If you like the new 12-cylinder Aston Martin DB9—or the Porsche 911—and hard work and good fortune have put you in position to buy such a car, you should consider acting on the impulse. In six years, these beauties could be harder to find or more expensive to acquire. Or they could be quite different cars.
Blame it on the Obama administration's strict new fuel-economy and emissions standards, which were formally adopted April 1. By the 2016 model year, the vehicles auto makers sell in the U.S. market will have to have a fleet average of 35.5 miles per gallon—up from the 2009 model year's 26.4 mpg.
That means the average car in the U.S. will need to be more fuel-efficient than compact cars such as the Volkswagen Beetle or Honda Fit are today.
Consider the Aston Martin. It may bring images of James Bond hurtling around a twisting mountain road, or a 470-horsepower, V-12-powered sports car that starts at about $200,000. But not a pint-sized commuter car derived from a European Toyota model.
The idea of an Aston Martin "luxury commuter car" sounds like a double oxymoron. But it's not a joke. Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd. has been showing a concept car called the Cygnet, derived from the Toyota iQ. The company says the car could be sold, initially in Europe, as a way to zip around congested city centers.
The Cygnet is just one example of the tradition-busting ways in which car makers—particularly low-volume exotic sports-car makers—are scrambling to rethink their model lineups and business strategies to meet ever-tougher fuel-economy rules in the U.S. and other major markets around the world.
The new U.S. fuel-economy standards are actually two standards. One measures greenhouse-gas emissions per mile—the limit will be 250 grams of carbon dioxide per mile—and the other miles per gallon of fuel. The two standards will be enforced in tandem by two different federal agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation.
Auto makers supported the tougher rules partly in return for an agreement that California and other states would not pursue their own mileage standards until at least 2016. Detroit also supported the switch to setting fuel-economy targets according to the size of the vehicle because it allowed them more flexibility to keep producing larger, more-profitable sport-utility vehicles and trucks.
The upshot for U.S. consumers is that mass-market cars such as a Ford Fusion midsize sedan or a Chevy Silverado large pickup or a Toyota Sienna minivan will have to evolve into more efficient versions of the vehicles they are today. The Silverado, for example, will have a 2016 target of 24.7 mpg, up 33% from the 2010 model.
But certain kinds of vehicles—particularly high-performance luxury cars—cannot meet the proposed standards without a substantial transformation.
Either the companies will have to change, merging or allying with mass-market partners to get credits for sales of cheap small cars, or super-luxury cars will have to change.
Different classes of vehicles will have harder or easier targets depending on their "footprint," or the size of the vehicle. The smaller the vehicle, the higher the mileage target. The fewer different kinds of vehicles a manufacturer sells, the harder it could be to hit the overall target—especially if the brand in question specializes in high-performance cars that are relatively small and slurp lots of gasoline.
'Overwhelming Challenge'
"It's a fairly overwhelming challenge for companies that are low-volume or have a limited lineup," says Stuart Schorr, a spokesman for Jaguar Land Rover, a unit of Tata Motors Ltd. of India.
Consider the Jaguar XK. Based on its footprint, the XK is roughly in the same class as a Ford Fusion, which by 2016 is supposed to achieve 37.1 mpg and emit just 230 grams per mile of CO2.
Today's Jaguar XK emits CO2 at roughly double that rate.
To make a Jaguar XK as fuel-efficient as a Ford Fusion, the company would likely have to choose among the following: Make the car bigger to move it into a larger class with a more lenient mileage target; use a hybrid or a highly efficient diesel engine; make the car much lighter and smaller; or start selling a flock of small Jaguar models to offset the big gas guzzlers.
Jaguar tried the latter option a few years ago, offering a midsize car adapted from former parent Ford Motor Co.'s European lineup. The car died, unlamented.
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