New Cars Arrive, Courting Few Buyers

The prolonged slump in vehicle sales has barely slowed car companies from blitzing the market with new models.

But with industry sales expected to fall below last year’s depressed levels, automakers will be challenged to attract attention from consumers who are staying away from showrooms in increasing numbers.

General Motors, whose United States sales fell 22 percent last year, made the most news Sunday, by introducing a sedan and two crossover vehicles at the opening on Sunday of the Detroit auto show. The company also said it would add two more models to its Chevrolet lineup — a minicar and a seven-passenger crossover — in 2011.

G.M. executives said the models had been in development long before the overall market slid 18 percent last year, and the company hit such dire straits that it needed to seek financial help from the federal government.

“These cars are paid for, their development is behind them, and the manufacturing investment is done,” said Robert Lutz, G.M.’s vice chairman for product development.

He said he hoped the new Buick Lacrosse sedan and the two crossovers, the Chevrolet Equinoxand Cadillac SRX, would sell without incentives and lift G.M.’s sagging revenues.

“Some people say a bad market and a poor economic environment is an unfortunate time to launch new product,” Mr. Lutz said. “I think it’s an extremely good time to launch new product because that’s when you need the added revenue.”

Automakers and analysts believe that industry sales in 2009 will drop significantly below the 13.2 million vehicles sold last year, possibly to as low as 10.5 million units.

Under those conditions, new models will be hard-pressed to draw anywhere near the level of interest they typically receive when they first hit the market.

Developing a new model usually takes three to four years, meaning G.M.’s offerings started being developed when American consumers were buying about 16 million vehicles a year.

“The problem is you can’t turn product development on and turn it off depending on the market conditions,” said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.

In G.M.’s case, the company will probably cut back on new models as it downsizes to meet conditions attached to its $13.4 billion loan package from the government.

“The nature of auto companies is to overproduce, but that is definitely going to change with the new financial reality,” Mr. Cole said. “I don’t think we will see these bad habits come back.”

The Ford Motor Company showed off two new models Sunday, the Taurus sedan and Fusion hybrid, as well as a 540-horsepower version of the Mustang.

But with the market shrinking, Ford is playing down expectations somewhat for the Taurus.

The Taurus was the best-selling American car in the early 1990s, but it gradually lost its appeal and became an also-ran in the full-size sedan segment behind the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord.

The new version, Ford executives said, will find a smaller niche in the market.

“We’re not expecting to ever do the 400,000 units we did at its peak,” said Mark Fields, president of Ford’s Americas division.

Other models that were introduced in Detroit included hybrids from Honda and Toyota’s Lexus division, as well as concept cars from German automakers.

The automaker with the least to show was Chrysler, which was coming off a year when its sales had declined 30 percent.

Chrysler recently received a $4 billion loan from the government in order to stay solvent until March. The company’s chief executive, Robert L. Nardelli, said Sunday that Chrysler was counting on more federal aid to complete its reorganization process.

While it showed a few prospective electric vehicles on Sunday, Chrysler had no new models ready for the market.

But Mr. Nardelli said new car introductions would resume in 2010, and pledged that Chrysler would still be in business by then.

One of Chrysler’s vice chairmen, James Press, said the automaker did not think the lack of new models would hurt its sales in 2009. “We feel we haven’t extracted the potential of our current product line,” he said.

A Less Exuberant Show, but a More Rational One

DETROIT is reeling. Its automakers teeter on the edge of bankruptcy, the unemployment rate hovers around double digits, its flamboyant former mayor is in jail. Houses are advertised for as little as $1 and its professional football team just finished with a 0-16 record, an N.F.L. first for regular-season play.

But it is showtime again in Motown, so the embattled city is doing its best to affect a festive atmosphere for thousands of journalists and industry insiders arriving for the North American International Auto Show. Despite the hospitality — and exciting prospects for the electrification of America’s vehicle fleet — it seems likely this will be the most subdued Detroit show in decades. A celebration of the automobile that was optimistic and bombastic in normal times may end up feeling more like a wake for a once-thriving industry.

“The 2009 N.A.I.A.S. will be a pretty gloomy affair — low key, attendance down by journalists, analysts and major brands, glitz definitely down,” George Peterson, president of AutoPacific, a market research firm in Tustin, Calif., wrote in an e-mail message. This year, he added, automakers will try to appear prudent — not blazing through marketing dollars. Mr. Peterson said he thought Detroit’s long-running industry showcase would retreat to its more modest, pre-1989 roots, before it took on the role (and name) of being North America’s auto show. That would turn the clock back to when automakers and dealerships catered more to hometown tire-kickers than to globe-trotting jet-setters.

Contrasts between last year’s raucous gathering and this year’s leaner get-together are likely to be stark. In 2008, to lend some cowboy swagger to its redesigned Dodge Ram pickup, Chrysler staged a cattle drive of 120 Texas Longhorns through downtown streets.

And for the debut last year of its new F-150 pickup, Ford had a noisy pyrotechnic show starring the country singer Toby Keith. At a high-decibel kickoff party and fashion show called GM Style, Detroit’s mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, tried to dance with General Motors’ vice chairman, Robert A. Lutz.

In 2009 no one should expect stampedes, fireworks or a hip-hopping mayor. (Last October, Mr. Kilpatrick began serving a 120-day jail sentence after pleading guilty to charges of obstruction of justice and assault.) The show’s organizers say that about 20 new car and truck models will make their global debuts, far fewer than in recent years. Combined with another two dozen or so vehicles that were previously shown outside North America, the Detroit unveilings are expected to be — for the most part — green-tinged, low-key and frill-free.

Three days of media previews begin Sunday, to be followed by two days of industry-only attendance, and then nine days for the public.

Yet the target audience for this show’s press days isn’t so much those who will be in Cobo Center. Rather, the automakers will be playing to the Washington lawmakers who recently threw a financial lifeline to Chrysler and General Motors in the form of emergency loans. Congress will no doubt be watching how this taxpayer money is being used.

Ford, G.M., Honda and Toyota will be among those showing new hybrid, electric and alternative-fuel vehicles, emphasizing sustainability and environmental sensitivity. Models that celebrate extreme horsepower, avant-garde styling and macho attitude are likely be played down and rolled out with little or no fanfare.

In a development unprecedented in recent memory, some major manufacturers — including Nissan, Infiniti, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Land Rover, Porsche, Ferrari and Rolls-Royce — have chosen to skip the show altogether. They cited a desire to spend their promotional dollars at events that they say are aimed more directly at their customers.

Mercedes-Benz is saving the cost of a press conference for its new E-Class sedan by unveiling the car off-site, rather than inside the convention center, the night before the press previews begin. The E-Class will not be displayed at the auto show, although new fuel-saving technologies in three concept vehicles will be. BMW will have its new Z4 sports car here in a display area less grand than originally planned. G.M. was hoping to save more than $1 million just by switching its display area’s flooring to carpeting instead of wood and tile.

In recent years, the economic impact of the two weeks of the auto show on the Detroit metro area was estimated by the show organizers to be as much as $580 million. This year, the estimates have been scaled back to less than $350 million.

With the stagecraft toned down this year, the cars will become the focus of attention. G.M. and Ford each plan six introductions, including important new models like the Buick LaCrosse, Cadillac SRX, Lincoln MKT and Ford Taurus. Chrysler is introducing three prototype electric vehicles, including the Dodge Circuit EV sports car. Toyota has two new hybrid electric introductions here as well as the tiny FT-EV.

There will also be nine new designs from Chinese manufacturers, who were for the first time allotted space on the main show floor — previously they were relegated to Cobo’s basement or entry hallways — even though their cars are not yet sold in the United States.

Overseas-based automakers continue to gain not only floor space at this show, but market share as well. The combined United States market share of Ford, G.M. and Chrysler fell to 47.5 percent last year, from 51 percent in 2007, according to Autodata, an industry analysis firm, which noted that this was the first time the Detroit Three had fallen below 50 percent. Asian brands accounted for 44.6 percent of the sales in the American market last year, and European brands for 7.8 percent.

But many of these so-called foreign automakers, like Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Hyundai, produce significant numbers of vehicles in the United States, Canada and Mexico. In that sense, they are all a part of the American auto industry, and all are affected by the problems of the industry and the economy — a reality that will be reflected in their show displays.