Most new sport-utilities are car-based vehicles designed mainly for on-road travel, but Jeep says its 2002 Liberty can pass the ultimate off-road test, the Rubicon Trail.
“Don’t even think about putting Liberty in the same class as those `cute utes.’ The Rubicon Trail is littered with the carcasses of lesser vehicles,” Jeep General Manager Tom Sidlik said. “Liberty will climb over the bones of them all.”
Liberty was among a few dozen new models and concepts introduced to the media last week at the Detroit Auto Show.
The four-door Liberty, which goes on sale this summer to replace the 18-year-old Cherokee, will come with two- and four-wheel drive, a choice of 4-cylinder or V-6 engines and Sport or Limited Editions.
Jeep officials say they have capacity for 200,000 vehicles annually and expect 80 to 90 percent to have automatic transmission and 4WD. It is the first Jeep with car-like independent front suspension instead of a solid front axle.
Craig Love, vice president for Jeep engineering, said Wrangler and Liberty will cater to youth, whereas the Cherokee was a vehicle for older, value-conscious buyers. Liberty, therefore, he said, will attract those whose income levels or family size have outgrown the Wrangler but who have shied away from the Cherokee’s boxy styling that dates to 1984.
Tom Marinelli, vice president of Chrysler and Jeep global brand centers, said DaimlerChrysler has 25,000 Cherokees in dealer inventory and has made no plans about possible discounts or sales to dispose of them before Liberty’s arrival.
Money matters: DaimlerChrysler will announce a reorganization of its Chrysler unit in February, sparking rumors of austerity programs to restore profits. Wolfgang Bernhard, new chief operating officer of Chrysler, says no future products have been cut.
“There will always be money for the future,” Bernhard said. “You cannot save yourself only with austerity. You must spend money for prosperity. “
Dieter Zetsche, Chrysler’s chief executive, seconded Bernhard’s notion. “Exciting products made this company what it is and exciting products will make it stand tall again,” said Zetsche.
Ladies and gentlemen . . . : The award for the longest introduction in the history of the Detroit Auto Show, 15 minutes, goes to Ken Kesey, author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Kesey took that amount of time to detail the fun of taking the road less traveled before showing the media, growing cuckoo from the wait, the 2002 Jeep Liberty, which the automaker says is designed for travel on- and off-road.
Firestone, who?: The Ken Kesey Award for avoiding the issue to Ford President Jac Nasser, who in a 20-minute discussion of the highlights and low lights in the last year, never once mentioned the word Firestone. Later, however, in an interview, when asked if Firestone will survive, Nasser said, “The marketplace will determine that. I can’t make a prediction.”
‘Bird watching: The five colors available on the 2002 Ford Thunderbird are the same basic hues offered on the 1955 model–blue, yellow, white, black and red. Thunderbird will be offered as a convertible starting at $35,495 and as a fully equipped premium model with a removable hardtop with side portholes for $39,795. Both include freight. The premium model also adds chrome wheels, traction control and anti-lock brakes as standard. The optional plastic hardtop weighs 83 pounds and will come in the same color as the car body or in contrasting black, white or red.
Power-hungry: Jim O’Connor, Ford division president, said the upcoming 2002 Thunderbird coming out this summer will be the second car in the household and compete with sailboats for the consumer’s disposable dollars.
The Thunderbird will be powered by a 3.9-liter, 252-horsepower V-8 with a 5-speed automatic, but sources hinted that an even more potent engine is coming.
“We’re going to keep doing things to always keep this vehicle fresh, and it doesn’t take too much imagination to consider that an engine option might be one way to do that,” a source said.
And the winners are: No surprise that the Chrysler PT Cruiser was named North American Car of the Year by a panel of journalists. The other car finalists were the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius, both with hybrid gas-electric powertrains. Something of a surprise was the Acura MD-X, a car-based SUV, being named Truck of the Year. Other finalists were the Ford Escape and Toyota Sequoia SUVs.
FWD Vibes: In unveiling its 2003 Vibe, Pontiac officials estimated only about 10 percent will be purchased with optional all-wheel-drive, and the bulk will be base front-wheel-drive or high-performance FWD versions. The base and AWD models will be offered with a 1.8-liter, 130-h.p. 4-cylinder engine. The base model will offer a choice of 5-speed manual or 4-speed automatic and the AWD model will come with automatic only. The high-performance 1.8-liter GT, which will develop 180 h.p., will be offered with 6-speed manual only.
Vibe was developed with Toyota, which gets a version called Matrix. Both are four-door hatchbacks with different styling.
Previously, the GM-Toyota alliance produced the Chevrolet Prizm and Toyota Corolla cars. Prizm will be dropped to make room for Vibe, which will be built at the joint-venture GM-Toyota plant in Fremont, Calif., and Matrix will be built at Toyota’s plant in Cambridge, Ontario, that produces the Corolla. Vibe and Matrix are built off a version of the Corolla platform, and the engines and transmissions are used by Toyota in some of its cars.
Matrix, like Vibe, will be offered in base front-wheel-drive, all-wheel-drive and high-performance versions, with the performance model called Sport. Matrix, like Vibe, also bears striking similarities style-wise to the Ford Focus.
All’s well that ends well: Bob Rewey, Ford group vice president, said sometimes when you misread the market, you come out better. As proof, Rewey recalled that when Ford gave the go-ahead to replace the compact Bronco II with the Explorer SUV, Ford’s top minds forecast Explorer’s sales at 80,000 units annually. Explorer became the best-selling SUV its first year (1991) and sold a record 445,157 last year.
The reason for Ford’s pessimistic sales target for Explorer? “Explorer was replacing a two-door Bronco; Chevy had a two-door Blazer, and here we were coming out with a four-door competitor,” Rewey said.
The cure: “There’s no problem in the auto industry that good products can’t solve,” Carlos Ghosn, president of Nissan, said in introducing a trio of new models here. The trio included the long-awaited remake of the Nissan Z-Car coming out in mid-2002 as a 2003 model, a high-performance SE-R edition of the Sentra coming out this fall as a 2002, as well as an advanced look at the full-size Nissan pickup coming out in 2003, which will give birth to a full-size SUV shortly after. The pickup and SUV will be built at a new plant in Mississippi.
The pickup, which looks just like the GMC Terradyne concept truck of two years ago, will be displayed at the Chicago Auto Show next month. But, insiders said, don’t be fooled that the production model will look like this concept. It won’t.
Ghosn said Nissan will bring out 22 new models worldwide by April 2003, with 10 earmarked for the U.S.
The upcoming Z, which was first shown in concept form two years ago and again as a concept last year, and both times greeted by a yawn from the media and Z-Car enthusiasts, has been dramatically restyled for its return to the market, thanks to the negative reaction to the concepts the last two years.
Jerry Hirshberg, retired head of Nissan Design USA brought back to unveil his last project, said the production model reflects a “fusion of the original 240Z and the high-performance 300ZX.” The 2003 Z will be powered by a 3.5-liter, 260-h.p. V-6 that will boast a zero- to 60-m.p.h. time of less than 6 seconds, compared with a 3-liter, 222-h.p. V-6 that powered the Z when it was last offered in the 1995 model year.
Sources said eventually a convertible will be offered in the Z lineup, but no timetable has been mentioned. No price has been mentioned either, but Hirshberg referred to the upcoming Z as a “$50,000-plus performance car with a $30,000-minus sticker.”
One noteworthy feature of the upcoming full-size Nissan truck is a tailgate that lowers almost to ground level for loading heavy cargo. At the same time, the cargo floor extends rearward, also to make loading easier.
