Gearheads of the World, Unite

Four-dollar gas may be making suburban commuters slightly loopy these days, but the Detroit auto companies are ready for a sanitarium. Not long ago their fresh lineup of muscle cars -- the Ford Mustang, the Chevy Camaro, the Dodge Charger and Dodge Challenger -- was bathed in gushing reviews for its retro sex appeal. Now, suddenly, Detroit seems to think that it's getting a different message from consumers: We want our muscle cars to look wimpier.

Barbara Kelley

At least that was the implication of recent comments made by Ford's chief designer, Peter Horbury, to Automotive News. He told the industry newspaper last month that Ford was making its iconic Mustang "look smaller" for 2010. It won't actually be any smaller. The car will have the same footprint as the current model, but "cleverness of design" will allow it to appear less prepossessing than its burly rivals, the forthcoming Challenger and Camaro. "We have a car which I think is more suitable for the times," Mr. Horbury says. Oh, goody.

It makes you wonder, not for the first time, whether Detroit's auto makers really know their customers.

Muscle cars are halo cars -- there to cast a glow on the more pedestrian choices on the showroom floor. Their success doesn't seem to depend on cheap gas but on their power and style. The same halo effect exists in other top-line brand flagships, regardless of fuel economy. Maserati sales were up 20% last month despite a $115,000 price tag and 12 miles per gallon. While SUV sales may have slumped as a category, the tanker-size Lexus LX, which gets 14 miles per gallon, has seen its sales more than double in the first five months of this year. Ditto the Toyota Sequoia and the Dodge Viper, where sales have remained strong. People who buy these cars aren't fretting over an extra buck per gallon at the pump.

Even Keith Crain, the longtime editor of Automotive News and a frequent critic of Detroit's fuel hogs, has editorialized against over-reacting to $4 gas: "Americans will still go on long-distance vacations in their cars and buy and tow trailers. . . . They have and will have different lifestyles from Europeans and Asians."

Nissan has also been accused of deliberately underplaying the size and power of its new GT-R, advertising a mere 480 horses when quarter-mile times reportedly indicate something closer to 550. The suspicion is that Nissan is trying to save its owners a few bucks on insurance. But the Japanese car maker did make a big show of delivering the first GT-R -- previously known to U.S. fans only through video games -- to a Southern California customer at 12:01 a.m. last Monday morning. The company brags that more than 70% of the 1,700 GT-Rs allocated to the U.S. market this year have already been sold.

Compare this with the neurosis apparent at Dodge, which isn't even a publicly traded company anymore (since Cerberus, the private-equity firm, grabbed Chrysler last year) and is presumably less subject to public-relations pressures. Dodge now plans to offer a stripped-down version of its '70s flashback car, the 2009 Challenger, with a suggested retail price of $22,000 and highway fuel stats of 25 miles per gallon. That's about half the price of the full-power version, and better mileage, too.

How are the gearheads reacting? Not well. When GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz suggested that the new Camaro could eventually be outfitted with a four-cylinder engine, one commenter on the MotorTrend Web site noted that enthusiasts dismissed such a vehicle as an "iconic pony car powered by a glorified econobox engine."

All this is reminiscent of the dark days of the early 1980s, a tragic era for aficionados of the Detroit muscle car. That's when Ford created its four-cylinder Mustang SVO and tried to make up in technology-boosted horsepower what it lacked in brute displacement and growl under the hood. Though the car admittedly attracts some nostalgia freaks now, it nearly squandered the Mustang's identity as the ultimate American chick-magnet.

Unlike SUVs, which drew their enormous popularity from a suburban family market that made them the cooler alternative to the minivan, muscle cars remain a young-at-heart phenomenon. As recently as June, a survey by Teenage Research Unlimited reported that the Mustang ranked as the top-of-the-wishlist choice among high-schoolers. For the older guys buying them, the psychic benefits of a dream car trump -- as ever -- a few extra digits on the fuel pump. Think this contingent is staying up nights worrying about gas prices?

Of course, there's nothing wrong with making a smaller, more fuel-efficient sports car that doesn't pack the punch of a Challenger or Camaro or Mustang -- just call it something else. All three Detroit auto makers invested considerable resources in the past few years reviving their muscle brands. Dissipating those hard-earned results for short-term reasons is all too typical of what got Detroit in trouble in the first place.

Let's leave "suitable" to vehicles far distant from the muscle brands of Americana. Detroit has shown us that, U.S. regulations and labor costs permitting, it can compete nicely in the sensible segment. See the enormous success that GM is enjoying in Europe today or its rightly praised new four-cylinder, 32-highway-miles-per-gallon Chevy Malibu for the U.S. market (which, by the way, offers about the same horsepower as the 1980s Mustang SVO).

The muscle-car market never consisted of people who worried about saving gas, and it doesn't now. Let's face it, Americans are still a wealthy people, and anyone willing to pay extra for the style and vroom of a genuine Motor City muscle car is no more likely to blanch at a few extra dollars at the pump than are buyers of top-of-the line BMW and Mercedes horsepower hogs.

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