Detroit Auto Show, Detroit Irony Show

Posted by hpayne on January 22, 2013

Politically-incorrect Karma.

Call it the Most Ironic Car in Show.

In the north lobby of Cobo Hall, visitors to The Detroit Auto Show this week will find the VL Destino, a Fisker Karma with its electric motor guts ripped out. . . and a gas-guzzling, supercharged, 638 HP Corvette ZR1 engine bolted in its place. Silicon Valley’s green carmakers have boasted that they are the future — and Detroit automakers are dinosaurs. So the fact that successful Detroit industrialist Gilbert Villareal would take the politically correct Fisker — at a time when the overdesigned, overweight Karma is struggling with production — and make it MORE competitive in the four-door sports car market against the likes of the Porsche Panamera and Aston Martin Rapide is rich in irony.

Even more delicious is that the “L” in VL is for Villareal’s partner Bob Lutz, iconic Detroit car guy and father of GM’s Chevy Volt plug-in electric car. Like the Karma, the sales-challenged Volt was hailed as the future. Is the Destino Lutz’s mea culpa? Is the notorious global warming critic (Lutz once called warming a “crock of s***”) thumbing his nose at coastal elites who have poured millions into electric startups like Fisker?

But the Karma-turned-Destino is just the tip of the irony iceberg.

The auto show’s opening also marks the first week of President Obama’s second term, a term gained in part on Obama’s class warfare against America’s upper class. In staring down the GOP at the fiscal cliff earlier this month, the president reiterated his campaign promise to bring “reforms to our tax code so that the wealthiest corporations and individuals can’t take advantage of loopholes.”

Yet the auto show reveals a Robin Hood presidency that has taken from the middle class and given to the rich.

Begin with Fisker founder Henrik Fisker, designer of chariots for the well-to-do, who, despite the struggles of the $100,000 Karma, gained a $529 million loan from Obama’s Energy Department to build the Fisker Nina, a $50,000 electric sedan aimed at consumers of the BMW 5-series. Buyers will get a further $7,500 subsidy for their new toy, just as wealthy celebrities like Leo DiCaprio and Justin Bieber did when they bought their six-figure Karmas.

The Volt’s wealthy consumer demographic, including Michigan’s own millionaire Senator Carl Levin, also get the $7,500 lollypop. The Volt shares a platform with the cheaper, 42-mpg, $20,000 Chevy Cruze Eco. But middle-class Eco buyers get no tax break for their fuel-sipping purchase.

Another electric carmaker, Tesla, occupies prime real estate at the Detroit show. Most show-goers won’t be able to afford its products but they are financing them nonetheless. Billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk, number 190 on Forbes list of wealthiest Americans with an estimated net worth of $2.4 billion, received a $465 million federal loan to build his $60,000 Model S luxury sedan.

The show floor is also littered with NASCAR models. NASCAR’s International Speedway Corp., which owns tracks including Michigan International Speedway, is a favorite of Obamacrats such as Michigan’s Senator Debbie Stabenow who snuck in a $78 million tax break for it in the fiscal cliff legislation. Indeed, the $68 billion in cliff tax breaks Obama helped shepherd to Big Businesses such as NASCAR, GE and Goldman Sachs will spend all of the $62 billion raised in 2013 by hiking taxes on incomes over $400,000.

The final irony? In 2007, candidate Obama came to Cobo Hall and predicted he would transform the automobile if elected president. “The auto industry is on a path that is unacceptable and unsustainable,” the Harvard lawyer lectured a roomful of auto executives. Five years later, and his expensive, taxpayer-funded electrics are struggling while the industry has ridden gas-powered SUVs and sedans back to profitability.

And Corvette engines are powering Fiskers.

Comments are closed.