Journalist Paul Eisenstein

DATE January 9, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Paul Eisenstein discusses the latest automotive news
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. New SUVs, gas and electric hybrids,
million-dollar luxury cars--all the latest designs and concepts are on display
at America's two biggest auto shows. The Los Angeles show runs through
Sunday; the Detroit Auto Show opens to the public on Saturday. My guest, Paul
Eisenstein, has been to both. Eisenstein is the publisher and editorial
director of the online publication thecarconnection.com. He used to report
from Detroit for NPR and is now a commentator on NPR's "Morning Edition."
Eisenstein is the former president of the Automotive Press Association. We
asked him to talk with us about where the auto industry is heading.

We're facing a likely war with Iraq. Who knows how that will affect our
access to oil. Some people think if we weren't so dependent on oil, we
wouldn't even be facing this war. Is the auto industry preparing for oil
shortages or higher prices or any kind of major change in oil?

PAUL EISENSTEIN (Thecarconnection.com; NPR Commentator): I think the auto
industry would probably like to duck its head in the sand, but increasingly
it's aware it must respond, not only to the threat of an oil problem because
of, say, a Middle East war or something happening and continuing to happen in
Venezuela, but simply because there is growing pressure in the marketplace and
in the political arena here in the United States. So it is quite likely that
we're going to have to see the industry respond on its own, which is an
unusual step. Usually they get dragged kicking and screaming to respond to
any pressure to deal with either emissions or fuel economy.

GROSS: At the new auto shows in LA and Detroit, are there new cars that are
emphasizing alternate fuels, either, you know, electric or hybrid?

EISENSTEIN: The electric vehicle, pure electric battery-powered vehicle, is
essentially dead. You'll see some of these so-called neighborhood electrics,
basically golf carts, but those are going to be specialty vehicles in
extremely low number. The reality is you can't mandate that as California has
tried. Battery cars just don't have the range, the cost is high, people don't
like the charging. We can argue all we want about whether they really meet
the actual needs that people have day to day, but they're not being accepted.
So the hunt is on for alternatives.

Everybody seems to be placing their bet on the fuel cell vehicle, which uses
hydrogen to create essentially water and electricity and to run electric
motors. Some people call it a refillable battery. Long term, perhaps 2010
and beyond, that technology could become a very serious alternative to the
conventional internal combustion engine. Great. That's 2010. What about
now?

We're starting to see the manufacturers come up with creative technology that
can take the regular gasoline engine and make it more fuel efficient. The
midterm solutions, there are two of them. Here in the United States, the push
is on for what's called the gasoline-electric hybrid, and we saw General
Motors in particular make a massive announcement the other day. They are
talking about making available as many as one million gasoline-electric
hybrids a year by 2007. This would cover about a dozen models, which would
represent a sizable portion of the products that they sell here in the United
States.

Now there are some problems. They give you anywhere from 12 to as much as 40,
maybe even 50 percent better fuel economy, but they add complexity. There's a
potential problem in terms of service. You have more technology to service on
your car. And they require consumers to pay anywhere from 1,200 to as much as
$5,000 more for a comparable vehicle. Everybody's betting that the likely way
that this technology would catch on with the mass of consumers, not with the
true environmentally minded auto buyer, will require that the federal
government and probably states pass some sort of tax credits. Little bit of a
problem at a time when everybody is desperately trying to fill budget
shortfalls.

GROSS: Have you spoken to a lot of drivers who have these hybrids, and what
are their reactions to the hybrid technology?

EISENSTEIN: Well, remember that the people who've bought them so far, and
there aren't a lot--last year, I think, the total sales of hybrids were only
about 35,000, mainly because the first hybrids were expensive and required a
lot of sacrifice. Honda's Insight, for example, is a very small two-seater.
The people who bought them were probably green-minded people to begin with.
Not to put them down, but they're going to like what they bought because they
are very environmentally minded. You've got to remember that the technology
in the US, with gasoline at $1.40 or so a gallon, doesn't really pay back if
you're looking for it to save you or to pay for itself by savings in gasoline.
It's not easy to make that equation. You really have to buy this as much
because you want to use less fuel, put out less emissions, as you do because
you want to cut your gasoline budget. But people who drive them generally do
like them.

We're going to be seeing mainstreaming of the hybrid really right about now,
beginning now, because Honda has put out a Civic. As a matter of fact,
Toyota's Lexus division, their luxury division, is putting out a luxury
gasoline-electric hybrid in the months to come, and that will be really an
interesting transformation, because it's aimed at people who can buy pretty
much whatever they want, but who also really want to work to improve the
environment and perhaps to lessen America's dependence on oil. So this
mainstreaming will be the real test. Can the hybrid become not just a
specialty vehicle, but something that the average buyer wants?

GROSS: Is fuel efficiency getting better on the average car on the market
now?

EISENSTEIN: If you take the average vehicle, including light trucks, it's
actually been going down because Americans have, by the millions, been trading
in their sedans and coupes for SUVs and minivans and pickup trucks. There's
been a general move towards bigger and more powerful vehicles. One of the
things that's most interesting that you saw at the auto shows was a horsepower
race. So manufacturers were rolling out prototypes and in some cases
production vehicles putting out 400, 500, 550 horsepower. General Motors
showed a prototype of an ultraluxury sedan called the Sixteen that has 1,000
horsepower. The good part is...

GROSS: What's the point of 1,000 horsepower? I mean, what can that get you?
The speed limits are unchanging, there's still traffic on the road. What can
you do with that?

EISENSTEIN: That's an interesting question. As somebody who personally does
like performance, it gets you a couple seconds faster off the light, merges
you in traffic a little bit faster, it gives you--and there are actually some
advantages. It gives you the ability to weave in and out of traffic if you
need to, get out of the way of a truck when you're merging onto the freeway.
And to tell you the honest truth, it just feels good.

GROSS: Uh-huh. And so what does that mean in terms of fuel efficiency if you
have, like, a thousand horsepower?

EISENSTEIN: Well, there is somewhat of a direct correlation between fuel
efficiency and performance; however, it's interesting to note that this GM
prototype could get, supposedly, on average 20 miles a gallon. Now that's
amazing. That's actually more than what you get with the typical SUV today
that might even put out only 200 horsepower.

GROSS: But wait. But I remember like 10 years ago when I was driving, you
know, like, Japanese imports, they'd get that.

EISENSTEIN: Well...

GROSS: We've really gone backwards, haven't we?

EISENSTEIN: Yeah. Now I should point out a couple things. First of all,
there's some really interesting technology out there which allows vehicles to
get a lot more mileage even as they get more performance. As I say, this
thousand horsepower Cadillac gets 20 miles a gallon. It uses some technology
called displacement on demand, so as you're going down the freeway and you
don't need all that horsepower, it actually shuts off as many as 12 of its 16
cylinders, and the same technology will start showing up in engines in pickup
trucks and passenger cars in the not-too-distant future.

I should also note, you talked about that import, and before people rush out
there and say it's the Japanese who are getting the best mileage, the reality
is that on a comparable basis, the Japanese vehicles are getting no better and
in many cases worse mileage than some of the stuff coming from Detroit. The
other thing is that the Japanese are making a massive push into trucks,
particularly big trucks, and their fuel economy is going to fall substantially
over the next couple of years because they're getting into bigger, more
powerful vehicles.

GROSS: My guest is Paul Eisenstein, the publisher and editorial director of
thecarconnection.com. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Paul Eisenstein is my guest, and he's just returned from the two big
car shows in Los Angeles and Detroit. He's the publisher and editorial
director of thecarconnection.com.

We've been talking about fuel efficiency. SUVs are famous for their poor fuel
efficiency, but a lot of people think that they are safer in SUVs and feel
better higher off the road. But a lot of statistics have come out saying that
SUVs are really comparatively unsafe and that they overturn easily. What's
happening in the SUV market right now?

EISENSTEIN: Yeah, let's deal with the safety issue first. You can make a
case that they do have a higher incident of rollovers, so the number's still
relatively modest. There've been some dire predictions. Some folks have
called them the most dangerous vehicles on the road. And yet even as the
numbers of SUVs has gone up spectacularly over the last decade, the actual
incident of deaths and injuries has not kept pace. In some cases, they
actually have improved the statistics. They're certainly significantly safer
than small cars, which many people would like to see populating the road, so
the argument is not as clear as it would seem.

But what is happening is that SUVs are in a sense taking over the American
highway. They are the most popular new vehicle. Millions of people are
abandoning their passenger cars to move into light trucks; minivans, the big
hits of the '80s and '90s have faded, sales are finally starting to fall, so
even those proverbial soccer moms and soccer dads are now trading in their
minivans for SUVs, which ironically are starting to really function more like
minivans. You're now seeing most minivan packages offering third-row options,
so you have the same three-row seating that you had in your minivans.

There's something that seems to connect with the American public. It's that
bigger is better, that more powerful sense, again, of performance. People
like the higher seating position. It's called command seating in industry
parlance because people can see farther, they can see over other vehicles.
One of the things that really is important about the SUV is the use of
all-wheel or four-wheel drive, and I've got to say that that is a really
significant advantage, and you're gonna start seeing more and more passenger
cars and more and more vehicles of all types offering all-wheel drive, which
just gives you a better grip on the road.

GROSS: There's something of a campaign now against SUVs by people who think
that, you know, driving SUVs means being more dependent on oil at a time when
we can't afford to be dependant on oil. There's even a new TV ad conceived by
Arianna Huffington. It's a takeoff on the commercial that says buying drugs
supports terrorism, and on this one the copy says, `This is the gas that
George bought for his SUV. These are the countries where the executives
bought the oil that made the gas George bought for his SUV. And these are the
terrorists who get the money from those countries every time George fills up
his SUV.' What's the reaction in the industry to the sentiment that it's
almost unpatriotic to drive an SUV now because it makes us more dependent on
oil?

EISENSTEIN: Well, I think the industry is looking over its shoulder because
it is aware that there's more and more opposition to the boom in the SUV. But
as they look forward, they see nothing but more demand from consumers and, of
course, it is a consumer-driven industry. The big question is whether things
like Arianna Huffington's campaign will ultimately change consumer sentiment.
Right now there's no sign that it is. It's interesting, when the first people
started writing stories that said SUVs were dangerous because of what happened
in the crash when they hit small cars, surprise, surprise, people traded in
those small cars and went for the ones they thought they'd be safer in, which
were the SUVs. Whether that was right or wrong, that's what happened.

And right now, with gas at $1.40, even when we had spikes last year at $2 a
gallon, the SUV craze didn't back off. I think eventually it will, but
whether we're going to see a return to small cars, not likely. That just
doesn't seem to be part of the American psyche. I think we're more likely to
see a switch to somewhat smaller SUVs, and these crossovers. We're gonna see
things that don't quite have the massive shape and certainly will have better
fuel economy. One of the ways that the automakers are likely to respond is by
putting hybrid engines into their SUVs so that they can boost the fuel economy
and feel like they're being patriotic. And, of course, if California backs
off a little bit, we may even see the diesel come to the United States. And
that's the great irony. Here's a technology that could boost fuel economy in
virtually everything by about 40 miles a gallon, but essentially it's blocked
from coming to the US.

GROSS: I'm afraid there's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy behind the
direction of the SUV vs. the small car. The more people who get the SUVs and
the pickups, you know, the big cars on the road, the more people in small cars
feel that they're vulnerable, and they have to get out of the small car just
out of self-defense because the cars on the road are heading in the opposite
direction. You know, they're getting bigger and bigger as you're getting
small.

EISENSTEIN: Yeah, absolutely. Now I do have to point out that when you look
at small car statistics, subcompacts are the most dangerous cars on the road,
and not because they get hit by SUVs. The number of people killed in
subcompacts simply by having one-car accidents is amazing. I did some
research when I was looking into the SUV safety issue, and it wasn't two-car
accidents that were the biggest worry, it was small cars running into
guardrails, into posts, into virtually anything that seemed to be the single
worst problem we have on the safety front.

GROSS: Well, I've got another question for you about fuel and efficiency. Is
there any movement, either on the ethanol front or the diesel front, and if
there was, what would that mean?

EISENSTEIN: There's not much happening in the alternative fuel front.
Ethanol seems to have sort of stumbled, not really gone anywhere. You do see
some states that still have gasoline pumps that add maybe 10 percent ethanol.
But the switch to methanol or ethanol as an alternative fuel hasn't caught on
and, in fact, there's some good environmental reasons why it hasn't. Alcohols
are surprisingly much more dangerous than gasoline, particularly if there's a
leakage. You let ethanol or methanol get into the water table, and it is a
devastatingly dangerous, dangerous substance, even worse than gasoline. And
it just hasn't necessarily proven itself to be that much of an advantage over
regular gasoline.

Diesel is the interesting one. If you go to Europe, you'll find that as many
as 70 percent of buyers in some countries, like Austria--France, I think, is
about 50 or 60 percent of buyers--are opting for diesel rather than gasoline
engines. Not surprising. Over there you're paying as much as $5 a gallon for
gasoline, and the diesel engine can generate as much as 40 percent better
mileage. Now people who remember the diesel from the old days would be
surprised. I recently drove one of the new VWs with their V10 turbo diesel,
which got as good mileage as a small car, and yet drove as well as a luxury
vehicle. The engine was smooth, the power and performance were incredible.
It's not at all the smelly, hard-running diesel that people think of from
decades past because of all the new technology like the turbo charging.

There's only one problem: We have emissions laws in the United States which
are geared more towards the gasoline engine that have essentially made it
impossible for manufacturers to sell diesels here, and certainly will, without
some changes, block the diesel entirely by 2007. So there has to be a change
in the law, or new technology.

GROSS: Well, would diesels add considerably to pollution if more people used
diesel engines?

EISENSTEIN: Not really. You know, we can get into a long argument, and I'll
probably get letters from people who'll go back and forth arguing both ways.
It has an incredibly slight increase in nitrous oxides which--yes, they are
connected with smog formation--but in absolute terms, the numbers are
incredibly small. The big concern is what's called particulates, which some
studies have connected with some lung disease. But the numbers with the new
turbo diesels again are very, very small. The trade-off is incredibly tiny,
particularly when you're talking about what people are more and more worried
about in this country, which is CO2 emissions. Remember, every gallon of
gasoline translates directly into, you know, a particular amount of CO2, so
cutting fuel consumption has a direct impact on--if you believe global warming
gases--CO2 is a global warming gas, and I happen to--then you want to cut
fuel consumption. And diesels get anywhere from 30 to 40 percent more
mileage. So it is the fastest way, the easiest way to cut fuel consumption
quickly would be to have a major switch to diesel power here in the United
States, and that's exactly what's happening in Europe.

GROSS: Is there a movement in the car industry in the United States to do
that?

EISENSTEIN: The automakers are pressing hard and there does seem to be at
least some consideration out in California. The toughest laws are coming from
the California Air Resources Board. These are the people that really in a lot
of ways run the emissions for the United States because California's such a
big market for cars. If something is blocked in California, manufacturers
don't want to sell it in the rest of the country. I've talked with some of
the people out there, and they're in a political bind. They don't want to
look like they're giving ground to the auto industry, but I think they're
increasingly recognizing that it's a foolish move to block the diesel. So I'm
betting that if the industry can come up with at least some more improvements
in diesel emission technology, we're gonna see the diesel come back to the
States. And as I say, when people get into today's diesels, they're gonna be
very surprised. A lot of times I'll pick up people in a diesel that I'm doing
a test drive review on, and they won't even know it's a diesel until I tell
them.

GROSS: Paul Eisenstein is the publisher and editorial director of
thecarconnection.com. He'll be back in the second half of the show. I'm
Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: Coming up, the ultraluxury car. We continue our conversation with
Paul Eisenstein, the publisher and editorial director of thecarconnection.com.
And Ed Ward profiles guitarist Link Wray. He was messing around with noise
and distortion back in the '50s and '60s.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Paul Eisenstein, the
publisher and editorial director of thecarconnection.com. We're talking about
the latest designs, concepts and trends in the auto industry. Eisenstein has
just been to the two biggest American car shows. The Los Angeles show closes
on Sunday; the Detroit show opens to the public on Saturday.

Well, let's get to the big new toy portion of our program, and talk about some
of the, like, new and glitzy innovations and the luxuries in the car world.
Why don't we start with the extreme, the ultra-luxury car? And apparently,
there are a considerable number of new ultra-luxury cars being shown this year
at the car shows.

EISENSTEIN: Oh, yeah.

GROSS: Give us a sense of what some of these luxury innovations are.

EISENSTEIN: Well, first of all, let's define ultra-luxury. That's
typically cars that cost at least $150,000.

GROSS: If that's the low end, what's the high end?

EISENSTEIN: Oh, you can go up to the McLaren F-1. We've got the new
Bugatti coming in about a year, and those will approach $1 million. I mean,
we're talking serious money here. That whole segment used to account, even in
the peak of the boom economy, for only about 7,000 vehicles a year.
Interestingly enough, when you add up all the new cars coming, the
manufacturers are going to have to triple volume if they're all going to
succeed. Not sure if they will, but it's fun to look at what's happening in
that segment.

There's a flood of product. Rolls-Royce and Bentley were partner companies
for 70 years. They were split up about two years ago, and now the split is
formal and official. Rolls is owned by BMW. They just came out at the
Detroit show with a brand-new ultra-luxury sedan called the Phantom.
DaimlerChrysler came up with a new one that they're showing in Detroit called
the Maybach, it's an all-new brand, way above Mercedes. If you'd like, you
can spend $360,000 and up there. Of course, that car will give you a
business-class airline-style seat. You can recline almost flat. You can get
platinum- or even palladium-coated switches, if you want, marble bar, dual LCD
video system in the back. Pretty much anything you could have in your living
room, you can have inside that car, and of course, that has a twin
turbocharged 550-horsepower engine, so your chauffeur will not be late getting
you to the office.

We have the 200-mile-an-hour, $150,000 Bentley Continental GT. Oh, it's just
a flood of these things, and then Cadillac, which has been desperate to try to
reclaim its position as the standard of the world, which it was for many
years, showed the Sixteen, this incredibly over-the-top super-luxury car. It
was voted best of show here in Detroit, and whether they'll build it is
another story, though my sources are telling me that they probably will build
maybe 1,000 of them. We'll keep our fingers crossed or point our fingers,
depending on our position on it. But that is the 1,000-horsepower,
16-cylinder engine. It's just--it really is over the top, but it is quite a
beautiful car.

GROSS: Is there much of a trickle-down effect from the ultra-luxury cars? Do
any of the innovations or luxuries from that car end up in a scaled-down
version in regular cars?

EISENSTEIN: Yeah, absolutely. That's a good question. If you look at
some of the--even the smallest cars on the road today, they're equipped with
antilock brakes, many have traction control, all-well drive, stability
control, high-end audio systems. I mean, it's quite amazing all the
technology that you find even in a $13,000 Hyundai that you had to pay a
fortune for a decade ago. When antilock brakes first hit the market, they
were only available as something like a $2,000 option, and only the highest
end of the luxury cars. I mean, vehicles like the Mercedes S-Class. There's
a steady trickle-down of technology from the highest-end luxury cars down to
even the lowest end of entry-level vehicles these days, so what you see in the
luxury market, you're probably going to see in the base vehicles in just a
couple of years.

GROSS: So, what's the big story for the average car buyer, the person who
cannot afford the ultra-luxury car? What's up with the mid-size, the compact?

EISENSTEIN: Probably the big story in the auto industry these days goes
by the name fragmentation. It sounds like a tech term, but what it basically
means is that the traditional automotive segments are breaking down. You used
to go to the dealer, you'd buy a sedan, a station wagon, a coupe or a sports
car, or if you were on the truck side, you bought yourself a pickup, van or an
SUV. These days, it's hard to tell exactly what you're getting, because
manufacturers are locked in a competitive battle, and what that basically has
done is empowered the consumer. Buyers are saying, `Look, I don't care what
you call it. I know what I need. Give me what I need and what I want.' And
you're seeing some incredibly quirky and creative solutions.

You got Porsche coming out with a sports car SUV, something very similar from
Nissan, their FX45, which is being sold--will be sold by their Infiniti
division. You see things that are almost station wagons, but not quite, SUVs
that have all the ride and handling, and even better, the fuel economy, of
passenger cars. All the barriers are breaking down, and the creativity that's
out there translates into a lot of choice for consumers.

Years past, a mainstream car was more or less a one-size-fits-all. GM at one
time might have sold a million Malibus, and there weren't many variations from
one to the other. Nowadays they may have five different vehicles selling to
anywhere from 80,000 to 200,000 people at a time, each one of them more tuned
to an individual need.

GROSS: Any new safety innovations?

EISENSTEIN: We're seeing more creative air bag systems, a lot more air
bags showing up in today's cars, particularly head air bags on the side, which
work especially well when you have side impacts and rollovers, smarter air bag
systems, systems that are, in some cases, now required by the federal
government in this new model year, so that if there is, in fact, a child in a
child seat in the front seat, the air bags will automatically shut off. That
will be in the next couple of years phasing through the industry. All cars
will have that feature.

There's an anti-rollover technology that Volvo just put into its new XC90, a
sport ute. Maybe that's one of the reasons that it was voted the car of the
year in the North American car of the year category. And so we're going to
see more safety features, particularly in the sport ute segment, designed to
blunt some of the criticism.

GROSS: My guest is Paul Eisenstein, the publisher and editorial director of
thecarconnection.com. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Paul Eisenstein. He's the publisher and editorial
director of thecarconnection.com. He used to report from Detroit for NPR, and
is now a commentator on NPR's "Morning Edition." He just got back from the
new car shows in Los Angeles and Detroit.

How is the American auto industry holding up against foreign cars?

EISENSTEIN: Well, it's been a real tough year. The domestic makers lost a
lot of share last year. Imports jumped to a record. They're up in the
40-percent range right now. I wouldn't be surprised, if the domestics don't
really continue the creative push that they're into right now, that the
imports ultimately capture 50 percent or more of the US market. It's been a
hard time for a couple of the makers. Ford, in particular, is struggling to
reverse some heavy losses in the last couple of years. DaimlerChrysler, which
really is a German-owned company these days--the Chrysler side is struggling
to regain market share. But they're showing some very innovative product.
And General Motors actually gained share last year, but they did it with the
heavy hand of incentives. That is a Big Three phenomena, you know, buy a car
and get a discount. As a matter of fact, I don't know where they can go next.
It seems like virtually everything sold in the United States by the Big Three
has a 0 interest finance program going. Maybe the next step is negative
financing, you know, buy a car, get a check every month.

GROSS: Well, is it at the point where companies are really eating into their
profit margin?

EISENSTEIN: Yeah. This has really eaten away. Now GM has gotten a lot
more efficient. I mean, this was a company that used to lose several thousand
dollars each passenger car not that long ago. And they've just improved their
productivity so much that they're making a lot more money and they can afford
to use incentives to help gain ground. GM actually gained market share for
the last two years. That's the first time that's happened in something like
three decades. So GM has a certain amount of momentum going. And now they're
flooding the market with a lot of really creative new products, cars and
trucks. And they're hoping that they can cut back the incentives as the
economy recovers and rely simply on the fact that their designs are more
competitive.

But that's what it's all about and I think that's what the industry has
discovered. Bill Ford over at the Ford Motor Company talks about product and
talks about back to basics. Fact is, this is an industry that builds cars,
and it's not about telematics, it's not about brand marketing. It is about
building cars and trucks that do what people want.

GROSS: Of course, if you watch television, it's about advertising and
advertising, specifically, to young buyers. Most of the car ads now are very
much geared to buyers in their 20s, maybe early 30s. What's that emphasis
about?

EISENSTEIN: Well, you're right, people want to attract the next generation.
Let's talk about Toyota, which has a big push in its new Sion division.
Toyota made its way because it was able to win over the baby boomers. They
transformed it from a niche brand into one of the world powerhouses. And now
Toyota realizes that its current buyer group is getting old. My God, I guess
I'm one of them. I'm in the class that they're sort of wanting to move past.
They want to go after the new buyers.

There are 63 million new drivers who will be getting their license over the
next decade, and the auto industry is drooling to win over their hearts and
minds. Toyota has created this Sion division which will market a whole bunch
of cars aimed specifically at a young Gen X and the millennials. And Honda's
come up with the Element, and we saw a whole bunch of other products at the LA
and Detroit shows specifically geared towards kids.

Interestingly, the industry seems to believe that the vehicles that this young
generation wants all look like boxes. The Honda Element is basically a box on
wheels, and the Sion division has one, Mitsubishi has shown a couple in that
shape. I don't know, there's something about telling young people what they
ought to want that has a tendency not to succeed.

GROSS: One of the big draws at the auto shows is the concept cars, and these
are cars that are basically prototypes; you're not going to see them in the
showroom this year. But these are kind of pie-in-the-sky designs that might
show up eventually or at least they'll affect what we're going to see soon.
What were some of the interesting concept cars this year?

EISENSTEIN: Well, you could call them fantasies in chrome, at least that's
what they used to be because concept cars of the past like the Batmobile and
the Firebird III were really not meant to do anything but tease the public,
maybe hint at the design and engineering prowess of the company, but not to
really show anything that was going to hit the showroom. That's changed big
time, and more and more of today's concept cars are ideas that may very well
hit the road soon. The manufacturers often will put a design out there just
to see what the public reaction will be. They'll actually put people out in
the audience and watch how the crowds collect, what cars are getting crowds,
and they'll go out and conduct surveys right on the spot to get a sense of
whether a concept works.

A number of the new concepts--Pontiac's G6--are basically nothing but
production cars very thinly disguised. The G6 will show up in less than a
year as the next-generation Pontiac Grand Am. This is becoming very, very
common. The Beetle, when they showed the new Beetle a decade ago, they had no
intention of building it. But the reaction of the public was so strong that
they had to rush it to market. The same thing with the Dodge Viper; reaction
was so strong. So these days when it comes to concept cars, what you see may
very well be what you're going to get not very long from now.

GROSS: I was looking at some photos from the auto show, and I want to ask you
about a specific model. This is the Ford Model U, which is apparently
supposed to tip its hat to the old Model T but take the direction into the
future. And they're promoting this as a green machine, you know, an
environmentally conscious machine made of environmentally friendly material
with a canvas roof made from corn, seat foam made from soybeans, and the oil
that this car uses is made from sunflower seeds. Is this kind of like
gimmicky stuff to make it look green, or is there anything really significant
going on here?

EISENSTEIN: Is it a gimmick? Yes. Is it real? Maybe. We're starting
to see more and more of this. In Europe, for example, there are new laws on
recyclability that essentially require the manufacturers to take back cars
much like soda cans here in the US. We're seeing because of that a pressure
to make those cars out of materials that can be recycled. Even in the United
States, about 70 percent of the typical car is recycled, the rest going to
landfills. And you're going to see more and more of those materials made out
of recyclable material going forward.

So is the Model U something I expect Ford to build in the next five years?
Probably not. But I do expect that some of the ideas that they're showing on
that vehicle--making parts out of materials that can be easily recycled,
especially the plastic or non-metal parts--that's going to become more the
norm than the exception as we go forward.

GROSS: So they're not really building the Model U; this is just a showcase
thing?

EISENSTEIN: It's just a showcase. But I have to say that there is an
increasing awareness of the need to go green in the industry if for no other
reason because they look over their shoulders and they see that both
legislators, pressure groups and the average consumer are all saying, `We want
our cars to be green.' But I have to put a caveat here. Yeah, consumers are
saying, `Build me a greener car,' but unfortunately, every time the industry
does put out something that is notably greener, it usually has a price tag.
And the interesting thing is consumers generally won't buy it. So the
industry has always realized not only does it have to go green, but it has to
do it without charging a premium. In some cases, that's meant that the
industry has actually had to swallow the cost and reduce its margins, which of
course is not a good business case. And, let's face it, this is an industry
and they are about profits.

GROSS: What did you leave the auto shows most excited about?

EISENSTEIN: I think the thing that got me most excited this year was that
the industry is really getting back to basics. I know that's a cliche but the
fact is it's rediscovered that this is a business about product and it's about
the product as a car, as transportation, as something that does more than get
you from here to there, that is also supposed to give you a bit of a kick, to
excite you, to make you enjoy the time you spend in it. It's not about
putting Internet connections into the car. It's not about navigation. It's
not about--yeah, satellite radio is nice, but the thing is you want a car that
you really, really feel good about, that does what you need.

The creativity of the industry is surprising. You're seeing so many
breakthrough ideas and designs, and I've got to admit, I like horsepower. And
today's cars are getting more and more horsepower, yet they're safer and
they're starting to focus again on fuel efficiency, and the industry has also
discovered it can give you performance without sacrificing fuel efficiency.
That's a trend I think we're going to see in the next couple of years.

GROSS: Paul Eisenstein, thank you so much for talking with us.

EISENSTEIN: Good to be with you.

GROSS: Paul Eisenstein is the publisher and editorial director of
thecarconnection.com.

Coming up, Ed Ward profiles Link Wray, a guitarist who was messing around with
noise and distortion in the early days of rock 'n' roll.

This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Profile: Guitar prodigy Link Wray pushed the instrument's limits
TERRY GROSS, host:

Modern rock 'n' roll guitar, the kind that takes odd noises, distortion and
feedback for granted, owes a lot to the part-Cherokee guitar prodigy Link
Wray, who just about invented the vocabulary today's guitarists use. In
dozens of singles between 1958 and 1967, he explored the instrument's limits.
Rock historian Ed Ward tells us his story.

ED WARD reporting:

You'd think that the first rock 'n' roll record to be widely banned in the
mid-'50s would have been by a black performer, but you'd be wrong. Common
sense dictates that it would at least have words, but it didn't.

(Soundbite of "Rumble")

WARD: "Rumble" was something guitarist Link Wray had come up with when he was
playing a dance and someone asked for a song they could do the stroll to.
It's too slow for that, but its menacing sound and the amount of gang warfare
teens were waging across the country in 1958 when it came out saw it banned in
New York, among many other places. It still managed to hit number 16 on the
charts.

Not that Link Wray ever really engaged in a rumble himself. He was born in
rural North Carolina in either 1929 or '30, and christened Frederick Lincoln
Wray Jr. In 1955, young Link and his brother Vernon, or Lucky, formed Lucky
Wray & The Lazy Pine Wranglers, a country band, and set up in Washington, DC.
But the nation's capital turned out to be a poor place for their act, so they
put away the hillbilly costumes, donned black leather jackets and announced
that they were The Wraymen.

They'd already cut a couple of country records for Starday that had gone
nowhere. Then disaster struck. Both Link and his brother, Doug, who played
drums in the combo, came down with tuberculosis. Link's lungs were so damaged
that the doctor advised him not to sing, which--since Lucky had left the band
to try for stardom under the name Ray Vernon--left them as an all-instrumental
combo.

Fortunately, instrumentals were in at that point. So when their homemade
recording of "Rumble" landed on the desk of Archie Bleyer of Cadence Records,
home of The Everly Brothers, he played it and hated it. His teen-age daughter
was in the room, though, and she said it reminded her of the rumble scenes in
"West Side Story." Apparently, the record had had another name, but "Rumble"
was what it was known as from then on.

(Soundbite of "Raw-Hide")

WARD: The rumble over "Rumble" must have unnerved Archie Bleyer, because Link
and the boys soon signed a three-year deal with Epic and had a hit with
"Raw-Hide" right off the bat. It wasn't as big as "Rumble," but it was pretty
catchy and went to number 23 in January 1959.

Virtually overnight, the boys were the biggest thing in DC, and Link
continually played with his equipment to develop weird new sounds. He'd punch
holes in the speaker cone with a pencil, turn the volume way up and experiment
with the knobs on the guitar itself, which--because he played fairly cheap
ones--also made a difference.

(Soundbite of "Comanche")

Group of Singers: (In unison) Comanche!

WARD: But despite such modern-sounding tracks as this one, "Comanche," Epic
wanted Link to make records that sounded more like Duane Eddy, the other big
guitar hero of the period. They also wanted to establish him as a teen
crooner, and I'll spare you the results of that brilliant idea. The fact is
he was dropped by the label after just over a year, but that was OK with him.
Mostly this was due to Vernon, who was already Link's manager, opening a
recording studio, Ray Vernon Recording, on Vermont Avenue in Washington. This
became The Wraymen's laboratory.

(Soundbite of song)

Unidentified Man: ...lurks in the hearts of men? (Laughs) The Shadow knows.
(Laughs)

(Soundbite of music)

WARD: The records were cheap enough to make, and they happily signed with
Swan, a tiny Philadelphia-based label that printed `Don't drop out' on its
records. In return, The Wraymen painted a swan on their equipment trailer and
continued to tour the country. They even gave Swan a hit.

(Soundbite of "Jack the Ripper")

WARD: "Jack the Ripper" was a modest hit in the summer of 1963 and was the
sort of record that Pete Townshend referred to when he famously said that he'd
never have picked up a guitar if it weren't for Link Wray. Of course, most of
the musicians they met thought they were completely insane. Nobody was
playing anything remotely like this at the time.

But it was just those changing times that spelled the end for The Wraymen's
hits. Swan loved cheap records, and would often buy masters other labels had
passed on. One such was a 45 they'd picked up from EMI's British wing called
"She Loves You" by a group called The Beatles. Suddenly, instrumental records
were passe.

This never even slowed down Link Wray and The Wraymen. They kept delivering
singles to Swan--which put out a few albums on the group, too--until 1967 when
the label went out of business. Since then, Link's kept on rocking. In 1970,
he put out an album on Polydor that touched on his Native American genes--he's
part-Cherokee--and did moderately well. And since then, he's continued to
tour. And anytime he wants to see his legacy, all he has to do is walk into a
record store.

GROSS: Ed Ward lives in Berlin.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Correction: Misidentification of Mel Tillis and Merle Haggard
as dead
TERRY GROSS, host:

And while we're on the subject of music, I need to correct a couple of
mistakes we made on the show when our rock critic Ken Tucker presented his
best-of-the-year list. In referring to Pam Tillis' tribute to her father, Mel
Tillis, I described him as `the late Mel Tillis' when, in fact, he's still
very much with us. And when Ken meant to refer to Waylon Jennings' death in
2002, the name Merle Haggard came out instead. Our apologies to them and to
you.

At least this offers a good excuse to close the show with a recording by Merle
Haggard.

(Soundbite of "I Think I'm Gonna Live Forever")

Mr. MERLE HAGGARD: (Singing) I think I'm gonna live forever. Hey, dying
ain't on my list of things to do. I think I'm gonna live forever. Hey, it
feels so good just to be out of love with you.

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.

(Soundbite of "I Think I'm Gonna Live Forever")

Mr. HAGGARD: (Singing) Hey, babe...
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