Interest Fades in the Once-Mighty V-8
By BILL VLASIC
Published: January 16, 2008

DETROIT — The V-8 engine, long a symbol of power for American car companies, is sputtering.


Carlos Osorio/Associated Press

Ford, which first popularized the V-8 engine in the 1930s, will use a turbocharged 6-cylinder engine in its Explorer S.U.V. At the Detroit auto show this week, Detroit’s Big Three are promoting smaller engines and alternative-fuel vehicles, eliminating the V-8 from many models and relegating it to niche status.

Ford Motor, which first popularized the V-8 in the 1930s, will start using a turbocharged 6-cylinder in many vehicles, including the next generation of its Explorer sport utility vehicle. The company has named its new engine technology EcoBoost, a nod to consumers’ concern for the environment.

“It’s pretty clear that the V-8 is on its way out of the mainstream,” said Ford’s chairman, William Clay Ford Jr.

General Motors recently canceled a $300 million program to develop a new V-8, citing new fuel-economy standards that require a 40 percent improvement in overall gas mileage by 2020. “That cancellation was a direct result of the 35-mile-per-gallon legislation,” Robert A. Lutz, G.M.’s vice chairman, said Tuesday.

Even the famed Hemi V-8 from Chrysler will be quieted at stoplights when it is paired this year with hybrid technology in some big S.U.V.’s.

Car companies, in a sense, are catching up with shifting consumer tastes: sales of V-8 engines in the United States have dropped 24 percent since 2004, according to the auto research firm R. L. Polk & Company.

The V-8 will still be a staple in pickups and large S.U.V.’s, and Detroit continues to flex its muscle-car muscle with some other models. General Motors, for example, unveiled this week a limited-edition 620-horsepower Corvette ZR1 — the fastest and most powerful Chevrolet ever — and a high-performance Cadillac, the CTS-V, offering 550 horsepower.

Ford executives said they had at times wrestled with the decision to give up V-8s in some models, including a new sedan from the Lincoln luxury division, because they worried about customer reaction.

“I worked on the Lincoln Continental program 20 years ago, and people were vehement that it had to have a V-8,” said Mark Fields, Ford’s president for the Americas. “But now people don’t really care if the performance is there.”

Some Asian automakers, notably Honda of Japan, have stayed out of the V-8 market entirely. Toyota offers V-8s in its full-size pickups and S.U.V.’s, but it has dominated the midsize car market with less powerful engines.

“The era of indulgence is over,” said John A. Casesa, managing partner at the Casesa Shapiro Group, an investment firm in New York. “When oil goes to $100 a barrel, the romance of a V-8 under the hood diminishes pretty quickly.”

Chrysler is bucking the trend somewhat. The company is updating its Hemi engine and achieving better fuel economy by marrying the current edition to a hybrid system in its full-size Dodge Durango and Chrysler Aspen S.U.V.’s.

But the automaker, which was bought last year by the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, is developing a new line of V-6 engines that would be an alternative to the V-8s in popular models like the Jeep Grand Cherokee S.U.V.

“There’s a new group of young customers that may not appreciate or care what the Hemi does,” said the Chrysler vice chairman, James E. Press.

That observation would have been considered sacrilegious in the glory days of the V-8, when drivers blared Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene,” singing along to the words, “Nothing will outrun my V-8 Ford,” and Detroit packed even smaller cars like the Dodge Dart and A.M.C. Gremlin with big engines.

Mr. Ford, the 50-year-old great-grandson of the company’s founder, Henry Ford, said the passing of the V-8 era is somewhat bittersweet for baby boomers like him.

“We all grew up when the coolest guy on the block had the most cubic inches under the hood,” he said. “That feeling dies hard.”