Heavy Metal?

Over at the Dodge stand, a young 50 wannabe is working as a security guard and craving the new Challenger. "I had pictures of this car up on my wall," he says, staring up at the blood-red Challenger spinning on a pedestal. "This car is my future." Then I provided the buzzkill by asking the young man with bling in his ears and stars in his eyes how he could afford to fill up this 425-horsepower monster of the motorway. "That's the only problem," he says, "with gas at $4 or $5 a gallon. That's tough."

Chrysler officials contend their Challenger lineup has something to offer fuel-conscious consumers. There's a stripped-down version with a V-6 engine that gets 25mpg on the highway. "A car like this is never out of step with the times," says Chrysler president Jim Press. "At some point, everybody likes to put the throttle to the floor and see what this baby can do."

Indeed, another Chrysler exec suggests that many people who come to their showrooms for sensible reasons might end up going home in a car like the Challenger. "A lot of people come in for fuel economy or even a hybrid and then go home in something different," says Chrysler marketing VP Deborah Wahl Meyer. Of course, currently, you wouldn't be able to find a hybrid on the showroom floor of your Chrysler or Dodge dealership. They will introduce their first gas-electric hybrid systems on big SUVs later this year. (Toyota currently controls 80 percent of the hybrid market.)

Oddly enough, I finally happened upon a green message coming from, of all places, Bentley. Yes, Bentley, home of $300,000 luxury cars with V-12 engines that swills gas like 50 Cent downs Cristal. At its sparsely attended press conference, Bentley marketing chief Stuart McCullough pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions (the global-warming gas) from its tailpipes 15 percent by 2012. What's more, Bentley will introduce a new engine that will cut its gas guzzling by 40 percent and it will make all of its motors capable of running on biofuels by 2012. Through all these measures, Bentley promises to boost its fuel economy from the teens today to 46mpg, when you factor in the entire lifecycle of the car and how much oil (rather than biofuel) it actually burns. Why does Bentley bother when its well-wheeled buyers clearly can afford gas at any price? "The cost of gas is not the issue," says McCullough. "It's the fact that people might start throwing stones at your car. Our customers are very conscious of the public statements they make." So, too, are the rest of us. Which might be worth remembering before Detroit rolls out another muscle car.

© 2008