How to save Detroit.

TAE's mouth is absolutely watering for the new Hummer. Tentatively named the "Hx", the newest and smallest member of the Hummer family boasts everything a guy could want if he has an inferiority complex but doesn't want it to be completely obvious. The Hx will be around the same size as the 4-door Jeep, and with removable doors, glass, and fenders, a meaty V-6 (since when does GM get 300HP out of a flexfuel V-6?) and all wheel drive, it can easily convert into a muddin' machine.

The fact that it looks like the Warthog from the Halo series doesn't hurt either.

This SUV, with a reasonable price (guesses range from $25-30k) its great function and wicked looks, stands as a poster-child for how Detroit can save itself.

My generation, which now stands at the threshold of being the major car-buying demographic in this country, grew up in a world with no domestic brand loyalty. We never saw the streets darkened with the smoke-stains of burnt tires from a '71 Charger. We never watched a 5.0 Mustang and a SS Camaro race down a street, slam on their brakes at a traffic light, then race down the street again. Instead we have a colloid of jelly-bean shaped, low-power, gee-whiz technologically-packed, foreign tin-cans that crumble upon impact.

Let me give an example. When I was in highschool, I owned an '89 Dodge Shadow. Built (and it behaved) like an undersized linebacker, it hummed and vibrated in a driver-sickening way above 55 mph. But when I backed up too sharply once and caught the corner of my sister's 91 Honda Civic...well let's just say I didn't even notice inside the Shadow. I got out of the car and found the front driver's side fender of my sister's car crumpled like an accordion. The Shadow showed no appreciable damage, the plastic front fender hadn't even popped loose. Later inspection showed a new front fender was required on the civic as well as the side fender.

So anyways, my generation has no domestic brand loyalty. We all "ooh" and "aah" at a Viper or a Vette when they scurry down the road, but no more so than when we see an Acura NSX or a nice BMW 7-series.

GM (and Chrysler if it isn't soon part of GM) and Ford need to get that back. The problem right now with those companies is they've decided to survive via the "if you can't beat em, join em" strategy, and have started spewing out their own creativity-void jellybeans.

To survive when your competition has you on the ropes you must innovate! In 1876 at the Yale-Princeton football game, Walter Campton, a Yale player, was about to be sacked by Princeton when he lobbed the ball forward to a teammate, Oliver Thompson. Behold! The forward pass was born! (Sidenote: the first legal forward passes happened in 1906, after Teddy Roosevelt called for safer rules to protect players.)

"Imitation is the highest form of flattery," goes the old saying, but when I see Detroit following pathetically on the heels of Toyota and Honda, I say "imitation is the saddest form of desperation." If Detroit truly cares for its own future, it must innovate. I am not talking about great technology, like fuel cell cars or hydrogen powered cars. Those inventions are existing, and will probably forever remain bound in political mires that will never really allow their widespread existence (nor is it really an innovation to develop cars around an existing technology).

Innovation I speak of is the development of the car as a modern form of art. Anyone with half a brain marvels at the beauty of the 1960's Ford GT500 Mustang. Every line on that car causes an observer to comment on the obvious power of the beast hidden under the hood. Similar Detroit cars, like the Corvette, or the SS, or the Charger, all wrote the book on American muscle. While the Europeans made their slick little race cars, and the Japanese wound their motors up to ever higher and higher RPM in the search for power, Detroit cunningly searched the American mind and figured out exactly what we wanted. Those cars typified the 1970's American driver.

They must do that again. Deep down, we Americans all love hugging trees and driving hybrid cars. But if you look at a Prius you do not feel excited about the possibility of driving it. If you slide into (and you must slide) a Honda Insight, you feel like you are inside an amusement park toy.

If GM or Ford unleashed an aggressive, American-minded vehicle, and put a hybrid engine in it, the sales would be phenomenal. I am not saying make a facsimile Prius, I am saying bunk the aerodynamics. I am not saying the car should sit on little rubber band tires, I am saying the car should have a ram air intake. I am not saying the car should start its' electric motor with the push of a button, I am saying the car should make you shiver when you grip the wheel.

Just make it look...good. The three designers of the Hx are all "young" designers (my age) at GM, and they were told to go radical. They did. You can't look at this thing and not think "awesome." I'm not by any measure saying it will be the most practical vehicle on the market, but when you look on the street and can't tell a Highlander from a 4Runner from a Rodeo from a (insert foreign SUV here) because they all are clones, you subconsciously reach out for something more. Something different.

Maybe that's why people's heads popped off when the H2 first hit the street. It was so enormous, so egregious, that you couldn't take your eyes off it. Maybe that's why Ford sold 30 bazillion Mustangs from 1993-2003. The car just popped.
At the time, the domestic auto makers were pretty ignorant for not seeing the coming fuel bubble, and erred when they didn't respond quickly to it. How hard was it to drop a hybrid engine in a Cadillac CTS? Not as hard as GM made it seem.

So to GM, I say to you, as a Generation Y spokesbuyer:

We want your cars, but you must INNOVATE!