The idea that the cars are so great to drive and so beautifully designed that they inspire passion is behind Chrysler's new brand slogan "Drive & Love," which has changed slightly from last year's tag line "Drive-Love."

Buzz words like passion, romance and emotion are featured in the new advertising campaign, which debuts Sunday on leading U.S. television networks.

"Drop-dead gorgeous cars, that's what this is about," Bill Morden, vice chairman and chief executive officer of BBDO Detroit, the ad agency that created the new campaign, told a news conference on Wednesday.

Calling Dion an "ambassador of love," he said she was an "absolute knock-dead gorgeous person" and an ideal pitchwoman for Chrysler. "She's a megastar," he said.

The black-and-white TV ads featuring Dion -- which company spokesmen say are aimed at moving Chrysler's brand image more upscale and not at just selling cars -- are for Chrysler's new Pacifica station wagon and Crossfire sports coupe.

But the ads also promote the popular Town & Country minivan, the Sebring Convertible and PT Cruiser.

Rather than fighting the "soccer mom" image associated with minivans, Chrysler -- which has long dominated the segment --embraces it by showing the Town & Country with images of Dion with her young son, Rene Charles.

"She could be potentially sort of the quintessential mom of the world," Morden said.

The songs that Dion belts out for the ads are plucked from her current and forthcoming albums and include a single aptly entitled "I Drove All Night" that makes its commercial radio debut this month.

Dion did commercials for Chrysler in her native Canada 14 years ago and her multiyear agreement to become the new voice of the automaker was announced in November.

Terms of the agreement have not been disclosed but automakers have increasingly been using big name musicians to help sell cars.

The Chrysler Group has adopted an "Enthusiast's Manifesto" to protect the vehicle-loving culture that produces exciting ideas like a Viper-powered Tomahawk motorcycle, Chief Operating Officer Wolfgang Bernhard said Wednesday night.

Chrysler showed the 500-horsepower concept motorcycle at the North American International Auto Show last week.

Bernhard told the Automotive News World Congress it is a great symbol of Chrysler enthusiasm, especially because it was not a product of Chrysler's normal vehicle-development system. Instead, it was presented by a couple of young designers as a rough sketch.

"The fact that these young people had the confidence to bring such a radical idea forward is a tribute to the kind of risk-taking and creative expression we encourage at Chrysler," he said.

The manifesto, as Bernhard described it, means that every vehicle must stir emotions, despite the difficult competitive and regulatory environment.

At the Detroit auto show, Jim Schroer, executive vice president of global sales and marketing for the Chrysler group, didn't hide his disappointment in the Chrysler brand advertising by BBDO Detroit last year, which included ads that offended some consumers.

"We were not achieving the level of excellence in our marketing on the Chrysler brand that we need to have to make that a winner in the marketplace," he said. "Everything you see from us going forward, you're going to see the beautifully designed side (of Chrysler vehicles) coming through the music of Celine Dion and the brilliantly engineered side coming through print and the Internet."

Chrysler debuted an ad campaign on Sunday, Jan. 19, that attempts to upgrade its image to premium status. Chrysler is preparing consumers for upper-scale vehicles, such as the 2004 Crossfire coupe and the 2004 Pacifica sport wagon. The brand is targeting 25- to 54-year-olds, mostly married with a median household income of $75,000.

"We're reinventing Chrysler, from a line of extremely attractive front-wheel-drive cars and a great minivan to a very aspirational brand of beautiful vehicles that are brilliantly engineered and that share some components with our friends in Germany," Schroer said.

Dodge, Jeep continue edge

The Chrysler brand needs a push. Its U.S. sales of 480,263 in 2002 declined 9.5 percent.

"We've had a rough year on the Chrysler brand, primarily because '02 was not a good year for cars and minivans," Schroer said.

But don't expect a quick image improvement in consumers' minds. It will take at least a year, said Bill Morden, BBDO Detroit's vice chairman and senior creative officer.

The Chrysler brand spent $260.1 million on U.S. measured media in the first nine months of last year, down 19.1 percent from the year-ago period, according to Competitive Media Reporting in New York.

The Chrysler group will spend about the same on advertising this year as last, Schroer said.

In the last year, the group pushed the envelope in its TV commercials, sometimes angering consumers enough that the company either changed or dropped the spots. The technique still works for the Dodge and Jeep brands, said George Murphy, Chrysler group's senior vice president of global brand marketing, but edgy doesn't fit Chrysler.

"You'll see the tone and feel of Celine, which isn't edgy," he said.

Showtime!

Dion's three-year contract cost Chrysler an estimated $20 million. As part of the deal, the Chrysler brand will sponsor her show, "A New Day," scheduled to premiere March 25 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

In addition to having its name on the marquee, Chrysler will display vehicles there and will get tickets to each show for dealers, customers and prospects.

Bob Eddy, chairman of the Chrysler-Jeep national dealer council, said Dion is a good fit.

"She's a definite asset to us," said Eddy, who owns Bob Eddy's Chrysler-Jeep in Austintown, Ohio. "With the direction the product's going, she blends tremendously." Eddy said he's also looking forward to using Dion in dealer-level advertising.

Dion appears in nearly all the TV commercials, but the French-Canadian won't make it into most print ads.

Add the Tomahawk motorcycle to the list.

At the Detroit auto show two weeks ago, Chrysler group COO Wolfgang Bernhard quickened the pulse of power freaks everywhere when he drove the Tomahawk onto the stage.

The motorcycle, powered by a V-10 engine from the Dodge Viper, is huge, dangerous, loud - and irresistible.

The Tomahawk started a year ago as a handful of sketches by the Chrysler group's design staff.

Bernhard immediately fell in love. "I said, 'We have to do this.' Are we a motorcycle company? Well, no, but what the hell."

No one was more surprised than the designer.

"I was stunned when they asked me to work up some 3-D electronic renderings. We didn't think they'd want to proceed with anything like this," said Mark Walters, the ponytailed 38-year-old designer who dared to propose the concept.

When it came time to present proposals for the 2003 Detroit auto show to CEO Dieter Zetsche, both Bernhard and Trevor Creed, Chrysler's chief designer, saved the Tomahawk until the end.

Creed didn't think Zetsche, the executive who fast-tracked the Chrysler Crossfire into production, would go for this one. He was wrong.

"Of course we're going to build this concept, right?" Zetsche said.

The Chrysler brain trust considered asking actor Sylvester Stallone to debut the Tomahawk at the show preview but decided "it would be cooler to have Wolfgang ride it because then the bike would be the star," Creed said.

Will Chrysler build it? The company is not saying. Executives did say they are considering building several hundred units of the motorcycle. The price would start at $250,000.

The cycle can accelerate from 0-60 mph in 2.5 seconds. Top speed is an estimated 300 mph - but no one at Chrysler has driven it that fast. The fastest speed the Tomahawk has been driven is about 100 mph, Bernhard said.

Chrysler hired a small specialty and restoration shop, RM Corp. in Novi, Mich., to assemble the Tomahawk. RM has restored cars for Creed.

It cost about $500,000 and took five months for RM to build the concept using three employees. Kirt Bennett, the owner's son, helped, as did Walters, dispatched there as design guru.

Bud Bennett, RM's president, said Chrysler has commissioned his company to do a feasibility study on limited production of the Tomahawk. It will look at two-, three- and four-wheeled versions. The Tomahawk is so heavy that the driver needs the four wheels to keep it from tipping over at stop signs.

But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration stipulates that a motorcycle must have two or three wheels.

The elder Bennett is hoping the Tomahawk can get a waiver from the wheel requirement.

Chrysler has commissioned a mule, and once it vaults the regulatory hurdle "it could be a go," said Bernhard, explaining that this could take three to six months.

To get a read from enthusiasts, "we showed it to a select few guys, and they fell to their knees and started to cry," Bernhard said.

The concept was shown to some motorcycle magazines in the United States and to a buff

auto magazine in Germany. "They told us they know of at least 200 people in the U.S. and 10 in Germany who would buy it," Creed said.

"And then we have film companies that want to put it into movies," he said. "When you do something like that, you immediately get phone calls."

The vehicle arrives next year as a 2005 model but can be sold only until 2007 unless Chrysler group engineers come up with a breakthrough in technology that reduces emissions.

Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz, both of which announced plans during the Detroit auto show to offer more diesels to U.S. drivers, are facing the same obstacles.

The technology does not exist to enable diesel engines affordably to meet tougher upcoming emissions standards in the United States, commonly referred to as Tier 2.

Under Tier 2 emissions rules, Chrysler plans to certify the Liberty diesel in bin 9 or bin 10, which are the highest or dirtiest classifications. Chrysler will offset the Liberty diesel's higher emissions with other vehicles in its fleet that are certified in lower bins. As a whole, an automaker's fleet must meet a certain target. Once Tier 2 is implemented in 2007 for cars and light trucks, bins 9 and 10 will be eliminated.

"We don't know how we will achieve the ultimate levels we have to achieve," said Bernard Robertson, Chrysler's senior vice president for engineering technologies and regulatory affairs. "We are placing the bet now that it's time to start getting people attuned to the idea of diesel. We think it offers a lot of potential. And we are banking on being able to figure out how to meet the lower bins in the future."

Volkswagen, the only automaker to offer diesel cars in the United States, also will be using the bin system to sell its diesels in this country, spokesman Tony Fouladpour said. He said Volkswagen plans to be able to meet tougher emissions standards in coming years. VW will add a diesel Passat later this year. Mercedes-Benz will offer a diesel engine in the E class in late 2004 or early 2005.

Ford Motor Co. plans to introduce a low-emission, diesel-powered

Focus sedan within five years. A Ford spokesman said the company won't use bin 9 or 10 to sell a diesel car beforehand. Ford doesn't want to spend the money to re-engineer the emissions system when the emissions regulations tighten in 2007.

Once Tier 2 regulations are implemented fully in 2009, all engines - gasoline and diesel - will be required to meet the same emissions requirements and be classified in bin 5.

The low-sulfur diesel fuel that is scheduled to be available by late 2006 will help diesel engines run cleaner, but not clean enough to meet upcoming tougher emissions standards.

Engineers at Chrysler and other automakers and suppliers are hoping to combine the cleaner fuel with improvements to the diesel engine's fuel injection system, combustion chambers and the after-treatment systems that clean the exhaust once it leaves the engine.

DaimlerChrysler could assemble up to 50,000 units of Volkswagen's new LT3 vehicle per year in its plant in Ludwigsfelde, Germany, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said in an article released ahead of publication on Wednesday, citing industry sources.

A Volkswagen spokesman said the firms had talked about joint production of the vehicles but said there was no decision yet.

The firms agreed last year to jointly develop the next models of their light commercial vehicles, DaimlerChrysler's Sprinter model and Volkswagen's LT3 model, continuing a cooperation that started in 1996.

The all-wheel-drive model of the 2004 Pacifica, which goes on sale in the second quarter, will start at $32,980 and a front-wheel-drive version with traction control starts at $31,230, said spokesman Bryan Zvibleman. The Pacifica is about $5,800 less than Honda's Acura MDX and $4,500 less than Toyota's Lexus RX 300, according to Edmunds.com, a Web site that tracks prices.

Chrysler's U.S. market share fell 0.1 point to 13.1 percent last year, according to Autodata Corp., and the unit's chief executive officer, Dieter Zetsche, said he wants a "slight" rise this year. Chrysler, which sold 2.21 million cars and light trucks in the U.S. last year, is adding and revamping models to try to increase sales by 1 million by the end of the decade.

The third-largest U.S. automaker next year plans two new versions of its Jeep Grand Cherokee sport-utility, a large Dodge wagon called the Magnum and a Chrysler version of a rear-wheel-drive vehicle platform called the 300C, Zetsche told investors last week. The Auburn Hills, Michigan-based unit will have a third spin-off version of the large sedans in 2005, he said.

At exhibitions like this year's North American International Auto Show, every carmaker tries to prove it is more innovative than all the others in terms of comfort, convenience, power or pure fun.

Even the displays at the show, which opens to the public Saturday, are designed to widen eyes, from the futuristic flat-screen at the Ford Motor Co. stand to the Lexus brochure that can be downloaded to your PDA.

Ford's information stand for its Model U concept is designed to reflect the high-tech nature of the car itself: The transparent flat screen is operated not by the click of a mouse but with the point of a finger -- think the movie "Minority Report."

To find out about the car, you point at different spots on the screen, which light up as you hold your finger steady and then open up a new page. All the while, you can look through the screen at the concept itself.

"We want folks to be involved and to have to enter the display rather than stand and read," says David A. Wagner, technical specialist with Ford. "It actually gets people to reach in."

Ford calls the Model U the Model T of the 21st century. It's powered by a supercharged hydrogen internal combustion engine and hybrid electric transmission. Key features include a reconfigurable interior, tires with corn-based fillers and an engine that uses sunflower seed oil.

"Someone told me once that to get a new technology off and running it takes anywhere from 10 to 15 years," says Ford president and chief operating officer Nick Scheele. "I think that's pretty reasonable."

Mercedes-Benz's 2004 E-Class features a headlamp system that responds to the movements of the driver and points in the direction the car is moving. Flat-screen displays offer information about some of Mercedes' systems and a demo of its acceleration-sensitive driver's seat. Plop down in the demo seat and get what amounts to a mini-massage as the seat moves with the car's acceleration.

Among some of the other vehicle innovations:

Audi AG's Pikes Peak concept has three rows of seats, each covered by a separate sunroof. Each seat is remote-controlled and the seats have separate video screens.

The Dodge Kahuna concept has an interior that can transformed into a lounge, with a front passenger seat that can flip around to face the back and second-row seats that fold down to form tables.

It's a minivan that "doesn't fall into the usual soccer mom category," says Trevor Creed, Chrysler's senior vice president of design.

Hughes ordered the windows sealed on his glacier-blue Chrysler sedan to keep dust particles from entering the vehicle and a one-of-a-kind filtration system was installed so the air he breathed was always clean, auction chief Craig Jackson said Monday.

Jackson said the filtration system is intact in the trunk of the Chrysler, which has only 1,500 miles on the odometer.

The Hughes car is one of about 800 vehicles on the block at this week's 32nd annual Barrett-Jackson Classic Car Auction in Scottsdale, Ariz. The four-day event, considered the nation's premier collector-car event, kicks off Thursday at the Westworld resort.

Six cars owned by actor Don Johnson also are up for bids, and the auction features a vehicle that was once the personal car of former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

The Kennedy car is a white, 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible assigned to the White House for Mrs. Kennedy's personal use. It's changed hands several times and now is being offered fully restored with 84,500 miles on its engine.

The auction draws up to 180,000 people with more than 3,000 bidders registered.

On Friday, nearby at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, RM Auctions' one-day Vintage Motor Cars in Arizona event offers bidders nearly 100 investment-quality collector cars, including a custom 1961 Ferrari 250GT Competition SWB Berlinetta once owned and raced by Italy's legendary Count Giovanni Volpi. It's expected to fetch $2 million.

"Horsepower is the hot trend for collector cars this year," RM Auctions chief David Gooding said. "Car enthusiasts will seek cars with lots of horsepower including big block Corvettes, racing Ferraris as well as GT500 KR Mustangs.

"Also popular will be custom bodied classics as well as horseless carriages including Mercers, Mercedes, Stutzs and Simplexes."

The average price for regular unleaded gasoline rose 1 penny over the last week to $1.454 a gallon -- up 34 cents from a year ago -- based on a survey of more than 800 service stations by the department's Energy Information Administration.

The national price for cleaner-burning reformulated gasoline, which is sold at about one-third of the gas stations in metropolitan areas, increased 0.9 cents to $1.516 a gallon, EIA said.

The jump in gasoline prices reflected high crude oil costs, which were caused by a disruption in Venezuela's oil exports from a worker's strike. Venezuela is the fourth-largest oil supplier to the U.S. market.

The price of crude accounts for about 40 percent of the cost of a gallon of gasoline.

The West Coast had the most expensive regular unleaded gasoline over the last week, with the average weekly price in the region up 1.8 cents to $1.518 a gallon, EIA said.

The Gulf Coast states had the cheapest fuel, as the average price was down 0.2 cents to $1.399 a gallon.

Among cities, San Francisco kept its top spot in fuel costs, with the price up 3.2 cents to $1.791 a gallon. Houston again had the best deal at the pump, with the price down half a penny to $1.379 a gallon.

The report also showed gasoline prices were down 0.3 cents in New York City at $1.549, up 0.6 cents in Los Angeles at $1.533, up 3.1 cents in Chicago at $1.504 and down 0.3 cents in Denver at $1.449.

The biggest year-on-year change in city pump prices was in Los Angeles, where gasoline costs were up 43 cents a gallon from a year earlier.

Separately, the nationwide price for diesel fuel declined 2.3 cents to $1.478 a gallon, but was 32 cents higher from a year ago.

Truckers in New England paid the most for diesel fuel at $1.593 a gallon, up 2.8 cents from the prior week. The Rocky Mountain states had the cheapest diesel at $1.445 a gallon, down 1.5 cents.

"In this cutthroat environment, the ability to innovate becomes the differentiator in establishing a competitive advantage," said Schaum Tuesday at the Automotive News World Congress.

On the product side, Chrysler wants "product leadership" with vehicles like the minivan, which the automaker launched in 1983 but still had one-third of the market in 2002, and the PT Cruiser retro-styled vehicle.

Schaum said the Pacifica crossover, which goes on sale in January, will continue this trend of producing something different. The Pacifica has European styling, interior appointments and handling. The independent rear suspension is based on a Mercedes-Benz systems.

The state is worried about using reformulated gasoline containing the fuel additives MTBE, which can contaminate underground drinking water, or using ethanol, which is difficult to transport to the Northeast.

New York's Department of Environmental Conservation asked the Environmental Protection Agency last week for the waiver that would take effect Jan. 1, 2004.

Approval of the waiver is unlikely, as the EPA denied a similar request from California. Also, the Bush administration is pushing for more use of ethanol -- which is made from corn -- a move favored in farm states.

Ironically, New York is asking EPA for a waiver of federal clean gasoline rules at the same time it is suing the agency for not doing enough to stop Midwest power plants from spewing polluting emissions across state lines into the Northeast.

An EPA spokeswoman said the agency was reviewing New York's waiver request, but could not say when it would act on the proposal.

Federal law requires major metropolitan areas with the worst ozone air pollution to use gasoline that contains at least 2 percent oxygen by weight. The extra oxygen makes the gasoline burn more cleanly.

Most refiners blend either MTBE -- short for methyl tertiary butyl ether -- or ethanol into gasoline to meet the oxygenate requirement.

New York told EPA it opposed MTBE because it has been found to leak from underground storage tanks and contaminate drinking supplies with a bad taste and odor. New York has joined many other states in banning MTBE.

New York also told the agency that using ethanol as a replacement for MTBE would produce gasoline that had a higher evaporation rate, which would put more polluting emissions into the air.

In addition, the state said it was difficult to transport ethanol in the near term from the Midwest, where the fuel additive is made, because it can't be transported by pipeline to the Northeast.

The ethanol would have to transported by truck, barge or rail.

New York said that 960 million gallons (22.9 million barrels) of ethanol a year would be needed in the Northeast, which would require 34,000 miles of barge travel and 3 million miles of tanker truck travel.

Ram pickups, Hemi engines, high-performance variants - the driving force at Dodge today is to do things at the outrageous end of the attitude scale.

Dodge added emphasis to that stance with the Tomahawk, a motorcycle type vehicle that's little more than wheels and a seat hung off a 9.0-liter, 500-horsepower V-10 from the Dodge Viper SRT-10. The concept was rolled out at the Detroit auto show on Monday, with Chrysler group COO Wolfgang Bernhard at the wheel.

Bernhard said the automaker is considering building several hundred units of the motorcycle and charging $250,000 each.

"We showed it to a couple of guys and they fell to their knees and started to cry, I have never seen anything like it," said Bernhard, who personally swore off riding motorcycles years ago "because I decided I wanted to live."

The Tomahawk can accelerate from 0-60 miles-per-hour in 2.9 seconds. Top speed is an estimated 300 mph, although the concept has been run up to only 100 mph.

The Dodge Durango RT being shown as a lightly disguised concept.
Dodge Division is out to stoke its reputation as the Chrysler group's home of performance and personality with a quartet of new designs.

The Dodge concepts - one unveiled in Los Angeles, the rest in Detroit - are loaded with horsepower and styling attitude. They fall into two groups: the nearly production-ready Magnum wagon and Durango RT Hemi sport-utility and the just-a-dream Avenger sedan and Kahuna minivan.

Dodge Avenger
The Avenger is a five-door hatchback styled in the genre of a European rally coupe, says Trevor Creed, the Chrysler group's chief designer.

Creed danced around the issue of why a four-door is being compared to a coupe, arguing that the Avenger needed the extra doors to fit Dodge's image of practicality.

In keeping with the rally car spirit, the all-wheel-drive Avenger's interior is nearly stripped - there is no carpet or headliner - with extensive use of aluminum.

"The designers who worked on it had a great phrase: 'Nothing fussy in here,'" Creed said.

The Avenger was not built on an existing or production-planned platform, but it is the size of Dodge's upcoming D-class cars being developed with Mitsubishi and scheduled for 2005. At 187.2 inches, the Avenger is nearly 3 inches shorter than the Dodge Stratus. But the Avenger is 7 inches taller than the Stratus.

The rear seat backs fold down flat, and the hatchback recesses high into the roof, making it easier to load big objects into the back.

The Avenger is powered by the 3.5-liter V-6 engine that debuts in March on the Chrysler Pacifica sport wagon.

Dodge Kahuna
The Kahuna, designed at the Pacifica studios in California, is a lighthearted example of how Dodge could approach the youth-oriented cargo-hauler segment with a six-seater that has a surfing theme. Kahuna means big wave, and the instrument panel gauges are seashell-shaped.

But the Kahuna is still a minivan - albeit with shorter front and rear overhangs than the production vans. The Kahuna is 185.6 inches long, compared with 189 inches for the Dodge Caravan short-wheelbase model.

The roof has a translucent fabric top. The doors open conventionally but the windows are frameless.

Power comes from the 2.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine used in the Chrysler PT Cruiser turbo.

Dodge Durango RT
Dodge was compelled to follow the "bigger is better" philosophy for the 2004 Durango RT sport-utility, being shown as a lightly disguised concept.

"We have taken our vehicle up again in size," said Creed, comparing it with the full-sized Ford Expedition and Chevrolet Tahoe sport-utilities.

"When we did the original Durango, we thought it was the right size. It had three rows of seats but wasn't too large. This time around is no different, except everybody's grown up. Even our own Grand Cherokee is bigger than the previous Grand Cherokee."

The Durango RT's wheelbase has increased by 3 inches to 119.2 inches, vs. 116 inches for the Chevrolet Tahoe and 119 for the Ford Expedition. The longer wheelbase allows 15 percent more interior room, Creed said. At 197.2 inches, the Durango is nearly the same length as the Tahoe (198 inches) and shorter than the Expedition (205 inches).

Styling was influenced by two concept vehicles from prior auto shows: the Power Wagon and Power Box, Creed said.

There's a strong family resemblance, primarily in the front end, to the year-old 1500 Dodge Ram pickup. The Durango will share components with the Ram but has its own platform.

Power comes from a 5.7-liter V-8 with hemispherical combustion heads, which makes 345 hp at 5,400 rpm and 375 pounds-feet of torque at 4,200 rpm.

Magnum SRT-8
The first of the Chrysler group's new rear-wheel-drive large cars, built on the LX platform, debuts as a Dodge wagon called the Magnum SRT-8.

Although the Magnum show car has all-wheel drive, the LX range will be rear drive - a shift from today's LH range with front-wheel drive and a cab-forward design.

The new Hemi V-8 with 430 hp powers the Magnum concept.

The show car has specialty treatment from the Chrysler group's Performance Vehicle Operations unit, including bodywork, 20-inch tires and competition gauges on the instrument panel similar to those used on the Dodge Viper.

The Volkswagen New Beetle, the Chrysler PT Cruiser, the Mini and the Ford Thunderbird, some of the most widely praised cars recently, all cast a nostalgic spirit. But most of the new cars and trucks that debuted at the Detroit and Los Angeles auto shows over the past week reflect more modern design rather than memories of the past.

"We didn't want retro because retro would be too easy," GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said of the new GTO. "We wanted to attract buyers who would consider German and Japanese rear-wheel-drive cars, so we wanted it to look contemporary."

To any skeptics who suggest the new GTO, which goes on sale this year, looks so little like the original because GM rushed it to market, Lutz said the next-generation GTO will also be more modern.

RETRO DEAD

Even Wolfgang Bernhard, COO of Chrysler Group, whose PT Cruiser was the sensation of the Detroit auto show in 1999, says the retro look is dead.

"It was dead before it was born," Bernhard said.

One problem with retro designs, he said, is keeping the look fresh when the car is redesigned, yet maintaining its retro look.

"When you do a face-lift, how are you going to take it to the next stage?" he said, attributing the success of the PT Cruiser to its roomy interior. "A part of PT is design, but what people like about it is its functionality."

While the New Beetle and the PT Cruiser were wildly successful when they were launched a few years ago, the cars now sit longer on dealer lots than most new vehicles, said Tom Libby, an automotive analyst with J.D. Power and Associates.

Chrysler and Volkswagen have tried to keep sales strong by offering new options such as turbo engines, limited edition colors, and convertible tops, which recently debuted on the New Beetle and will come soon on the PT Cruiser.

"The retro thing seems to have subsided," he said. "There's a real challenge to the long-term prosperity of retro vehicles. By definition, their design is locked in."

CARS THAT LOOK FAST

There's nothing retro about the Infiniti Triant, a concept two-door