Detroit Auto Show: New Hybrids from Toyota, Honda, VW

Toyota Prius Family Preps for New Addition

When Toyota's fortunes appeared to be at their nadir earlier this year, its then president and CEO was heavily criticized for leading the company into the full-size truck arms race with the U.S. OEMs. Fast forward a few months and Toyota is quickly getting back to its roots: Not only is the automaker now led by Akio Toyoda — the founder's grandson — but it's also ramping up development of the smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles on which it built its original success.

That's the backstory behind the new Toyota FT-CH hybrid concept that was just launched at the North American International Auto Show. In fact, the stylish, agile four-door hatch was presented as the first in a series of new Toyota hybrids — and plug-in hybrids, EVs and fuel-cell vehicles — that would be sold under the "Prius" nameplate.

Not a lot of details on the FT-CH were forthcoming from Toyota, but it's obvious from what specs are available that this is the kind of vehicle the Honda Insight should have been. It's essentially as wide as the Prius, but it's almost two feet shorter, which makes it about the length of a Toyota Yaris. No one will confuse the FT-CH with an actual sports car, but its dimensions should make for dynamic handling and impressive maneuverability in a package that's designed to be less expensive and more fuel-efficient than today's Prius.

The FT-CH also shows an aggressive exterior design that makes it look a bit like the love child of a Volkswagen Golf and Nissan Leaf, but with a few more random character lines and details thrown in to attract the younger generation. You know, the way the Honda Insight was supposed to — and Scion, too, for that matter.

Now, keeping in mind all that "of mice and men" stuff, I'm not going to say the FT-CH will be as big of a hit as the Prius has been, but if Toyota keeps the sticker price aligned with the vehicle's size, there's no reason why it couldn't happen.

Honda CR-Z: This "X" Misses the Spot

Similarly, I'm thinking the Honda CR-Z will be just about as successful as the Insight — in other words, not very.

The concept behind this concept was sound: Recreate the beloved Honda CR-X as a hybrid coupe for the 21st century. Unfortunately, a few things got lost along the way, things like styling, performance and even fuel efficiency.

The CR-Z, frankly, looks half baked, with all of the cooking — and way too much of it — done to the front end. The result looks like someone tried to graft the front of a Mitsubishi Eclipse to an Insight's rear, with predictably poor results. The trouble is rumored to be the fact that the CR-Z is built on the same platform as the Insight, which limited how far Honda designers could move away from the latter. It's funny, though, how the Honda Civc and Honda CR-V ride on pretty much the same platforms without having too much ugly stick to those vehicles.

But the biggest problem with the CR-Z has to do with its performance, both on the road and at the gas pump. Preliminary specs have the CR-Z weighing in at a relatively svelte 2,700 lbs. That's in the same range as the Honda Civic coupe, but the Civic, itself no high performer, carries an engine that delivers 140 hp and 128 lb-ft of torque. The CR-Z has the same torque but about 18 fewer horses. That might not be so bad if Honda wasn't using words like "sport" and "sporty" throughout the CR-Z's press materials.

And the thing is, Honda's new hybrid categorically does not make up in fuel efficiency for what it gives up in performance. With a six-speed manual, Honda estimates the car will get 31 mpg city/37 mpg highway; with a continuously variable transmission, the numbers go up to 36 and 38. But for comparison's sake, Toyota is saying the production version of its FT-CH concept will outdo the Prius, which, as you may recall, goes 51/48/50 in the EPA's city/highway/combined ratings.

Even non-hybrids like the coming Chevrolet Cruze and next Ford Focus are expected to top 40 mpg on the highway.

Customers can look for the CR-Z to hit dealerships later this summer — I just don't think too many will.

VW Compact Coupe Boasts Big Numbers

And as long as we're comparing hybrid fuel-efficiency numbers, let's toss the Volkswagen New Compact Coupe (NCC) into the mix. VW's hybrid concept does everything the CR-Z is supposed to do, but does it better, starting right with fuel efficiency.

Volkswagen claims the NCC will deliver a combined EPA rating of 45 mpg, well above even the highway number for the CR-Z, while still going from 0-60 in 8.1 seconds. That's not blinding speed, but it is a lot closer to my idea of what a sporty hybrid should deliver. The NCC uses a host of new VW technologies and is clear evidence that the German company knows it way around hybrid powertrains as well as it does with diesels.

On the other hand, the NCC also represents a further step down what most other OEMs consider an unlikely road to success. While Ford and GM are aggressively unifying their overseas and U.S. product lines to cut costs and boost economies of scale, VW is taking the opposite tack. In a bid to move annual U.S. sales from last year's 213,454 up to at least a million or so, the company is developing a line of U.S.-only cars that are supposed to pick up the slack.

The NCC is definitely a concept in that it's not likely to go into production in its current form, but it certainly provides some hints about the design language these U.S.-oriented models will use when they come to market in the future. And it looks like VW will be speaking "bland-ish" when that happens.

The car looks like a streamlined version of the current Ford Focus coupe, a design that most customers greeted with a hearty yawn.

When you consider the kind of dramatic styling currently popular throughout the industry — witness cars like the Cadillac CTS Coupe, the new Hyundai Sonata or even VW's own Volkswagen CC — one has to wonder what the folks behind the NCC were thinking.

Or maybe that should be "if."