I hate to be cruel -- car designers tend to weep spontaneously -- but I must say, some of the most counted-upon cars, like the Jaguar XF and Lincoln MKT, are just not rockin'. Or as they say in the movie "Titanic": Iceberg right ahead!! Here's a tour.
-- Dan Neil
If you think Mandarin Chinese is hard -- and unless you are Chinese, chances are you do -- how would you like to try to do business in English, one of the world's weirdest, most sprawling and most irregular languages? So it's with great respect and no small amount of sympathy that we salute Geeley's product brochure for the LTI.
-- Dan Neil
The one thing that a 200-plus-mph car needs is a roof -- or not. This is the LF-A Roadster, a drop-top version of Lexus' 500-horsepower V-10 supercar proposal that, for a fast car, is taking its own sweet time coming to market. If the car were to reach the market in anything like this configuration, it would be the fastest convertible in the world, even faster than the Mercedes-McLaren SLR Roadster.
-- Dan Neil
Tired of being passive aggressive and ready to be just plain old aggressive? Here are the keys to the long-rumored super-Vette -- also known as the Blue Devil -- the Corvette ZR1. Powered by a supercharged race-tuned 6.2-liter V-8 churning 620 horsepower and 595 pound-feet or torque, the Ferrari-from-Warren boasts other big numbers too, like 20-inch wheels, foot-wide rear tires, 15.5-inch carbon ceramic brakes, a top speed of more than 200 mph and a price expected to top $100,000. Which, oddly enough, would make it the most irresistible sports car deal of the still-young century.
-- Dan Neil
The Maybach is clearly courting the Saudi prom night business with this monster Maybach, equipped with a very special landau top and a snow-white leather trim. Now, I'm no expert -- actually, I kind of am -- but I think this type of roof is not a landaulet but a demi-landau. Disputes and corrections filed below...
-- Dan Neil
The two-door version of the new Cadillac CTS Coupe was revealed in Detroit, and it turned out to be a huge hit. With massive converging sidelines and outrageous diamond-faceted tail (with a hint of tailfins, says GM design chief Ed Welburn), the Coupe was a labor of love in the GM Design Studio.
What's interesting about this car is, in fact, what engine they'll stick under the fluted hood. To put the mighty 550-hp V-8 in the car (as in the CTS-V sedan) would be to a make the car a creature of tradition. If GM puts a high-performance diesel under the hood, then the car becomes a crystalline shape of things to come.
-- Dan Neil
General Motors covets the Larry the Cable Guy market and so, behold, the Hummer HX, a concept off-roader with removable doors and configurable body panels designed to steal some sales from the Jeep Wrangler. Hummer, the brand that puts the "gawd" in "gawdamighty big," is trying to downscale a bit and lighten its footprint.
The HX is a full 10 inches shorter than the Hummer H3. The concept vehicle's 3.6-liter V-6 powertrain imagines itself to be flex-fuel capable, but the likelihood is that such a vehicle would have a smaller diesel engine as an option.
-- Dan Neil
The thing about auto show news conferences is that no matter how deep the hole whence the company speaks, no matter how unlikely the thing said, it all has to be said with conviction and soaring optimism. This, of course, generates waves of snideness in the assembled press, who've all seen this movie before. Here's a sample.
-- Dan Neil
Henrik Fisker, the superstar designer of the BMW Z8 and the Aston Martin DB9, bailed on corporate autodom three years ago, with a plan -- a bit of a lunatic plan, really -- to re-skin BMW 6-Series and Mercedes-Benz SLs as Latigos and Tramontos, respectively. This plan had one obvious flaw, and that was that these cars were beautiful to begin with. Quelle dommage!
These days, Fisker Automotive has an even more audacious goal: to build a plug-in hybrid luxury car. Fisker hatched his plan after a trip to Monaco to see Prince Albert -- really, that's where I get all my good ideas -- and the good prince said he wouldn't have his picture taken in anything but a "green car." Fisker realized there was really no such thing as a "sexy green car." He dismisses the Lexus LS 600h with an airy hand-wave of European contempt. Something like, "Pfft."
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In a development that promises to revolutionize family alienation, Bose has introduced its SeatCentric loudspeaker system in the Nissan Forum concept minivan. Based on the time-tested truism that children should be seen and not heard, the system equips each seat position with directional speakers built into the headrests, rather like loose-fitting headphones.
Each member of your party can then select an entertainment source -- audio or video or both -- and listen to it in a separate-but-equal zone that moves with the seat if, as in the case of the Nissan, the seats rotate in the cabin. In the unlikely event that Dad has something to say to the kids, he can hit a button on the steering wheel, muting all sources and piping his voice over a loudspeaker. "Hey, kids, did we leave Grandma at Denny's?"
-- Dan Neil
Wind metaphors are all the rage here at the show. Mazda is rocking the stand with its utterly outrageous, completely captivating Furai race/street car. The name means "the sound of wind," but considering that this car is a reskinned version of an LMP2 Le Mans race car with an ear-shattering three-rotor, 450-horsepower engine fitted amidships, its sound promises to be more like a hurricane in a seashell.
The Furai -- another of Mazda's recent Nagare design concepts -- is a collaboration between Mazda Design and Swift Engineering, the makers of race chassis. The extravagant, fluted, twining design -- rather like a open book with pages lifting and ruffling in a gentle breeze -- might seem like pure styling indulgence. But, according to Mazda North America design director Franz von Holzhausen, the intricate surfaces shape aero turbulence so effectively that future Mazda race cars in the Le Mans series may share the organic surface. This is great news for Mazda, allowing it to promote a corporate image in a landscape of look-alike, anonymized race cars.
Mazda also showed a coaster-wheeled Taiki street car. Eh.
-- Dan Neil
As if Detroit didn't have enough to worry about, the Chinese are quietly, steadily -- one might even say serenely -- working toward selling cars in the U.S. market. Seems fair, because U.S. and European automakers, General Motors chief among them, are selling millions of cars in China. Here at the Detroit show, five Chinese carmakers have displays. Among the most fetching, and far-fetched, is the Tang Hua, which might be thought of as a cross between a SmartCar and an inflatable life raft. Tang Hua means "Book of Songs," and ... well, I'm already feeling like joining the nearest Shaolin temple.
The Tang Hua has a 72-inch wheelbase, reaches speeds of about 30 mph and has a range of about 100 miles. The design prototype I sat in also set some kind of record for toxic outgassing. Curiously, it also had what looked like a picture of Chairman Mao on the steering wheel.
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It's a supercharged, 5,000-horsepower, all-wheel-drive, bulletproof, underwater-capable convertible with special buzzsaws for cutting through heavily wooded areas. It's the Mach 5, and it's our 2008 North American Car of the Year. Starring in the upcoming, endless-nightmare-of-the-multiplex "Speed Racer," the Mach 5 -- actually, a static model of same (Mock 5?) -- is on display in the Michigan Hall of Cobo Center, here on the first day of the Detroit show.
The film, starring Emile Hirsch as a teenager half his age, is another special-effects set piece by the brothers Wachowski of "Matrix" fame. They're all here: Pops, Trixie, Racer X, that damn monkey. Basically, it's the proto-anime cartoon by Tatsuo Yoshida, only without the po-mo irony and stoner-friendly non sequiturs.
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 A good way to bracket the Detroit auto show is to think in terms of hometown hero and most lowly and unloved visitor. The former has to be the 2009 Chevy Corvette ZR1, a 620-plus-horsepower Visigoth, a skull-cleaving barbarian wielding a carbon-fiber cudgel. The first six-figure Vette, the ZR1 (powered by a supercharged 6.2-liter V-8) promises to leave just about any Ferrari or Lamborghini you care to name for dead. If this is the last incandescent blaze of doomed petrochemical optimism, it is nonetheless glorious.
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