Ford and Toyota went head to head Monday in a battle to claim “Top Treehugger” at the increasingly green Detroit Auto Show. Ford took the title — but may have jumped the shark in the process.

With CEO Akia Toyoda in from Japan to defend his company’s crown, Toyota hauled out its “Prius Family” — an achingly cute collection of planet-saving lookalike eggs — the “patriarch of the family” hybrid Prius, a new plug-in Prius, a Prius V wagon, and an infant Prius c concept.

But then Ford pulled out the trump card: radical Hollywood environmentalist Ed Begley, Jr. — once a Prius advocate — proclaimed that Ford’s new Ford Focus electric car made it the new King of Green.

A giant three-story Begley — flanked by a polar bear (what else?) and the Ford logo — spread his arms wide across the Cobo Arena video screen as a Ford “halo logo” appeared above his head and said: “So if someone asks me where to look for an electric vehicle, what do I tell them? Ford. Yup, Ford gets it.”

Begley followed with thinly veiled shots at Nissan’s electric Leaf and Toyota’s Papa Prius before fading out and introducing the Green Chairman himself, Bill “I’m an environmentalist myself” Ford, Jr., who emerged from an electric Ford live on stage.

The Ford faithful roared, the press swooned. But is a green actor who advocates eliminating the nation’s coal and natural gas plants (not to mention the internal combustion engine) really someone a Michigan manufacturing firm wants to be hanging around with?

Read more at The Michigan View.com.