Auto shows are strange things, wherein manufacturers go to great lengths to appeal to all manner of car people: enthusiasts, prospective buyers, and even the biannually curious. With the greatest of pomp, car builders reveal their wares and maximize the hype, which is far more important now than ever. Along the way, they produce some terrific experiences and they fall flat just as often. I walked the show floor on Friday’s press day (the day after most “big reveals”) to preview what the showgoer can expect.

Those familiar with my usual subject matter will expect (correctly) that I was looking at and under showfloor cars for rust and frame damage out of habit, but I think I occasionally stumble into a loose grasp of the esoteric nature of the automotive industry. With that in mind, I offer up three classifications from the Auto Show: The Good, The Grotesque, and The Glorious (which is really just an alliterative way to say “racecars”).

THE GOOD

When the Lexus RC F debuted at the Detroit Auto Show, I made mention of its normally aspirated 5.0-liter V8,which can switch back and forth between the Atkinson Cycle (for efficiency) and the Otto Cycle (for power). It’s some swell technology and putting a big NA V8 in a car designed to fight the BMW Ms of the world is a bold move. In profile, it resembles some kind of heretofore unknown marine predator.

From the front, the oversized corporate grille renders the RC F a sinister jungle cat with some kind of freaky vertically opening mouth ready to devour scads of womp rats. Those are real, right?

Cadillac’s Elmiraj concept car is an interesting bit of kit. The pillarless design and enormous doors harken back to the glory days of the Personal Luxury Coupe (not to be confused with Personal Misery Coupes). While I can’t be an apologist for bizarre and intentional misspellings, I can say I appreciate an unapologetically Cadillac Cadillac.

The exhaust tips are clearly well thought-out and integrate nicely into the lower bumper covers. The “V” badging looks like an afterthought, because everyone knows that “Emiraj-V Driving Academy” just sounds ridiculous.

This is the new Corvette Z06. If you’ve not heard about it, you’ve been living under rock. What’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson up to these days? And whatever happened “3rd Rock From the Sun?” If you see John Lithgow, tell him I said, “Hi.” He doesn’t know me, but I don’t want him to think I’m a jerk who doesn’t appreciate his art.

The 2015 Ford Mustang was on display in GT trim with a NOW-BIGGER-THAN-EVER 5.0 badge on the front fenders. I didn’t have a ruler and some Very Important People from Telvision (VIPFT) were shooting it when I was perusing, so I will estimate the badge is approximately 13-feet tall. In the foreground of this photo is a cutaway of the 2.3-liter four-cylinder engine that the Mustang will also get. I, for one, am excited for an SVO Mustang successor.

I’m a sucker for black wheels on a white car and the Mopar Edition Dodge Challenger wears its blue stripe over the black wheels quite nicely. For some reason, this car was buried deep in the substantial corner Chysler carved out of the show floor.

The “M” stands “Mostly out of your price range,” since Dodge is only making a few dozen of these.

Chrysler, however, will make considerably more of the new Chrysler 200, which no longer looks like some malformed Chrysler Sebring. Pretty sharp redesign, I think.

I met the esteemed Executive Hoon, Jeff Glucker, early in the morning as he desperately searched for coffee. He is a tall, handsome, clean-cut man who seemed entirely puzzled that a short, bearded Muppet with glasses (me) was addressing him by his first name. He was helpful and, well, you all know Jeff Glucker by reputation. He’s a solid guy.

There was a point to that short anecdote and it was this: Mr. Glucker is rather fond of the Jaguar F-Type. I think it looks peculiar yet distinctly Jaguar in its appeal, which is probably a good thing, but I’m glad to have seen it in person at last. Unfortunately, all of my pictures of the F-Type turned out awful except this close-up of “Jaguar” on the vents, so that’s the photo you get. If you’d like to complain about it, leave Jeff a voicemail that he won’t be able to hear over the F-Type’s glorious exhaust note, still ringing in his ears some months after his test drive of it. This one of several cars I wish they’d let patrons hear.

Here are two of the new BMW M cars. The blue one is an M3, the one behind an M6. BMW also had an M4 and an M2 and maybe six or seven other M-cars. I’m not a big BMW fan, but I hear BMW fans are big fans of these. I was too busy messing with the nearby i3 (more on this later) to hear much of the M-Sport question-and-answer session, but the BMW PR guy said they had no plans to build a 5-Series wagon. The E34 wagon is my favorite BMW, so that was disappointing to hear.

Next to BMW, Mercedes had a twirling new AMG CLA45 and the SLS Gullwing, which is a sexy piece of kit if you’ve got a couple of hundred-thousand-dollar bills laying around doing nothing all day. The CLA45 sits nicely on its haunches, doesn’t it?

And now for something completely different: This is the new Chevy Colorado. It oozes automotive patriotism. It launches this year with two engine options: a 2.5-liter four cylinder and a 3.6-liter LFX V6 that makes 300 horsepower. By early next year, it will also have an optional 2.8-liter turbodiesel four-cylinder. Chevy’s PR person is a mind reader, because when I asked what its projected towing capacity would be, he said they were projecting the V6’s towing capacity around 6,700 pounds, which “would be enough to tow a small racecar.” I must look like some kind of wild-eyed LeMons freak.

The new aluminum-bodies F-150 got a nice redesign.

You may have seen a better picture of the Cummins Diesel-powered Nissan Frontier in the recent edition of the Hooniverse News, but I had to take a photo of this poor fellow tasked with mopping up automotive journalists’ drool on the Frontier’s magic spinning dais.

 

Say, isn’t that just a Mazdaspeed3 with a bit of aero and the tire size inexplicably printed behind the front wheels? Yeah, that’s pretty much what the Club Sport 3 is. And I like it. Sue me.

The 2015 Volkswagen GTI Concept has some Ferrari 512TR up in that grille.

But the Volvo V60 was the scene-stealer for me. Comfortable seats and a proper wagon is a major selling point…

…but the electric-blue V60 Polestar is the kind of wagon that makes me drool. “Mop to the Volvo display. Mop to the Volvo display.”

 

THE GROTESQUE

I’m not generally one to judge automotive subcultures, belonging to a sufficiently weird one myself, but it seems odd for a luxury marquee like Lexus to display a stanced IS F. The orange looks good and the black striping is a nice touch, but the slammed suspension creates an obscenely strange beast, even for a show car.

This is the new Cadillac Escalade. It’s huge and appointed with all of the amenities of a proper luxury autocoach. Maybe it’s the boxy front or maybe it’s the box o’ wine I smooshed into my laptop bag and was drinking out paper-cone cups like a true gentleman, but it doesn’t take much squinting for it to look like a ’98 Lincoln Navigator.

This is the Rolls Royce Wraith Phantom and it is enormous. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is until you see one in person. It dwarfs most trucks and certainly dwarfs all peasants.

Speaking of which, the AMG G-Class is a monstrous piece of offroading capability, but most owners will never use it for that.

There are certainly things to like about the G-Wagon, of course. The doors register an extremely satisfying chunk when you toss them shut and the interior gives the potential for The Finer Things on an offroading excursion. But the cupholders in the front, they look a bit…well…floppy.

Somebody possesses the job to make sure all of the Porsche centercaps are perfectly vertical at auto shows. And Stuttgart’s manufacturer is building the most amazing hybrid road car ever. This is not it. This is a Panamera Hybrid.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I like the old-school look of the Chevy Camaro ZL1’s four gauges shown here, but for some reason the infotainment setup reminds of the Tiger Handheld Electronic Baseball game that I got for a Christmas when I really wanted a GameBoy and the not-Mario-but-totally-Mario Baseball game. I’m sure it works fine and if you’re driving a ZL1, you probably don’t really care, but man, this wine just tastes better and better after each cone-cup.

BMW’s electric i3 looks like someone cut the middle three feet out of a Toyota Matrix, ran it through 3,000-degree car wash, and then tack welded the smoldering mess onto the Matrix’s front clip, adding some lights and a couple of filled-in kidney grilles.

Inside, the i3 features some a plush setup with some wood, brown leather, and an ashtray in the center cupholder.

Sitting next to the i3 on display was the i8, which might belong in the “Good” category, but the quixotic design renders it impossible to capture what it truly looks like in photos. If I boil it down to simple design elements, I love the floating roofline, but the car’s face looks like the caricature of a pigfaced Roman legionnaire.

The Kia Niro concept was similarly hard to photograph, if only because it required me to look at it for an extended period of time. The shape is fine, but the accents (tire racing stripe?), the scissor doors, and the hideously retrofuturist interior are all nonsense. Even for a concept car, this strikes me as a bit much.

The seats look to be made from foamboard and silver spray paint.

I’m not sure what to think about the Ceramic White Mazda6 concept, which features irregular silver striping on a flat white body, enormous 20-inch wheels to fit big Brembo brakes, and not much else different from a normal 6. However, the retro Mazda logo looks pretty neat emblazoned on the doors.

In years past, Scion has made it a point to show how seriously they take the younger demographic by making their booth obnoxiously teen-centric. Maybe they’ve realized that teens don’t buy new cars, but Scion’s display is considerably more toned down this year.

Mitsubishi was apparently at the auto show, but their booth is tucked away in a bit of a back corner, behind the Airstream display. Promptly featured were a couple of crossovers and the Mirage; the sole Lancer Evo was hidden even further in the back corner of the back-corner booth. For what it is, the Mirage seems like a decent car at a reasonable price; I hope Mitsubishi can hang their collective hats on that for a while and maybe they’ll even get some foot traffic in their out-of-the-way location.

This is the new Subaru Midsize Car.

I really do see what Fiat is trying to say with this 500L, but that graphic sincerely looks like an “F,” an “M,” and an “L.”

 

THE GLORIOUS

 

Do you like cars? Do you like video games? Do you like car-related video games? Do you like waiting in long lines for four minutes of car-related video gaming? I counted no fewer than five manufacturers with Forza, Gran Turismo, and iRacing setups in their booths. Most only had one or two machines, so you might have to wait a bit to get a crack at one or two laps in a predesignated car at a predesignated track. But hey, I’d not yet played Forza 5, so that was neat, even if Alan Cesar from Grassroots Motorsports Magazine beat me.

Not into video gaming? Ford brought a wall full of Ford Mustang pinball machines. I’m no pinball wizard, but it’s a pretty decent pinball game and the price of zero American dollars hits the spot, too.

Right at the entrance to the Toyota display is this, an 8000-horsepower supercharged V8 funny car with the top lifted so you can see its guts.

The engine is certainly impressive, but the simplicity of most other components is remarkable. The steering linkage is shown above, running alongside the tubeframe chassis. Granted, a dragster doesn’t have to steer much or for very long, but its rudimentary nature is pretty nuts.

Marco Andretti’s Honda-powered Dallara IndyCar resides on display in the Honda booth. It’s not the only car in the show bearing the Andretti name, but it’s certainly the fastest.

Tanner Foust’s Global RallyCross Volkswagen Beetle also carries the Andretti name, as Foust will campaign it under the Andretti name (The small red front-bumper badge is Andretti Autosport’s logo). I’ve never seen a car so tightly buttoned up at an auto show, probably because it’s just mule for the livery.

Nearby sat another Beetle with Andretti branding and Scott Speed’s name on it. Andretti announced that Foust and Speed would both be driving in Global RallyCross with Beetles, but the 7Up car didn’t look remotely rally-prepared, as it also appeared to be for the purposes of livery demonstration.

Ford stealthily entered one of their new F-150s in the 881-mile Baja race, modifying it only with required safety items. The aluminum-shod truck didn’t win the production class, but it finished the race, which is itself a major victory for any vehicle. Ford brought it to the show without watching any of the dirt or debris from its battle-scarred hide.

 

Jeff Glucker already posted this Tudor United Sportscar Championship SRT Viper, which finished third in TUSC’s GTLM class at the recent Rolex 24 at Daytona, but it’s worth an extra look or three. I absolutely love that Riley Technologies—who built and run the car for SRT—left 24 hours of tire rubber, oil, grease, dirt, bugs, and grime smeared all over it.

The full-season pairing of veteran racer Marc Goossens and young hotshoe Dominik Farnbacher (whose impeccable hair is the stuff of legend) were joined by 2012 IndyCar Champion Ryan Hunter-Reay for the 24-hour race, from which Goossens started on pole.

Even though it’s a static display, this was far and away the highlight of the show.

Oddly enough, Corvette Racing’s #3 GTLM entry in TUSC sat just a hundred feet away or so, polished to a sheen like a collector’s car. With the new Corvette’s debut, maybe GM wanted it to look sharp for the non-TUSC fans at the show. It looks incredible, but racecars look best when they wear their wear proudly. Danish sportscar legend Jan Magnussen and Spanish bulldog Antonio Garcia will drive this C7.R all season in TUSC.

Through the substantial brake venting, you can see the incredible width of the Michelin racing tires these Corvettes wear.

There was one more TUSC car on display, Mazda’s Skyactiv Diesel Prototype. It ran well off the pace at Daytona, which is to be expected with teething troubles on a new powerplant. Whatever else you say about it, it looks terrific.

I probably missed something in the churning TUSC news cycle this fall, but this car closely resembles Lola’s last closed-cockpit prototypes before the legendary racecar builder went into receivership. The gas tank filler cover even said “LOLA” on it in recessed lettering. Is this a Lola chassis that Mazda laid claim to?

The endplate on the rear wing contains a bunch of holes, which allow the aerodynamics to be fine-tuned by adjusting the angle of attack on the top half of the two-element wing.

Major League Baseball pitcher C.J. Wilson owns a few Mazda dealerships and a couple of a Mazda MX-5s that run in the Continental Tire Sportscar Challenge, a supporting series for TUSC. Continental Challenge cars start their lives as street cars, rather than being purpose-built racing machines like the TUSC GTLM cars shown above. The MX-5’s interior is modified, sure, but its layout still resembles a stock Miata.

In a quiet corner of the show floor, a group of students from the Illinois Institute of Technology were eager to show off their all-electric Formula SAE car. It’s quite a setup with a 25-horsepower motor driving each of the wheels and the capability to get to 60 miles per hour in a little more than three seconds. They finished second in their class in 2012 and are currently working on a fresh build for this year. Expect more about this car and its builders soon.

Of course, that covers less than half of the show. If you happen to go, feel free to share what you find good, grotesque, or glorious. And be sure to check out the Auto Show coverage from our friends at Autoweek before you go.

All photos copyright Eric Rood/Hooniverse