How green is my Valiant?

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If Billy-Bob and Britney had a map, and could spell Australia, they'd see the future for American car making.

They wouldn't like what they saw, because Australia's Big Two have now both confirmed what pundits with more than a dozen functioning grey cells have known for quite some time: The big rear wheel-drive six-cylinder powered behemoth is terminal. All hail the front-drive four-cylinder.

For Billy-Bob and Britney, the US$50 gallon they tasted briefly this year would have told them that their affair with vast gas guzzling V8 utes and SUVs has to end. Their desertion from purchases of said vehicles has certainly been noted by the CFOs reporting to the suddenly jet-free head honchos of Detroit.

Even though Australians are not as welded to V8 SUVs and Utes, the message has finally been received and understood at Ford and Holden. We're quite happy with four-cylinder, large-bodied front wheel-drive Japanese-sourced family cars, thanks. Luckily for us, our CEOs and the Australian government have heard the people and acted, just in the nick of time.

So, as we begin the long-road to jettisoning our decades old penchant for manufacturing big-sixes in favour of four-cylinder lean and green machines, so too must Americans accept the game is changing stateside.

If they don't make the decision for themselves, Wall Street and Washington will gently guide their buying habits by bankrupting the Big Three and forcing Billy-Bob & Co to Japanese and Korean transplant products.

Good news for us is we're slightly ahead of the curve. Switching our factories to focus on small four-cylinder models, originating in Europe, or Asia, that come in a variety of body styles and engine configuration, gives our local manufacturers the opportunity to reach out to the market with a product line that can meet the expectations of new generations of buyer not stirred by Bathurst victories, but turned on by reduced tailpipe emissions.

Irrespective of the yo-yo-ing oil price, down a mere US$100 a barrel in the past four months, it is the exhaust emissions and environmentally friendliness of the engines that will increasingly drive sales.

The Federal Government wants us to think only in terms of environmental impacts, not performance, or even fuel economy (although emissions and economy are incontrovertibly joined at the hip). You'll be feeling the first winds of this thinking when the ETS debate really gets going and Carbon Tax Credits begin flying around the virtual world we increasingly inhabit.

Never mind fat content and cholesterol levels marked on food packets, every bill we pay in the future will undoubtedly berate us for our callous disregard for the bunnies and open toed sloths we're driving (ahem, pun intended) to extinction, via itemised Carbon Tax loadings.

But back to the car industry's metamorphosis from testosterone filled torquester to new age greenies.

You have to give credit to Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister for Announcing New Programmes, and Kim Carr, the Minister for Green Cars.

They have been hard at work dishing out money to the car industry like it was going out of fashion for the past few months.

It is good to see the government of Australia showing some support for the future of car making here.

After all there's not much mass-market high-tech manufacturing going on in Australia outside car assembly, and with the likes of Toyota exporting 100,000 cars a year, you'd have to conclude it can be done (and maybe even at a profit).

Build a car in Australia for export that other fellows around the world want to own. Well, where else is the government going to spend its cash, really? Clothing, Textile and Footwear? Nuclear power? Mining? Unlikely. Not going to earn any green brownie points propping up the mines.

But greening the car industry. Now that can be done. Just look to Europe where cars are almost vacuuming the air, with exhaust emissions cleaner than the air they ingest. Well, almost. But a long way from what comes out of a Falcon or Commodore tailpipe anyway. (If only the Feds had the nerve or nous to clean up the petrochemical industry. Cleaner fuels = cleaner tailpipe emissions.)

Full marks too to the industry lobby groups that have been advising the government regarding the nature of their handouts of taxpayers' money. Not just to keep South Australians busy bolting bits of metal together and out of Centrelink's hair, but pointedly providing money for green car initiatives.

The Commonwealth and State-funding programme for Holden is out in the open. The deal announced. The press opportunity done and dusted. Now the hard works starts.

But before the bubbly goes flat, shouldn't someone ask a few itty-bitty questions?

Why is the limping cash-strapped giant GM investing in Australia as a base for this new small car? And exactly how much compared to the State and Federal governments' input?

What exactly is Australia offering that Thailand, South Korea or China can't? And on a much smaller scale than any of those countries.

With our unique Australian Design Rules, whatever small cars are made here will be more expensive to produce because they need to comply with ADRs, some of which are more stringent than many potential export markets require.

And what is the magic ingredient, thus far hidden from view that makes it economically viable to build a small car in Australia now, when even Toyota couldn't make a business case for it in recent years despite so many decades of Corolla production in Melbourne?

Industry analysts used to love to point out the cost of assembly of a small car was the same as a large car but the sale price was obviously lower, making it harder to return a decent profit on small car production operations.

When did that rule change? Maybe when 'green' became the battle cry of the future of the car industry as the Falcadore's grave was hastily dug?

However, you have to wonder if we will in fact take to these locally made small cars with any real enthusiasm. Such as been the success of brand definition, even in the small car market that Mazda has walked away with the private market, leaving Honda and Nissan in its wake. Toyota stocks government fleets and Mitsubishi keeps the rentals happy. But a Peugeot 308, VW Golf and even Citroen C4 are extremely competitively priced and positioned and equipped in the mid-$20,000 market. Especially their green diesel models.

So who will want to buy Ford or Holden branded small four-cylinder front-wheel drive cars? Not the current red and blue faithful. They'll be disgustedly sniping from the sidelines and nursing another 10,000km out of their FGs and VEs.

There's also the small matter of Ford and GM surviving long enough as corporate entities to allow their Australian off-shoots to swing their small green cars into production. The Mitsubishi experience will caution the local manufacturers as to how hard it is to sell a local product when the parent company's on life-support.

Perhaps the smartest play in the book so far has been the much-criticised Camry Hybrid. It might be a green fridge on wheels, but it is a big green fridge on wheels. It's demonstrably a new age environmentally friendly car as it has a 'Hybrid' badge on the rump, and it's spacious. Mazda 6 and Honda Accord Euro don't have that; although the Thailand built US style Accord has deactivating cylinders which means it can hop-along on three pots when the full six aren't needed.

Ford and Holden are right to move to defend their manufacturing plants in Australia and the government is right to support them with our cash to do that.

But they are not right to use the money to simply bring us what could be imported.

We need to use the $6 billion Kim Carr has promised to make our industry smarter, future-proofed and the envy of the world.

Building a localised iteration of yet another GM Global Car provides Australia with no advantage.

It needs to have Aussie know-how, Aussie design flair and Aussie technical advantages built in. That's what our taxpayer dollars should fund. It's what would make our cars appealing to export markets.

A car that will return 7.0L/100km and have 600Nm of torque.

A green Torana, Kev, mate, that's what we want.