Chicago Auto Show: Nibbling Around the Edges

Chicago Auto Show: Nibbling Around the Edges

By Bill Visnic

After the giant outpouring of product at last month’s Detroit auto show, there’s barely time for anyone to come up for air before taking in this week’s Chicago Auto Show.

At Chicago, automakers, rushing to grapple with a rapidly changing U.S. market, will stage a bevy of facelifted models and continue to promote fuel-efficient options such as more-powerful but more-efficient four-cylinder engines.

But more important will be new models and concepts that hope to revive interest in two flagging market segments: vans and compact pickups.

Vans At Center Stage? Vans?

Volkswagen AG will roll out one of the Chicago show’s most-significant production models with the planned unveiling of its Routan, the badge-engineered version of Chrysler LLC’s Dodge Grand Caravan/Chrysler Town & Country — and VW’s first-ever true minivan. There was scant detail prior to the Routan’s unveiling, other than that another of VW’s persistently ill-advised names seems certain to once again displease dealers and befuddle the public.

And Ford Motor Co. is expected to show a U.S.-spec version of the Transit Connect commercial van, which is enduringly popular in Europe, in what may be a stab to realign the paradigm and instill the Euro “sensibility” (read: fuel economy) in that market.

The Second Coming – Or is it Third – of the “Compact” Pickup

And high gasoline prices are beginning to reinvigorate automakers’ attention to small to midsize pickup trucks – a market all but written off a couple years ago. Data from Edmunds.com indicates buyers once again are considering smaller pickups as an alternative to the thirsty full-sizers into which automakers for years have lured them, largely via outsized incentives.

Most intriguing of Chicago’s lesser-than-a-full-size pickups is General Motors Corp.’s GMC Denali XT concept, a unibody revival of the’70s and ’80s Chevy El Camino (few remember GMC’s versions called the Sprint and Caballero). The Denali XT concept doesn’t appear particularly small — unless considered in relation to today’s hulking Sierra pickup — but is built on the new GM global rear-wheel-drive platform slated to underpin the still-gestating new-generation Chevy Camaro. GM’s Pontiac also has suggested it could market a similar car-truck as a family partner to its new G8 sedan.

Suzuki Motor Corp. shows up in Chicago with its new Equator midsize pickup, built courtesy of a new deal with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. Equator is a rebadged variant of Nissan’s Frontier. The deal may help Nissan deal with some excess capacity at its Smyrna, Tenn., assembly plant, given Frontier sales nosedived to around 64,000 units last year.

And although GM’s Hummer brand may not convince many of its save-the-planet credentials — particularly with the V8-toting Alpha model — Hummer unveils its H3T, a version of the flagging H3 SUV with a 5-foot bed and 22 inches added to the wheelbase.

Facelifts And Reworked Engines

The Chicago show’s facelift brigade includes:

• The Ford Edge Sport, a new version of the popular crossover; it will be introduced as a 2009 model in the fall. It looks like a factory-cutomized vehicle with an exterior body kit, special interior and — believed to be an industry first on a crossover — standard 20-inch wheels; 22-inch wheels are optional.

• The Mitsubishi Galant sedan and Eclipse coupe. Galant also gets some V6 reworking, and Eclipse mainly sports the Japanese variation of the Audi gaping-trapezoid grille. Its V6 is slightly retuned for a couple extra horses.

• Hyundai’s ’09 Sonata has reworked sheetmetal and what is said to be an all-new interior, reflecting how quickly the standard is rising for luxo-perception in mid-market sedans. The Sonata’s not at all old in the market, yet since the current model’s launch Hyundai has watched new generations of Toyota’s Camry and the Honda Accord come to market with markedly richer interiors. The Sonata also features a revised 2.4-liter 4-cylinder that delivers more power yet better fuel economy.

• GMC will show the ’09 Sierra Hybrid, its full-size pickup that utilizes GM’s  innovative but pricy 2-Mode hybrid-electric drivetrain to boost combined fuel economy by 25 percent.

• Chrysler ends the misery by finally unveiling the ’08 Dodge Challenger SRT8. The Challenger is the two-door the world insisted was immediately necessary when the Charger sedan was launched, meaning Chrysler’s enjoyed nearly three full years to dribble out teasers and innuendos about the Challenger. After the protracted buildup, the horsepower wars are winding down; now the Challenger stands a fine chance to set a new record for the most-anticipated new vehicle to launch into immediate irrelevance.

Photos by the manufacturers
1 & 2 - GMC Denali XT concept
3 - 2009 Ford Edge Sport
4 - 2009 GMC Sierra 2-Mode Hybrid
5 - 2009 Dodge Challenger SRT8

Michelle Krebs:  is Editor-in-Chief of AutoObserver.com. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.