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Motorshows homepage -> 2010 Detroit Auto Show
2010 Detroit Auto Show - Mark Nichol, Shane O' Donoghue, Kyle Fortune, Alisdair Suttie
After a fairly miserable 2009 for the car industry, albeit punctuated by some quite sensational cars, we're fully expecting a vintage 2010. And we're already off to a good start, because the Detroit Motor Show (official name: North American International Auto Show) played host to some fascinating new cars. Here's the list.
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Audi A8
The A8 was officially unveiled in Miami so there's not much we didn't know about it coming into Detroit, but it's the first chance we got to poke around the new Audi flagship. First impressions? Quality is sublime, but the rear seats seem strangely cosy. Maybe that's to do with our recent American diets though? Read full article here.
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Audi e-tron concept
The e-tron electric supercar, which promises devastating performance to match its 'TT of the future' looks, is Audi's show star. Audi's press stand was absolutely stuffed with journalists, all desperate to see what the company's future looks like and hear about its plans for electrification. Read full article here.
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BMW Z4 sDrive35i
We already love the Z4, as you can read about here, so the prospect of a spooled up sub-M version has got our knickers in a right twist. Changes are discreet - 335bhp, up from 306bhp, harder suspension and silver mirror caps - but it still looks great. Read full article here.
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BMW 1 Series Concept ActiveE
This is the debut of Project i, technically, which is BMW's umbrella name for a succession of green cars it'll be introducing over the next few years, including a two-wheeled, two-seat tandem car thing (Ed: isn't that called a 'motorbike'?). The electric 1 Series is more normal than that - it's very normal, in fact, which is what's so good about it. Nice clean power, nice lack of compromise. It hits the roads in 2011. Read full article here.
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Cadillac XTS Platinum concept
Cadillac's rumoured new concept car has arrived in the form of the XTS Platinum saloon, which will become the flagship of the range. It's a full hybrid in concept format, which means it can travel on electric power alone and it's set to hit American dealers in 2012. Read full article here.
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Cadillac CTS-V Coupe
As expected, Cadillac wheeled the CTS-V Coupe out in Detroit, which packs 556bhp in an angularly styled coupé shell that eschews B-pillars and curves of any kind. A 6.2-litre V8 provides all those horses. See, not all motorshow cars are green. Read full article here.
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Chevrolet
Chevy's stand is huge, and packed to the rafters with new metal, as you'd expect given the maker's in its hometown. The headliner is the Aveo RS, which Chevy hopes will make American buyers like hot hatches more - they’re not that popular in America beyond the tuning scene. The Orlando and Malibu are there, as expected, as well as loads of SUVs that are irrelevant to us. What didn't show, though, is the Camaro Convertible. Shame. |
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Chrysler Lancia Delta
Yes, it actually happened. Despite having no real presence and not holding a press conference in Detroit, Chrysler plonked one of the most talked about cars in the entire show - a Chrysler-badged Lancia Delta - on a plinth, and then basically ran away. Weird. Read full article here.
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Fiat 500 Electric
Fiat and Chrysler are awkward bedfellows at the moment, and that's very evident in Detroit. Like Chrysler, Fiat turned up with no pomp or ceremony (or press conference) yet still displayed a car that people wanted to talk about - the electric 500. We tried asking the Fiat representative, but she seemed more interested in posing for pictures than discussing lithium ion and solenoids.
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Ford Focus
The 'one Ford strategy' was all the rage at the Blue Oval stand as it unveiled the all-new, global Focus in Detroit during probably the show's biggest ceremony. America is now salivating over a new small car that turns its back on softly sprung blandness and poor plastics in favour of sharp handling and 'big car quality'. Read full article here.
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Ford Mustang
All the hype on the Ford stand is reserved for the new Focus, but the maker also has an updated Mustang or two on display. Tweaks include a 412bhp 5.0-litre V8 - that's more than a tweak, granted - and some cosmetic changes here and there, which you probably won't notice because there are fewer Mustangs in the UK than there are Big Brother housemates.
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GMC Granite concept
The car formerly known as the Urban Utility Concept is birthed as the Granite, which is so small that GMC has given it a super butch name to compensate. Well, we say 'small'. By GMC standards it's small, but it'll hold a mountain bike in the cabin and you'd probably struggle to squeeze it into a disabled space over here. Nice styling though. Read full article here.
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Honda CR-Z
With much ceremony Honda has unveiled the CR-Z coupé, a car it hopes will make hybrids all sexy again. From the outside it looks ok in a 'Honda Insight's sporty brother' type of way, but inside it's less promising. Interesting, but perhaps not the Honda sportscar renaissance many were hoping for. Make up your own mind... Read full article here.
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Hyundai Blue-Will PHEV concept
The 2009 Seoul Motor Show hosted the world debut of the Blue-Will plug-in hybrid concept, but it's out again in Detroit, which means Hyundai is fairly serious about the claim its first plug-in vehicle is a pointer towards a future design direction. They all say that about concepts, granted, but if a future Hyundai four-door looks anything like this, we bet big-headed award show crasher Kanye West will stop being disparaging about the Korean maker in his songs.
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Mercedes-Benz E-Class Cabriolet
We already know plenty about this (how surprising can an E-Class based car be by now anyway?), but that doesn't stop us getting excited about the range-completing drop-top. Possibly more intriguing, though, is the CLS art installation next to the Mercedes café, which shows a molten metal next-gen CLS 'emerging' from the ground. Read full article here.
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MINI Beachcomber concept
We've only just got our heads around the 'baseball cap' roof of the MINI Coupé, and now there's this, the Beachcomber. It's unmistakeably a MINI, but loads of the details are different, including the lights, grille, jacked up ride height, odd bonnet scoop and, of course, the complete lack of doors. In this form it will never make production, but there's lots about it that will, like its 4x4 system, and possibly the 'centre rail' that stretches the length of the cabin. Read full article here.
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Toyota FT-CH concept
Another world debut for the NAIAS, Toyota has unveiled the FT-CH hybrid, which is only a concept but will form the basis of a production model to rival the Honda CR-Z coupé - also unveiled in Detroit. This four-seat coupé uses the same hybrid tech as the Prius. Read full article here. |
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Volkswagen New Compact Coupe
In a genuine Detroit shocker, Volkswagen didn't unveil the new Touareg or Jetta, as expected, but instead brought the New Concept Coupe, which you can think of as an A5 meets a Passat. It's not groundbreaking, but we're certainly in favour of a VW four-seat two-door that looks like this. It's a hybrid, of course, and it looks production-ready to us. Read full article here.
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Volvo C30 electric
Like the 1 Series ActiveE, the C30 BEV (battery electric vehicle) makes normality its selling point. It apparently drives like a normal car, has a decent enough 90-mile odd range and accelerates in a non-embarrassing fashion. To be honest, a motor show is not the place to get worked up about what will ostensibly be just another C30 - it's the driving that will get us going. For that we'll have to wait until 2011, which will give us plenty of time to move all the boxes out of the garage and buy an extension cable. Read full article here.
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