2006 Chicago Auto Show Insider Report

THE CHICAGO AUTO SHOW
The Biggest, By Far
By Steve Purdy TheAutoChannel Detroit Bureau

Easily the biggest auto show in terms of square footage and number of attendees, the 98-year-old Chicago Auto Show will draw well over 1 million visitors to see over 1000 automobiles and trucks strewn throughout 1.2 million square feet of exhibit space at the massive McCormick Place in downtown Chicago. Your dedicated Detroit Bureau team, just back from press preview days, witnessed first hand all the hot new stuff. Along with New York and LA, Chicago is now officially sanctioned as a truly international show.

Press Days in Chicago traditionally start with a breakfast hosted by MAMA, not your Mama or my Mama but the Midwest Automotive Media Association, at which a newsworthy dignitary from the auto industry sets the tone for the show. Jim Press, personable CEO of Toyota Motor Sales in the US, offered an enthusiastic and optimistic view of the upcoming year in the US auto industry. He was remarkably humble and gracious about his company’s phenomenal success and ability to lead the way with new products and market segments without offering to eat anyone’s lunch. He also offered an optimistic view of the longer range future of the industry pointing out demographic indicators like the 63 million youngsters who will get new drivers licenses in the next 10 years and his assertion that a new baby boom is about to be realized. “After all,” he quipped, “each new baby represents potentially 13 purchase cycles.”

The charming Mr. Press then led the way out of the breakfast room and onto the show floor where he and his colleagues introduced, with plenty of fanfare, the all new Lexus ES350, essentially a higher content version of the impressive new Toyota Camry introduced last month in Detroit. The ES350 defines a segment of the market described as “entry luxury.” Just to ice the cake for press week the Lexus folks planted a 30-foot metal mechanical flower in downtown Chicago (way off-site of the show) programmed to bloom in honor of the ES350 introduction. A tad longer and wider than its predecessor the new ES350 boasts a 272 hp V-6, 6-speed automatic transmission, iPod and Bluetooth compatibility and more content than the original LS series, Lexus’ full luxury models.

Next it was GM’s turn to impress the throngs of media. Chevrolet unveiled the next in a series of fresh new full-size truck rollouts – the popular Avalanche. GM’s full-size truck boss, Gary White, demonstrated the versatility of the revised Avalanche and described upgraded interiors, enhanced powertrains and advanced safety systems. Though it doesn’t look substantially different than the last generation truck much has been improved under the skin.

GM announced it is making hay (or perhaps corn) with the forward-looking E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) ad campaign initiated during the Super Bowl, touted in Washington DC after the State of the Union address and, beginning next week, with a major push in NASCAR featuring the Silverado Flex Fuel Race Truck. In cahoots with Shell and VeraSun Energy, GM showed the race trunk and promoted the addition of 26 new E85 pumps in and around Chicago where greenies can start buying the corn-based fuel.

Next on the morning’s agenda was a visit to the Dodge booth where a blond-wigged Wink Jasondale (aka DCX VP of Communications Jason Vines who is an accomplished comedian) hosted a quiz show called The Driving Game. The three new Dodge announcements were as entertaining as the quiz show parody. First was the flashy new mid-size sport-utility we’ve all seen and been thrilled with, the Dodge Nitro, here in RT form with an amazing 5,000-lb towing capacity, sliding cargo floor, 4.0-litre V-6 and amazing good looks. Then, wasting no time, Dodge is bringing out an SRT4 (Street and Racing Technology – read high performance) version of the brand new Caliber which is just now being rolled out in standard form. And finally, just to keep us entertained, a big, brash concept pickup truck called Rampage burst out from behind the curtain, featuring unibody construction, front-wheel-drive, fold-flat seats, and tailgate ramp.

Over at Ford and Lincoln Mercury E85 was big news too. They’ve partnered with VeriSun as well and talked about more outlets in Missouri and Illinois. On the stand Kermit the Frog extolled the green virtues of the E85 Hybrid Escape research vehicle before introducing his pal Ervin “Magic” Johnson who presented the freshened Lincoln Navigator, and Navigator “L” (14.7-inches longer) with gaudy new grille and new 300 hp 5.4-litre V-8 that guzzles regular instead of premium fuel. And, for those of us who like performance sedans there was a Lincoln Zephyr MKZ (say Mark Z) with a new 250 hp V-6.

Who says the minivan is dead. Don’t tell Nissan who just refined the Quest in mid-cycle. Some thought the center-mounted gauges were a bit off-putting so Nissan moved them to the traditional place in front of the driver and freshened the interior hoping that might get lagging sales going. And, just for good measure and further entertainment the Nissan folks trotted out a meaty Titan concept pickup.

Hundai continues their 24/7 commitment (7 new products in 24 months) with #5 and #6 respectively: the “near-luxury” Azera” and a new entry level Accent that comes in three trim levels. Both are contenders, to be sure. With the best warranties in the business and rapidly improving looks and content, you’ll want to take a close look at them. Looking ahead the next Hundai product, shown here in preproduction form, will be the Entourage minivan, starting at a bit over $23,000 it will be bigger inside than the Honda Odyssey and feature 6 standard airbags, a 242 hp V-6 and all the accessories need to compete with the best in the minivan class.

Now for some real excitement we stroll to the opposite end of the miles-long McCormick Place to witness the reveal of new Mercedes AMG products with skaters and hockey players on an artificial ice surface. For the uninitiated AMG means super high performance in MB parlance. Mercedes has traditionally introduced AMG products at the Chicago show probably because of Chicago’s reputation as a brawny, tough city. Well, both the R63 AMG based on the new R-Class sports touring vehicle and the ML63 based on the Alabama-built M-class sport-utility will be in showrooms later this year for those with lots of money and lust for power.

Honda had little new to show. They revealed the new entry level Fit in Detroit a few weeks ago. Most of the press conference was about all the awards won with their unibody Ridgeline pickup, Civic and Odyssey recently. But just for a bit of excitement they did bring forth from behind the curtain a fresh Civic Si, an iconic performance small car that goes back to 1986. The new Si, with 18-inch wheels, 6-speed stick, performance brakes and limited-slip differential, is thoroughly updated and will be out this fall.

Keeping with our Japanese theme we next wandered over to see what Mitsubishi had to offer. Struggling to keep up in the tough car business of today, Mitsubishi promises 6 new vehicles in the next 30 months. The two fresh products featured today are both performance versions of bread-and-butter sedans, Lancer EVO and Galant RalliArt. The former is the rally racing proven all-wheel-drive competitor for the dominant Subaru WRX and the latter a dressed up Galant with 258 hp, 3.8-litre V-6 riding on 18-inch alloys. Some mention was made as well of last week’s Mitsubishi win of the longest and toughest motor sports event in the world, the Dakar Rally.

Day two of the Chicago Auto Show press days began with Honda Civic winning yet another accolade, this time Motor Week’s Driver’s Choice award. Civic, you may recall has already won three Car of the Year awards recently.

Best press conference of the show accolade goes to Toyota for the introduction of the new Tundra, completely redesigned version of the full-size pickup that put Toyota in the “work truck” business in 1999. Journalists passed through lumber jack and ranching displays to get to the press conference then watched video of lots of rough, tough and scruffy working men (not one woman among them) using their trucks as major tools to get the job done. Then came Irv Miller, Toyota Motor Sales’ corporate communications guy calling it “ a big, bad motha of a truck,” and later Jim Press referring to it as “the biggest, boldest, bad ass truck in Toyota history.” It certainly carries some of the design and styling queues of the bold concept truck shown at Detroit last year. The new Tundra has an all-new platform and more than 10,000-lb towing capacity with a well-dampened tailgate that a big tough fellow can operate with just two fingers, and a rear-facing camera for aiming the built-in trailer hitch. Tundra is American made, including its new 5.7-litre V-8, produced at both the existing Prinston, Indiana factory and a new plant in San Antonio, Texas. You’ll be able to buy one in about a year.

Something we haven’t seen at the Detroit show in many years are trucks bigger than pickups and Suburbans. Well, a traditional manufacturer featured in Chicago is the Illinois-based Navistar International Corp. who unveiled two trucks considerably bigger than Tundra or any of its colleagues, and bigger even than the Hummer H1 yet way smaller than the Class-A rigs International is also famous for. These stylish trucks look like something we might like to see made into a classic car hauler or perhaps a fifth-wheel tower.

Over at Volkswagen we had a wonderful art demonstration. In order to honor the venerable Rabbit, introduced to the US in 1974, a high-energy young man hand painted (and I mean “hand” painted – dipping his hands into the paint and using his fingers as multiple brushes) a colorful, stylized image of the Rabbit on a large black canvas, all in a matter of less than ten minutes. This was to introduce the new fifth-generation Golf, successor to the Rabbit and best selling car in Europe, that is coming to these shores soon. The new GTI version of the Golf, the car that in Rabbit form invented the “pocket-rocket” market segment, was also on display and will be introduced soon. (In fact, this reporter will be evaluating the GTI later this month. Watch for that report.) Also featured at VW is the EOS coupe with retractable hardtop that we saw in Detroit – a really cool new open-air tourer due out this summer.

Subaru has had great success with the stylish B9 Tribeca crossover sport-utility and they are introducing some upgrades. After garnering the IIHS “Top Safety Pick” honors based on superior rollover protection and use of airbags and other safety technology, Tribeca will now have rollover sensors triggering the side air bags. Another device will measure the rate of break pedal stroke and increase brake force in panic stops.

On display at the BMW booth are the current Z-4 Roadster next to the very Z-3 used in the James Bond film Golden Eye, the first non-Aston Bond car. Nothing really new was presented at BMW except the announcement that a third product, a new crossover, will soon be on line at the Spartanburg, SC plant. Since they began building 3-Series sedans there in 1994 the plant has been in a constant state of expansion, from the original 1.2 million square feet to the current 2.4 million, and they will soon be celebrating the 1-millionth vehicle produced there, an M-Roadster. The plant was recently shut down and converted to a single production line - from a dual one - in order to be able to add other product lines more efficiently. We enthusiastically recommend a visit and tour of the factory and museum in Spartanburg.

And finally at KIA we saw another addition to the small, 7-passenger crossover genre called Multi-S, about the size of a BMW X3, featuring stowable seats, a sliding roof panel and an optional 5-speed manual transmission. That small crossover segment is one that is rapidly being filled with something from every manufacturer.

The best display is certainly the Chrysler group’s where four distinct driving courses allow visitors to experience Dodge, Chrysler and Jeep products, as passengers, not drivers. One course is dedicated to SRT products. A young man who is an instructor at the Skip Barbour Racing School chauffeured me around that course. Another course demonstrates capabilities of Jeep products and another shows how Dodge trucks handle tough road conditions. The fourth is for regular automobiles.

Judging from the Chicago Auto Show the industry is in pretty good shape. So what if GM lost 8-point-many billions of dollars last year, they still sold more total full-size trucks than anyone else. After all, it’s not just about numbers; it’s really just all about numbers. Whichever numbers you like. I heard much more optimism about Ford’s prospects than those of GM but after some serious shaking out, downsizing and reorganizing I think products will tell the story and there are great products coming from all the manufacturers.