replacement for the Achieva.
The same basic platform with different body trim and interiors made the Cutlass the same as the Pontiac Grand Prix, Buick Regal and Chevy Malibu. The Intrigue continued with the same basic platform when the models were redesigned, but the Intrigue was given the unique opportunity to use an all-new 3.5-liter V6, with dual-overhead camshafts and four valves per cylinder, while all the rest of the branches had to use older-design V6 engines, such as the 3800 or the 3.1. The 3.5 was much more high-tech, and had more power than the larger pushrod 3800, plus it got better fuel economy and lower emissions.
In a similar vein, the Olds Bravada was its version of the SUV craze, coming off the Chevy Blazer platform. There also was a GMC version, but unlike its siblings, the Bravada had full-time all-wheel-drive — another technical difference from the switch-required transition from 2-wheel to 4-wheel drive.
In 1996, the average age of Oldsmobile buyers was 60. Now it is 48, a significant improvement. But there just aren’t enough 48-year-olds buying Oldsmobiles, apparently.
This year, Olds has come out with an all new Aurora, a little more compact but with great room, and with both the 4.0-liter V8 and the 3.5-liter V6 available, while the Intrigue is the only other vehicle allowed to use the 3.5.
When the powers at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway decided to start an all-new series, called the Indy Racing League, it went with specific body styles and limited engines to 4.0 liters. The Olds Aurora engine took over the series, in highly modified form, of course, with only Nissan entering as a competitor, and only a couple of Nissan Infiniti engines ran among the Aurora-dominated 33 starters last May at Indy.
Right after the first of the year, Olds was to unveil an all-new Bravada, which was displayed at auto shows last spring. It will have a new, high-tech, dual-overhead-camshaft in-line 6 cylinder engine. That engine will also power the other GM compact SUV lines, but it seemed significant that Olds was going to be able to unveil it first.
Now, we don’t know what will happen. Word is the existing models, including the Bravada, will be brought out and maintained, as long as sales are sufficient. If sales go south, we can look for Olds to die sooner; if sales hold for a while, the brand may continue for four or five years, until these new models run their course and need redesign. Some say people will gobble up new Oldsmobiles and stash them away as instant antiques. My guess is that prices will drop, and anyone looking for a good midsize sedan will jump at the chance to get an Intrigue, with its high-tech engine, or an Aurora, with its choice of two high-tech engines.
Surely those engines will find new life in other GM brands. Surely, by eliminating its high-tech division, GM isn’t going to also eliminate high-tech. Surely, the bean-counters can’t have taken over to that extent. Have they?
[[[[CUTLINES:
1/ A new Aurora sedan for 2001 advances Oldsmobile’s role as GM’s high-technology division, but Olds will cease to exist when current models run their course.
2/ An all-new Bravada, shown at auto shows, is about to be introduced with a dual-overhead-cam, in-line 6-cylinder engine and full-time all-wheel-drive. ]]]]]
Prius carries consumers, and Toyota, into automotive future
No other car-maker in the world has been as busy as Toyota in the last year. Not only has the Japanese giant come out with entirely new models for the Avalon sedan, Celica and MR-2 sports cars, Corolla compact, RAV4 compact sport-utility vehicle, and the Lexus LS430 luxury sedan, but Toyota also has introduced entirely new vehicles, such as the Toyota Echo subcompact, the Sequoia large SUV and the Lexus IS300 sports sedan.
I may even be missing a vehicle or two, and I know a couple more are coming. But you get the picture. With all these new and improved vehicles hitting the showrooms, one that might — but should not — slip through the promotional cracks, is the Prius. I finally got my hands on a Prius for a week-long test drive, and it just happened to be that week when fall turned to winter with a thud Up North. That produced an interesting sidelight, as well.
When I first read about the Prius, I was impressed, and in my mind’s vocabulary it was pronounced “PRY-us.” I quickly learned that the proper pronunciation is “PREE-us,” and that the word comes from the latin word, meaning “to go ahead.” Toyota has either gone ahead or been right with the industry leaders for a couple of decades now, and the Prius passes that test by being the first mass-produced hybrid vehicle in the world.
Of course, we in the U.S. didn’t know that, because the Prius first went to market in Japan, a year ago, while Honda came out with its hybrid Insight in the U.S. before the Prius reached our shores.
Both of them must be heralded for showing us the future, and making it available right here and now.
Car-nuts everywhere love engines and power and driving, but only the most stubbornly myopic cynic can’t recognize that we’re using up the world’s energy sources at an alarming rate and generating pollution that seriously threatens our future environment.
I’ve always believed that while we needn’t panic about automotive pollution, and we still have to get to work and fulfill our free-wheeling (so to speak) lifestyles, we also cannot allow our auto-makers to sneak around pollution laws just for the sake of producing low-tech/high-profit vehicles that we continue to buy. I love fast cars, with high-performing engines, but the best engines are highly efficient, which not only allows high-performance but also thorough burning and improved emissions. To get great gobs of power while dumping copious amounts of pollution out the tailpipes is irresponsible, and to lobby for lowered government standards to insulate car-makers from being responsible is outrageous.
Every manufacturer is fiddling with electric vehicles, but none has proven logical or efficient, simply because electric motors have tremendous power, but need to be recharged frequently and for long expanses — to the point where a large changeover to electric cars would cause coal-burning power plants to make so much more power that they would pollute a much greater amount than the electric cars would save.
So the new trend is toward hybrids, which combine gasoline engines and electric motors. That trend has escalated tremendously in the last year, ever since Honda and Toyota have come out with their cars for the real world, and for sale at $20,000. U.S. companies have whined that those cars are being “dumped” in the U.S. at a price cheaper than it must cost to build them, but we might suggest they should quit with the whining and get with the development of something similar.
Nobody in the world is better at making small but extremely high-tech gasoline engines than Toyota and Honda. So both the Prius and the Insight work with small but extremely efficient gasoline engines, linked to battery-pack-powered electric motors. The difference is that the Insight uses a tiny 3-cylinder, 1-liter motor for basic power, with the electric motor coming in on demand, when you need more power, and then cutting out when cruising, to be recharged by the gas engine.
The Prius has a similar but different approach. The Prius uses a 1.5-liter, 4-cylinder gas engine with 70 horsepower at a 4,500-RPM peak and 82 foot-pounds of torque at 4,200 revs. Those RPM peaks are limited only because Toyota has lightened the components considerably and curtailed the rev limits to assure longer durability. The engine has variable valve timing to alter valve timing and create more power over a longer curve.
The battery pack runs an electric permanent-magnet motor with internal components that never wear. It develops a separate equivalent of 44 horsepower from 1,040-5,600 RPMs and 258 foot-pounds of torque at everywhere from 0-400 RPMs.
Unlike the Insight, which uses the electric motor for boost, the electronic controls in the Prius can operate on either the gas engine or the electric, or a combination of both, with the ratio controlled by speed and load, which coax the computer into selecting the most efficient blend. The crossover between the two is almost completely unnoticeable to the driver, because a power-split gadget uses a planetary gear that divides up the output from the power sources and delivers it to the front wheels.
The clear winner in either case is the consumer, because the two cars are both low-emission rated and are fuel-economy champs. The Insight is the winner, rated at over 70 miles per gallon on the road (I got 50+), while the Prius is listed as 52 mpg city and 45 highway. Think about that. It is so efficient, it gets better fuel economy in town than at cruising speed. I got 44 miles per gallon on a highway trek.
The Environmental Protection Agency has different categories, such as LEV for low-emission vehicles, SLEV for super low-emission vehicles, and ULEV for ultra-low-emission vehicles. The Prius ranks as an SULEV — for super-low-emission vehicle — which means it burns 75 percent cleaner than a ULEV and 90 percent cleaner than an LEV, when it comes to smog-forming exhaust.
The Prius also uses regenerative brakes, which gain power boost from the electric motor whenever the vehicle is decelerating. The brake itself operates on a wireless, computerized system which notifies the regenerative system as soon as you touch the brake, then blends in the hydraulic system as you continue braking. What you notice is when you slow down for a traffic light, the engine turns silent and when you step on the brake, you get immediate slowing, and if you hold your foot constant, the car slows at an ever-increasing rate.
DRIVING THE PRIUS
Perhaps it’s typical of the basic differences between Toyota and Honda, but while the Honda Insight is a futuristic-looking 2-door coupe, the Prius is a more squarish 4-door sedan, not unlike the subcompact Echo in overall design, but with an interior that is large enough to be categorized as compact.
Once inside, the first thing you notice is that you look straight out and down at the road, unencumbered by any instruments! The instruments are very different looking, and they are mounted in the middle, between the two front bucket seats, and feature a digital speedometer at the top of the center-dash, and a video-screen-like display below it, with various designs on it, mainly one that shows the transmitting of power, how much is coming from the gas engine and how much from electric.
I’ve read all sorts of things about why the instruments are center-mounted, but it’s safe to say that it is not just to enhance backseat drivers, or passenger-seat input. But we in the U.S. must realize that in Japan, as well as Great Britain, they drive on the left side of the road, with the steering wheel on the right side of cars. By putting the instruments in the middle, Toyota doesn’t even have to redesign the interior and merely mounts the steering column on the other side to switch from Japanese to U.S. markets.
Prius also shows a preview of tomorrow-land with its automatic transmission. We’ve gotten used to 2-speed, then 3-speed, finally 4-speed, and now a few exotic 5-speed automatic transmissions, Toyota has placed a continually-variable automatic transmission, which keeps adjusting itself to provide the optimum gear-ratio, everywhere from low-end traffic to freeway cruising. You get no clunking, no lurching, none of the usual shifting feel. It just goes.
There is a different feel to the Prius and the Insight, which I drove last summer. The Insight, which comes only with a manual 5-speed, felt swifter in acceleration, and held highway speeds with ease.
Perhaps because it’s heavier and built for four occupants, and because it comes only with an automatic transmission, the Prius doesn’t feel as quick as the Insight, but it does perform as adequately as any subcompact with a small gasoline engine.
A modern interior design, with neat sweeping lines and high-tech switchgear for the heat-air and audio system. The seats are comfortably supportive, and the trunk is large for a subcompact-sized car, but you clearly could commute with four aboard without any problems of interior space.
When you drive, you might be unnerved at first that when you stop at a red light, the engine dies. When you step on the gas, it both whirs to life and you start moving, simultaneously. You get zero gas mileage, and you pollute some during all those minutes at red lights, but not with the Prius. It also has an internal fuel cell inside the tank that collapses as you use fuel, just to prevent the fumes from hanging around for possible emissions, too.
NITS TO PICK
In my week with the Prius, I was able to take photos of it with backgrounds of both green grass and snow because of the abrupt onset of winter. Then, as you might recall, the temperature threatened to plunge right out of the bottom of the thermometer. I was testing another vehicle briefly during the time I had the Prius, so it sat in my driveway for a cold night, then all day, then another night.
When I started it up, the instruments flared to life, and I was immediately warned to “check engine.” Those signals always give me a chill, so to speak, but often they go off after you warm the engine up a bit. It continued to run, and I drove it delicately up and down the street, but the warning stayed on, and the little “!” symbol, that means “get thee to a dealership’s service outlet” flashed on. It was 5-below zero actual, and I parked it and left it alone. Later, it got up to 20-above that day, and the Prius started up and ran just fine.
Without any further information, I developed a theory. Previously, I noticed the video screen that shows the flow of power had also indicated that the battery was fully charged by the energy from the gas engine. When it was cold, and warning me, that same instrument showed the battery to be extremely low on charge. Apparently it had lost almost all of its stored energy from the cold, and the gasoline engine, while competent enough to handle its duties, was complaining to the computer-control system that it was overworked by being expected to drive the car and recharge the battery pack at the same time.
Whatever, putting the Prius in a garage would solve that problem. Otherwise, Toyota is sure to be coming out with a cold-weather package to alleviate that problem.
The other nuisance was that there was no cruise control, and while trying to stay with traffic at 70 miles per hour or so on a couple of runs between Duluth and the Twin Cities, I continually found my speed fluctuating between 75 and 62, without feeling like I was changing anything in the throttle control. Maybe it was switching back and forth in power modes, or maybe the change was too imperceptible to feel. But I hate it when cars pass me on the freeway and then slow down, and all of a sudden I was one of them, unintentionally.
But those are small and correctible problems (hopefully) in a $20,855 car that doesn’t pollute, gets well-over-40 miles per gallon, and has everything standard, from alloy wheels, rear spoiler, climate control, computer display, power windows and locks, autio system with cassette, air filtration system, and a timed rear window defogger, with the only options being floor mats and a compact disc player.
[[[[[[[CUTLINES:
1/ Toyota’s hybrid Prius goes well beyond the steam locomotive to carry commuters into the future.
2/ Instrumentation is centrally mounted, and includes digital speedometer above, with a map of power being used on the computer screen.
3/ The Prius interior is not chintzy, featuring state-of-the-art design and layout with comfortable seats for 4.
4/ A small 1.5-liter 4-cylinder gasoline engine is coupled to an electric motor to power the Prius to 50 miles per gallon.
Conzumel? Las Vegas? Iceland? Staying at home looks good
Christmas time is the perfect time for taking a family trip. But for our family, this year we might journey no farther than to an Up North hockey arena, if we venture out at all.
This time around, the perfect trip is to do a little shoveling, or maybe a lot of shoveling, do a little driving, visit with some friends, and don’t travel too far.
It’s amazing how much enjoyment you can get by waking up and watching the sun rise over Lake Superior, especially on one of those really cold mornings where a cloud of lake-effect fog hovers over the water and delays the first look at the hazy sun for an extra few minutes.
Watching one of the late-season freighters make its ghostly way through the hazy gobs of vapor rising from the big lake, nearing the refuge of the Aerial Bridge, is another highlight.
Trying to be unobtrusive enough to spot the deer that tend to walk through my yard each day and/or night is another element of adventure for me.
Or, just gazing in wonder at the pile of snow building to beyond a foot on the picnic table I should have put away a month ago, is pleasurable. So is the wind-chime, which seems to have a distinctly different higher, clearer pitch in winter than in summer, and takes on a different look when the snow from the last blizzard adorns it.
Those are simple pleasures of nontrips over the holidays.
When you live Up North, and you actually enjoy and appreciate the change of seasons and the cold winters, that doesn’t mean you still might not take the family on a week-long trip to some warm and sunny place. Somehow, that can give you the incentive to face the rest of the frigid winter with more than the usual cheerfulness.
We have done that, quite successfully, in our family. We went to the Florida Keys for a weeklong rental of a house, and another time did a time-share rental of a condo on Key Largo, and still another time went to the Naples, Fla., area and hit the exotic beaches of Sanibel, but our favorite place to unwind and rewind is Key West. On the West side of the map, we have enjoyed Northern California and Southern California, as well as Arizona and Texas.
I would have agreed to go for another dose of any of those, but my family demanded a recount. With George Dubya getting elected, we decided that just to be patriotic we should refuse to count all of the money in our budget, in case there might not be enough.
So we moved on. My wife and our two sons and I always have a lot of laughs and good-natured heckles on such ventures, so it came time to discuss our variable options.
That’s where we ran into a bit of a snag. We disagreed more than we agreed. Our older son, Jack, finally said he flat couldn’t go during the Christmas holidays. His only vacation time would be after the first of the year, and he had a trip he’d been planning. Without us, he didn’t need to add.
That ended the debate for a brief time, but then we decided that the other three of us shouldn’t suffer because Jack couldn’t go along. So we reinstated our discussion.
We ultimately decided we would go, and what the likeliest dates would be. Then it came down to our destination. We all spent a day or two thinking about it, and then we reconvened to make our final decision.
I volunteered to go first. We’ve never been to New Orleans, so we could take a neat car for an extended road trip and drive there. It would only take a couple days, and we could drive leisurely, stopping wherever we wanted. It would be the least expensive way to go, and it would be quality time together as we drove.
I’m not sure if I heard correctly, but the response from Joan was something along the lines of “over my dead body.” I might have heard it better, but when spoken through clenched teeth it didn’t sound like the type of phrase it would be wise to inquire about.
Joan chose Conzumel. Conzumel? That’s in Mexico, right? Right. She had found a good deal, a special air-plus-hotel deal, and we could do it for less than $2,000 apiece.
It was a suggestion that made me realize I should write down my favorite fragrance for smelling salts, just in case.
I offered a counter-idea. We could arrange for a swift vehicle, to be picked up at some far-off spot, then take a special discount air trip to meet it at some warm city, say, Las Vegas. We could then take off from there, do a little desert driving, head for Southern California, wherever we wanted. We could do the vagabond thing on a budget.
Not bad, I thought, because at least the concept was not met with outright refusal and/or scorn.
Jeff’s turn. “I’ve got it,” he trumpeted, as he descended from upstairs in triumph. “We can get this unbelievable deal on air tickets, and we can stay anywhere from three days to a weekÂ…”
“Where?” I answered, all perked up.
“Reykjavik,” he said.
“Isn’t that in Iceland?” I said.
“Yeah, and it’s really great,” he said. “Remember I stopped in Reykjavik on my trip to Europe, and how I said I’d love to go back there?”
I remembered. I also remembered that we’re talking about late-December or early January, and when its cold in Minnesota it might be UNBELIEVABLY cold in Iceland. I mean, I’d dearly love to go to Iceland in July, some year. But not during the Christmas holidays, not right now, this year.
Agreement isn’t mandatory, but is it possible to get any more divergent suggestions than Conzumel and Iceland?
So we’re staying home. We’re going to not spend a lot of money and time and bother to hire airline baggage guys to skyhook our luggage into the bins, and we’re not going anywhere.
As a compromise, we’re going to try to gather the whole clan out on top of the hill in Lakewood. We’ll put a fire in the fireplace, see if we can get some takeout enchiladas at Hacienda del Sol, so Joan can pretend she’s in Conzumel, and we can look out at that wind-chime with its little towers of snow, and beyond, to the little holiday lights outlined by the solid white field of snow, so Jeff can pretend we’re in Iceland.
And we’re planning on enjoying it. Merry Christmas.
Ford Escape takes on Acura MDX, Toyota Sequoia for top truck
Light trucks account for 46 percent of all vehicular sales in the U.S. these days, so the annual Truck of the Year award takes on more significance than usual each year, rather than being a willing subsidiary of the Car of the Year event.
For 2001, the three finalists for Truck of the Year award are, alphabetically, the Acura MDX, the Ford Escape and the Toyota Sequoia.
All are impressive, all deserving. In fact, you could make the case for several non-finalists as well.
Along with the MDX, Escape and Sequoia, other candidates were the Ford Explorer SportTrac, the Hyundai Santa Fe, Mazda Tribute, Mitsubishi Montero, Nissan Pathfinder, GMC Sierra Heavy Duty, Chevrolet Silverado Heavy Duty, Toyota RAV4, and Yukon Denali.
Pretty impressive bunch.
In interaction with the committee, I have lobbied to add minivans into the truck bracket, rather than run them with cars. My theory is that cars are cars and trucks are trucks, but when people start choosing whether to buy a truck, they might buy a compact sedan and a minivan, just as they might buy a sedan and a pickup truck. The one-of-each crowd might replace a pickup or an SUV with a minivan, but it’s not likely they would own a sedan and an SUV and trade the sedan for a minivan.
But my request to have light trucks include pickups of all size, SUVs and minivans has not yet worked out. So Chrysler’s reinvented minivans all competed in the car category, while one of them might well have been a major contender among the trucks.
My personal vote, as the only member of the international jury of automotive writers in about five states, was spread out. My top pick was the Escape, second the MDX, and tied for third was the Sequoia and the Toyota RAV4. One point below, another tie, with the Silverado HD and the Sport Trac deadlocked, and another point behind those two came the Montero and Pathfinder.
The Escape is the perfect compact SUV for the times. The times are with the buying public slowly becoming aware that the huge SUVs, fortresses of safety and security in a collision with a smaller and lighter vehicle, are not at all safe if driven too aggressivly. With tire problems that may well be coming from the weight overload of hefty SUVs, and with the tendency to roll over at the slightest loss of control and resultant over-correction, 85 percent of light truck fatalities are in single-vehicle incidents — meaning loss of control and/or rollovers.
Well, the Escape, designed by Mazda and built by Ford, is front-wheel-drive when not all-wheel-drive, which means, simply, that there is never a time when the rear wheels will strive to pass the front wheels, as they do in conventional four-wheel-drives that start out with primary drive to the rear. On top of that, the Escape starts out with a very safe structure, and along with lighter, more agile handling, it also has the interior room of the current-but-outgoing Explorer. For the $20,000 range, the Escape gives Ford the perfect way out of its Explorer/Firestone hassle.
The Acura MDX, meanwhile, is Honda’s first all-out attempt to build a normal-sized SUV, and it put it into its elite Acura line. The MDX rides and drives more like a luxury sedan but and has the anticipated high-tech engine from Honda. So it gets decent mileage, has decent power, gives you luxurious interior appointments and comfort, handles well, and qualifies as an ultra-low-emission vehicle.
The Sequoia is another all-new SUV from Toyota, giving that manufacturer possibly unexcelled control over every level of the SUV spectrum. There is the RAV4 at the most compact end, the 4Runner in the middle and the Land Cruiser at the top of the Toyota line, along with the RX300 and the LX430 in the Lexus line. Adding the Sequoia was logical, and Toyota took its extremely impressive Tundra pickup (my top choice as last year’s truck of the year; it didn’t win), and used it as the rock-solid base for the Sequoia, which is large enough to be aimed right in the midst of the large SUV segment dominated by the Chevy Tahoe and Suburban and Ford Expedition.
As such, the Sequoia does it all, and in style. It is tight, well-made, loaded with all the best creature comforts of the largest SUVs, and with the power of Toyota’s splendid 4.3-liter dual-overhead-cam V8.
The RAV4 set the stage for the compact SUV boom, followed eagerly by the Honda CR-V, the Nissan Xterra (last year’s truck winner), and others. This is the first major makeover of the RAV4, and it not only is thorough, but impressive, in that it takes on the only major criticisms of the original RAV4 — quirky styling and a bit underpowered — and smooths out the styling but with an edge, and adds enough punch to make a performance difference.
The Silverado is Chevy’s new pride and joy, a huge truck with massive power, and if you need that sort of heft and power, the Silverado 2500, particularly with the big diesel, can tow small villages into the next county.
Ford has covered all the bases with SUVs, too, so it took its popular Explorer and its popular pickup truck and came up with the hybrid Sport Trac, which is two-thirds of an SUV, but with a pickup box behind the full four-door body. It works, it’s different, is far more flexible than a normal pickup, and I gave it points.
The Nissan Pathfinder has been a favorite SUV of mine for years. For some reason, I seem to fit into it better than almost any other SUV. The new one is no exception, upgraded in power and styling. It may look a little more generic than its predecessor, but it is better in every way, and deserves credit for that.
Mitsubishi’s Montero also is entirely new, considerably larger, and yet has never outgrown its self-stated demand to be capable of conquering the most rugged off-road stretches without ever losing its on-road manners. Impressive, indeed.
Because of my personal vote, obviously I can’t disagree with the three finalists, especially when my ballot ranked them 1. Escape, 2. Acura MDX and 3. Sequoia. I would predict they will wind up that way, when announced at the Detroit Auto Show.
[[[[[CUTLINES:
1/ Ford’s Escape may provide the company with a compact and worthy escape from the hassles of Explorer/Firestone inquisitions.
2/ The Acura MDX has the appropriate luxury expected from the Acura line, but with the technology and toughness Honda could compile.
3/ Toyota took its big, strong and impressive Tundra pickup platform and built the Sequoia SUV on top of it, with predictably impressive results. ]]]]]]]]]
PT Cruiser, Honda Insight, Toyota Prius are car of year finalists
The 50 members of the jury have cast their votes, and the finalists for the 2001 North American Car of the Year have been determined. Nobody will know the winner until dawn on Jan. 8 in Cobo Hall in Detroit, when the North American International Auto Show opens with the unveiling of those named car and truck of the year.
As for the car of the year award, we have to be impressed that the jury went for trendy but also high-tech. The three finalists are, in alphabetical order, the Chrysler PT Cruiser, the Honda Insight, and the Toyota Prius.
There can be no surprise that the PT Cruiser made it. Chrysler’s latest concept-come-to-life made a spectacular splash at its introduction, and people were understandably dazzled by the fact that it could meet the requirements of a station wagon, a sedan, a minivan, and even most desires of an SUV. Consumers then were surprised to see how compact the Cruiser is, with a bluntness that makes it shorter in overall length than a Honday Civic or Neon, but with the tall interior volume about double of such compacts.
On top of that, the thing that may make the Cruiser most attractive, is that all of those assets can be obtained in fairly well loaded form for under $20,000. That sent buyers scurrying to get on waiting lists. I know a fellow who talked to me about it before it was introduced, and I encouraged him to go for it. He got his name on a list and got his by early last summer, and when the first display model wound up in his dealership, his wife insisted on one, too. So they ended up trading in two SUVs for two PT Cruisers, and both are happy and well-satisfied.
The Honda Insight and Toyota Prius represent more of a surprise as finalists, for two reasons. First, there are an unprecedented number of impressive competitors eligible this year. That may sound trite, because all cars that are sufficiently redone or introduced are eligible every year, but this year there not only are a number of good new cars, but they are of a quality and level of technology to be strong contenders for consideration.
The Insight and Prius, both from Japan, are the absolute pinnacle of technology, however, because both are hybrid vehicles — which means they are powered by combinations of gasoline and electric motors, linked by amazing technology that solves the (supposed) neverending dilemma of how to make electric cars function when their advantages in power, silent efficiency, and emission-free performance were so compromised by their need to be recharged.
It is a little-known fact that almost every electric prototype being experimented with by automotive companies were clean-running vehicles harboring a dirty little secret: If they were successful in the marketplace, rather than merely as public-relations facades, the need to plug them in overnight for recharging would cause coal-burning power plants to produce so much more energy that the resultant pollution from the plants would be far more hazardous than the combined lowering of emissions from the cars themselves.
Toyota and Honda, however, solved the dilemma by combining a small but efficient gasoline engine with an electric motor, and while they use different techniques of combining them, the result is that the electric motors’ battery packs get recharged by the gasoline engine even while being driven. The Insight gets over 70 miles per gallon, the Prius around 50 in EPA ratings.
The Insight runs on a 3-cylinder, 1-liter gas engine with the electric motor kicking in when you step on the gas, giving you plenty of zip, and then disengaging when you don’t demand power and getting recharged when not being utilized. Twin “fuel” gauges give you how much gasoline you have left on one side and how fully-charged your battery pack is on the other. In my test-drive, I was able to edge the cruising speed up to 70, and — for scientific purposes only, of course — even up to 78 miles per hour without the battery chipping in. When you want to accelerate down a freeway ramp, however, the Insight takes off as if it has a much larger engine.
The Prius is a four-door, four-seater, which coordinates a 1.5-liter, 4-cylinder gas engine with a similar electric motor, with an engine management system that goes back and forth, combining the two and offering a center-dashboard screen that displays where the energy is coming from at all times, so you can watch the electric motor either contributing to the drivetrain or being recharged.
It is impressive that 50 automotive journalists, none of whom has a bias or financial interest in the outcome, have independently agreed in principle that such high-tech advances should be rewarded with enough votes to be among the top three. Unquestionably, a factor is that both the Insight and Prius are priced right about at $20,000. That means all three finalists are available to families on tight budgets, because all three can be had for $20,000 or less.
As a jury member for something like eight years now, I can appreciate how difficult it was to vote this year. I can be accused of always tending toward advanced technology, because I think it’s of utmost importance to all of our futures. But consider the temptations of other vehicles, some of which are far costlier, and many of which are off the scale in comparisons of luxury features and creature-comfort items.
First of all, the new vehicles that qualify are first assembled. Then the jury members make a preliminary vote for their own top 10, and from that the original list is filtered down to a final group. That final list showed: Acura 3.2CL coupe, Audi allroad SUV/wagon, PT Cruiser, Chrysler Sebring sedan, Chrysler Sebring coupe, Chrysler Town & Country minivan, Chrysler Voyager minivan, Dodge Caravan minivan, Dodge Stratus sedan, Dodge Stratus coupe, Honda Civic, Honda Insight, Lexus IS300, Lexus LS430, Mercedes C-Class sedan and CL coupe, Oldsmobile Aurora, Pontiac Aztek, Toyota MR2 Spyder, Toyota Prius, Volvo S60 and Volvo V70 station wagon.
That is a strong crop. Chrysler gets the PT Cruiser in, but does not get the very impressive Stratus and Sebring coupes or sedans, or the minivans, into the final field. Toyota gets the Prius into the final three, but fails to get the very impressive MR2 sports car, or the Lexus luxury LS430 or sports-sedan IS300 in. Honda made it with the Insight, but didn’t make it with the all-new Civic or slick Acura 3.2 CL coupe. Audi’s allroad quattro is costly, but it also offers every imaginable technical trick to combine an onroad station wagon with offroad SUV capabilities. General Motors got blanked, although the new Aurora is impressive and the Pontiac Aztek drew a lot of attention from a love-hate or controversial standpoint as an SUV. Volvo’s S60 is a superb sedan and the V70 is another onroad wagon with offroad pretensions.
The way we on the jury vote is that we each get 25 points. We are allowed to divide them up any way we choose, with a maximum of 10 points to one, but only one, vehicle, and fewer points to others considered among the best. We are to judge vehicles against others in its particular competitive segment, rather than to compare apples to oranges, and give points to those that seem most significant overall.
My personal method is to establish criteria — styling (looks), performance, handling, comfort, price, plus fun, which is a very subjective area of how much actual enjoyment do you get from driving and living with the vehicle. Combining such objective areas into subtotals can give you a very interesting result, sometimes surprising yourself.
In my vote this year, I split up my points probably more than ever before. My ballot gave the most votes to the PT Cruiser, with the Insight, the Stratus sedan and the Audi allroad quattro tied for second, then the Mercedes C320 and the Lexus IS300 tied just behind them, and the MR2 and the Caravan tied with my final points.
My reasoning for the PT Cruiser and Insight have already been explained. I chose the Insight at the expense of the Prius, only because in my tests the Insight performed better at highway cruising speed, and had much snappier acceleration. Those advantages may have been because the Insight comes with a stick-shift only, and the Prius with an automatic only, or it might be enhanced because of the difference in collaboration between gas engine and electric input. But based on my tests, if I had to choose only one of the hybrids, it was the Insight.
The Sebring and Stratus were both impressive, both in coupe and sedan form, and I went with the Sebring because I guessed it might be the higher-volume of the two, and it has a couple of very slight handling/performance edges. Overall, I believe the Stratus/Sebring are the first midsize sedans from a U.S. manufacturer that can take on the best from Japan or Germany from the standpoints of technology and driveability, and they do it at a price under $20,000.
The Audi allroad quattro, which will be the subject of a more expansive column soon, costs $47,000, but it is absolutely the most stable vehicle I’ve ever driven. It has a twin-turbo 2.7-liter V6 that has all the high-tech goodies, right down to steering-wheel automatic shift buttons, and it has armor-plating under all the vitals, plus an adjustable suspension that can raise ground clearance to 8 inches and allow actual off-road use. Such technical excellence applied to real-world uses costs money, no question.
The Lexus LS430 is the costliest car of the batch, and while it exudes excellence, it could only have split my Lexus vote, becaue the IS300 is half the price, at $30,000, and it is a Japanese version of a BMW M3 — swift, fun to drive, great handling and large doses of power. While the LS430 is the latest in an established luxury boat, the IS300 is an all-new venture and the more impressive of the two, I thought.
Mercedes might have outdone itself with the C320, another vehicle that will be the topic of an upcoming column. As the smallest, and least-expensive Mercedes (at $30,000 for the base model), the new C-Class borrows some of the best styling and performance concepts from the larger E-Class and S-Class and incorporates them into a tight, enjoyable sedan that never lets you forget it is a real Mercedes, and why Mercedes is considered the standard of the industry.
Both the Lexus IS300 and the Mercedes C-Class deserved consideration, I believed, and deserved even more, but they have front engines and rear-wheel drive — something that is not necessarily a problem, but falters when compared to front-wheel-drive in the Up North snowbelt.
As for the MR2, it is inexpensive, in the $20,000s, and is an all-out blast to drive. It will compete with Mazda’s tried-and-true Miata, but also can challenge such costlier vehicles as the BMW Z3, Porsche Boxster and Audi TT from a fun-on-a-budget standpoint with its mid-engine balance.
The Caravan Sport I drove at introduction time was the best-handling minivan I’ve ever driven, and such new touches as a power tailgate that stops its closure if it even touches an object are highlights of an entirely rebuilt model line. The Town & Country and Voyager can come with similar equipment, and some unique touches of their own, but the ones I got for test drives were lacking in the pizzazz and features I recall from the introduction of all three. Still, the minivan segment is extremely competitive, and the Caravan, with its Sport version, and an available all-wheel-drive unit, may have retained the top echelon with the new model.
That doesn’t mean that the others didn’t deserve some points too, but the ranking had to run out somewhere, and I had run out of points. Still, our automotive future might depend on technology, and we don’t ever want to overlook the fun and flexibility of vehicles, so I can’t argue with the three finalists — especially when two of them were my 1-2 picks.
[[[[[CUTLINES:
1/ The PT Cruiser draws a crowd wherever it goes, or parks. This one was on the beach at San Diego at introduction time, where passers-by joined assembled automotive journalists for a closer look.
2/ The Honda Insight seats only two, and comes only with a 5-speed manual transmission, but its electric-motor-boosted power augments the 73-miles-per-gallon gasoline engine for easy cruising.
3/ Toyota’s Prius (PREE-us) seats four and comes with a constantly-variable automatic transmission to send its hybrid gas/electric power to the ground. ]]]]]]]
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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