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Story by Jack Baruth; photos by Zerin Dube, Carl Modesette, and Dave Everest

Oh, what we wouldn’t give to return to the fashionable ennui of last year’s Detroit Auto Show! Back in those oh-so-innocent days, the floor was crowded, the giveaways flowed like water, and no manufacturer could foresee any problem worse than perhaps falling back a place in their particular front of the never-to-end horsepower wars. We didn’t know the “Carpocalypse” was coming, didn’t know that car sales would crater the way they have, couldn’t begin to guess that within a year the domestics would be on their knees while Toyota and Honda experienced thirty-percent-plus volume drops. Oh well. That was then, this is now.

The floor traffic was way down at Detroit this year, even if the increasing numbers of obnoxious soap-averse Eurotrash with monstrous rolling-tripod HD video cameras made the press previews feel a little… close at times. What’s the point of using a twenty-grand rig to film three days of a show, knowing that you’ll be boiling it down to a press-pass-contract-specified maximum five minutes of 320×240 Flash video? This was the worst-smelling NAIAS in history; the mulchy aroma of the “eco-drive” basement area mixed with the sweat-soaked polyester tops of the foreign press to create an aroma best described as “paint-peeling”. Some of these dudes really should have been thrown in the ol’ Silkwood shower.

Still, there were times when, comfortably seated in the fixed buckets of a matte-blue Murcielago or relaxing with Audi-branded chocolate squares in a manufacturer lounge, it was possible to obtain a little perspective on the show. Forget the economy, the drama, the naked pleas for government assistance, and the relentless howl of anguished prima donna front-row photographers. It’s still a show about cars, which means we’re going to name the Rockers, Suckers, and Snoozers of the 2009 North American International Auto Show.

Continue reading Detroit Auto Show 2009 In Review: Rockers, suckers, snoozers.

By Byron Hurd

GM’s press conference on Sunday was not the most depressing of the day’s events (See: Chrysler), but it certainly wasn’t the most inspiring either. Wagoner’s communications team set him up with a healthy four hundred words that had nothing to do with GM’s financial trouble. Now that’s a solid corporate communications strategy when everything is business as usual, but when you’ve just been floated a loan by some 300 million of your peers, a little humility may be in order. (See: Chrysler — sensing a pattern?). But while ChryCo’s conference may have been the most depressing of the bunch, it was the non-event that was Pontiac’s presence at NAIAS that depressed, disturbed, and frankly offended me as both an enthusiast and as “member” of the press. If you’ve ever shown up to a party where you’re surrounded by dozens of people who were your friends just days before and suddenly don’t want to talk to you, look at you, acknowledge you, or even share the same hundred-square foot area of their apartment, then you know what it’s like to be Pontiac. You don’t know what you did (or didn’t do), but suddenly you’re the fattest, pinkest, most foul-smelling elephant ever to be under the table.

Continue reading Lord Byron — Pontiac (Was) Car.

Click to View Cadillac Converj & Sport Wagon Gallery

Photos by Zerin Dube and Carl Modesette

The Speed:Sport:Life 2009 North American International Auto Show Photo Gallery is live! 550+ of the best photos of the show that you will find on the web. We’ve taken the time to painstakingly color correct and enhance each photo to make sure you feel like you were there. All photos are viewable as large as 1200×800. We’ll have the 2009 Rockers, Suckers and Snoozers for you tomorrow, but for now we hope you enjoy the gallery.

Full index of photo galleries after the jump!

Continue reading 2009 NAIAS Photo Gallery – 550+ High-Resolution Photos

Click to View Lamborghini Fashion Show Gallery

Story by Jack Baruth
Photos by Zerin Dube

Today saw the introduction of what was justifiably called “the most important product introduction of the 2009 North American International Auto Show”, the mostly-new, .25 coefficient of drag, Toyota Prius… Oh, the hell with that. You don’t wanna hear about the Pious Pod. You want pictures of beautiful women, exotic supercars, Nurburgring-veteran Vipers, bad-assed turbocharged Lincolns, and a half-million-dollar pair of Mercedes super-SLs… and we will deliver.

Continue reading 2009 NAIAS Day 2 Wrap-Up: What, did you think we were gonna cover the Prius?

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Story by Jack Baruth
Photos by Zerin Dube

“THANK YOU, AND GOOD MORNING FOR COMING!” Huh? Mark Fields doesn’t read a teleprompter terribly well, and he would go on to make at least one more hilarious malapropism in the following few minutes, (“WE CAN’T WAIT FOR ALL OF YOU TO GET BEHIND… uh, THIS CAR!”) but it didn’t matter. With their 2009 press conference, Ford broke from the troubled domestic-manufacturer pack and ran for full-throttle glory. We’ve seen this kind of bravado from the Blue Oval’s Detroit rollouts before, but there was a critical difference. Last year the 2009 F-150 arrived in a blast of pyrotechnics as a quartet of Mustangs twirled smoking donuts , but this year the fireworks were silent, replaced by a determined confidence in a simply spectacular wave of product. Gone was the machismo and Toby Keith-fueled manic energy; the new Ford wants to be a great car company, not just a great truck company.

See the S:S:L 2009 NAIAS Day 1 Coverage Gallery HERE.

Continue reading 2009 NAIAS Day 1 Wrap-Up: a tale of three domestics.

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See the Volkswagen Concept BlueSport gallery HERE.

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Ford debuted the Ecoboost Flex alongside the 2010 GT500 and 2010 Taurus before deftly sneaking the F150 on stage just before the end of their show. For a truck with so many early accoldades, they still seem a little nervous about it sharing the stage with a line-up that focuses on fuel efficiency and sporty driving dynamics. More details in our daily wrap-up article later this evening.

See the complete Ford Press Conference gallery HERE.

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More on the Legacy Concept after the press conference.

See the complete Subaru Legacy Concept gallery HERE. We’ll be adding more shots to the gallery after the press conference.

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Even though Honda won’t be holding an over-the-top press conference at the 2009 NAIAS, the all-new 2009 Honda Insight Hybrid will still be debuted to the world in Detroit. Ruining all the fun of a surprise, Honda has dropped one photo of the Insight ahead of the show.

The Insight is expected to have annual global sales of 200,000 units per year – approximately 100,000 in North America – and will utilize a new interactive, driver-focused fuel economy enhancement technology named the Ecological Drive Assist System.

The five-passenger, five-door Insight will go on sale in the spring of 2009.

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Story by Byron Hurd

That’s not a Dave Matthews Band lyric, by the way. If it’s still familiar to you, that’s likely because it’s the title of a short story by Joyce Carol Oates, first published in her Epoch collection in the mid-1960’s. What does it have to do with this column, or with the automotive world as a whole? Well… nothing, actually. But the title’s catchy, and I think it’s a good foundation for a discussion about a twenty-year staple of the American auto industry. According to the NAIAS fact sheet, Detroit has hosted some semblance of an auto show for the better part of a century. It wasn’t until the late eighties that Detroit started to lobby its way into the international spotlight. And while New York, Chicago and Los Angeles also play host to the international automotive media, Detroit hosts the North American International Auto Show. Or at least it did.

At publication time, the list of deserters is as follows: Ferrari, Rolls Royce, Nissan (Infiniti), Suzuki, Mitsubishi, Porsche and Land Rover have bailed entirely. Whether any of these companies will have display models on the floor isn’t entirely clear, but their reps will be absent. Honda has also announced that they will not be holding any press events, but it appears their vehicles (including the new Insight, which was supposed to be debuted) will be on the floor for viewing and photography. I suppose that fits though, since for many enthusiasts the excitement of a hybrid vehicle typically ends at its sheetmetal. Now when you compare the sales volume of these manufacturers to that of those who are still on the floorplan, it may not seem like a catastrophic shift in direction, but it is certainly not insignificant. Two of the Big Japanese 3 are out; two of the smaller Japanese volume sellers are out; and the exotic builders are dropping fast. Keep in mind, most of these announcements have come over the last two weeks. We’re still over a month out.

Continue reading Lord Byron: The Detroit Auto Show — Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?