Dans Papers - May 18, 2007

It's Monday morning, May 14, and the breaking news is that DaimlerChrysler has finally sold its Chrysler Division at a loss of billions. They must have really wanted to get rid of that silly little Chrysler company.

Coincidentally, one of the cars I was going to mention in this week's article is the newly designed Chrysler 300 Sedan that took America by storm with its handsome Bentley-esque style. This car is certainly a homerun for Chrysler and it's a shame that the rest of their product line didn't sell as well. The reason given for Chrysler's poor sales record was that they concentrated too heavily on large truck type vehicles. Duhhh! That's exactly what I've been saying for the last several years. The Chrysler 300 is certainly full of the right visual clues. In fact, not since the 1936 Cord Beverly four-door, has a new American sedan caught the imagination of the buying public. Esoteric fact - unlike the Chrysler 300, the Cord didn't sell well because it was too radical.

Historically, four-door automobiles have never been as sexy as convertibles or two-door coupes. Their image has been that of a prosaic and practical family hauler. If you wanted a fast-looking, rakish body-style you looked elsewhere. But over the years, a trend has been toward more powerful and faster four-door sedans. This direction peaked with the Mercedes 500 S-Class that was introduced in the 1980s. If you remember the hit television show "Miami Vice," it was de rigueur for the bad guys to drive Mercedes 500s, which were always part of their exotic car stables. Whenever I was in Germany in the 1980s, it was the big Benzes that were running along with the Porsches at insane speeds on the Autobahn.

Mercedes and BMW are still at it. They currently build the fastest, most powerful and expensive four-door sedans in the world. I'm sure you've all noticed the Mercedes CLS four-door. This is the recently introduced Mercedes sedan that doesn't look like a Mercedes. It's too radical. It's too sexy. It's too desirable. In fact, this sedan looks so hot that it makes the newly minted larger Mercedes 5-Class Sedan flagship look absolutely staid. But why did they put Ford Focus fenders on the new S-Class?

Speaking of the Ford Focus, it is a beautifully designed vehicle, especially for an entry-level car. It has daring Eurotech styling that is a little too bold for the American market. Obviously the Europeans love it, because the Ford Focus became the best selling car in England and did very well on the rest of the continent. Another extremely Eurotech-looking vehicle recently introduced is the new Toyota Yaris. I love the look of this car, especially as a two-door coupe. I wonder if it will catch on over here. By the way, the cool looking Yaris gets about 40 MPG. Esoteric fact - it was designed in France.

Another extremely handsome new vehicle is the Ford Edge SUV. It is a clean sheet, stunning shape that looks well built and handles adequately for its bulk. It has been called the car that will save Ford, but any car that will save the American car industry needs to have excellent gasoline economy. The Edge needs a diesel or hybrid power. Its gas consumption is not bad, but just average for a vehicle in that weight class.

I have to admire General Motors for continually producing the Chevrolet Corvette. Like Porsche, since 1953, GM has been improving a basic design concept. Even though I admired the look of the earlier Corvettes, they were not built well. The new models are light years ahead of the old ones in quality, as well as performance. They also offer more performance per dollar than virtually any other car in the world. Imagine Ferrari performance for a third of the price. Esoteric fact - the 190 MPH Corvette gets 25 MPG on the highway. Why? Because it's so powerful that the overdrive transmission can be set so that at 60 MPH in top gear the engine is virtually idling.

Another impressive automobile with a dramatic shape is the recently out of production retro Ford GT40. It's the most exciting car to come out of Detroit in the last 30 years. The shape has stood the test of time since the sixties, when the original was designed. Having raced against an original Ford GT40 in Bridgehampton, I attest that a well-driven GT40 on a race circuit is unbeatable - quite a machine, then and now. Thank you, Ford.

Bob Gelber, an automotive journalist living in the Hamptons, appears regularly on television as an automotive expert. You can email him at bobgelber@aol.com