Hummers are out, hybrids are in

By DAVID USBORNE

When Tim Robbins and his wife Susan Sarandon left the Vanity Fair Oscar party last year in something that was patently not a Hummer - the colossal faux-military vehicle first popularised by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and a symbol of road-hogging prowess - all of Los Angeles let out a knowing sigh.

Not for the first time in their lives, Robbins and Sarandon were making a political statement. (Or, in this instance, an environmental one.) Their choice of wheels nowadays is something called a Toyota Prius. Styled like a wedge of Wisconsin cheese, this car is no beauty, nor has it won any prizes for guts or acceleration. But it has something special beneath its bonnet: two engines.

The Prius, in other words, is one of those new-fangled hybrid cars that give its owner more than just a mode of transport, but also a reason to be smug. With an electric motor that kicks in to do the work of the regular petrol engine at slower speeds, it gives fabulous miles to the gallon and pollutes less, too.

So, the Robbins-Sarandon family was taking up arms in a Hollywood cultural war. On the other side of the battlefield were Arnie - he was the first American to buy a Hummer when it first came out 10 years ago - and the brigades of other more recent converts to the General Motors-owned brand, for whom taking to the road is about flashing muscle. The pumped-up like to ride in a stretch Hummer.

The Hummer and its variant, the H2, represent the apotheosis of America's long-running love affair with cars-on-steroids. In the 1950s it would have been an obscenely long power-steered saloon with tail fins and a drive that was about as firm as a doughnut soaked in milk. Since the mid-90s, though, the highways from Connecticut to Colorado have been invaded by so-called Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs). Jeeps became Explorers became Expeditions became Navigators. I'm bigger than you, get out of my way.

Not so fast. Americans are beginning to question whether the love affair with big is sustainable. The reason is clear. The price of petrol in the US has reached record highs, touching an average of US$2 ($3.08) a gallon nationwide, compared to around US$1.50 ($2.30) a few months ago. This may be still far below what Europeans are used to ( bear in mind an American gallon is smaller than its imperial nephew) and it is cheaper than a gallon of milk. But drivers are starting to wonder.

Arnie, you are going out of fashion. For symptoms, look no further than the sudden slump in Hummer sales figures. After the launch two years ago of the H2 - which looks even more like a giant Dinky Toy than its predecessor - General Motors struggled to keep up with demand. It was the only brand on its books that it never had to push with rebates and discounts.

Since the start of this year, that has all changed. Hummers are being stranded on the showroom lot. And what is the most common complaint of those already driving a Hummer? Its absurdly low mileage of about 11 miles (17km) per gallon.

"I don't know what it is," said Jim Lynch, a dealer who is building a garage for his Hummers in a suburb of St Louis. Across the US, Hummer sales have fallen and Lynch is struggling to shift his inventory.

"I know in some parts of the country it became the poster child for large SUVs for people who didn't like them. I know they're burning them in California." (Not quite, but one Hummer garage was hit by an arson attack last year.)

Perhaps even more worrying for Detroit, capital of the American car industry, is a similar slowdown in sales of other over-sized family vehicles. General Motors has temporarily closed a factory that makes some of its SUV models in Oklahoma because of a supply glut. It hopes to crank up the production lines again later. Ford admits that its numbers are also down this year for its largest SUV models, the Expedition and the tarmac-thumping Lincoln Navigator.

So here is the news from Detroit, and it should not surprise you. The Big Three - GM, Daimler-Chrysler and Ford - are rushing to join the hybrid revolution. What is a bit surprising, however, is that they seem to be finding a way to combine hybrid technology with the American taste for size. No longer do hybrid cars have to look weird, like the products of science experiments, or be particularly small.

First off the blocks in a couple of months - and already earning rave reviews from the car magazine editors - is the new hybrid version of the Ford Escape. This is an SUV, albeit a fairly modest member of that family. With the Prius and Honda Civic, it will be only one of three cars on the US market that are fully hybrid vehicles. In other words, there will be times when the petrol engine will cut out and virtually all noise from beneath the bonnet will cease as the electric motor takes over.

That might bring some concerns for pedestrians and cyclists unable to hear the roar of oncoming traffic, but more stealthy wagons are on the way. Honda is rushing out a hybrid Accord. Most impressive, however, is Toyota's new addition to its line of luxury cars bearing the Lexus name. Available in the US next year will be a hybrid sister to its fast-selling and highly stylish Lexus SUV.

Not a hybrid but part of the same trend is a soon-to-be released diesel-drinking version of the Jeep Liberty.

With its V6 engine, it will consume 25 per cent less fuel than the regular Jeep Liberty.

In January, a senior executive at General Motors suggested that hybrid cars were an "interesting curiosity" but nothing more. Already, the company has changed its tune. Though it has no hybrids in its showrooms now, it is supplying hybrid trucks to some municipal government fleets, for instance in Miami. And it has sold hybrid buses to Seattle. More importantly, it is promising to be ready to make a million hybrid versions of its most popular models for the general public as soon as in 2007. (Americans buy about 17 million new vehicles a year.)

Curiously, the economics of buying one of these hybrids is not as attractive as it seems. The mileage statistics pasted on these new cars are often misleading. Even in the case of the Prius, testing by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, says it can run for 55 miles on a single gallon (3.7 litres) of petrol. But the test the EPA uses is widely acknowledged as being skewed. Other tests have put the Prius at about 43 miles per gallon.

Bear in mind also, that hybrid cars are generally more expensive to buy. A car that costs about US$20,000 ($30,830) will sell at a premium of US$2500 ($3850) more if it has the twin-engine technology. You would need to drive an average of 15,000 miles a year to make that money back at the pump.

For that reason, many motoring experts predict that only if petrol goes beyond US$2 and more a gallon will there be any widespread defection of Americans away from their traditional petrol-only cars.

That said, there is no denying that interest in hybrids is picking up. Toyota reports that it has an orders backlog today of about 20,000 Prius cars and that sales of the model this year are likely to be up by 50 per cent to about 50,000 units.

"It's way too early to write obituaries for big American vehicles," the chief motoring writer for the Detroit News newspaper, Daniel Howes, said. But he added: "The success of the Toyota's Prius - and Ford's eagerness to get the hybrid Escape in driveways - suggests we're beyond the point of hybrids-as-fad."

So never mind if buyers of these new cars may not, in the end, save much money. Whether it is Iraq or the soaring price of fuel - or some kind of reaction against runaway consumerism - there is a growing sense that hybrids are the new cool in America's showrooms. It's planet-conscious against Planet Hollywood, tree-hugging versus tree-chopping. It may even be Democrat versus Republican.

Wes Brown, an analyst at Iceology, a Los Angeles market research company, agrees that it is about shifting cultural tastes. "We look at the higher-end SUVs as really being fashion statements," he said. "It had its moment in the sun when everyone had to have one. And now, that's it. It's done."

But if you can soon have a hybrid Lexus SUV, who is to say that a hybrid Hummer is not around the corner? It could happen. Then again, that would seem to deny the whole Hummer ethos - consume for the sake of consumption.

- INDEPENDENT