Everything You Need To Know About The 2015 Detroit Auto Show
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Your Jalopnik staff has braved Detroit's arctic tundra (except for me, I'm relatively warm in Austin and it's awesome) to bring you all the latest news from the 2015 Detroit Auto Show. Here's all the stuff that dropped over the weekend and this morning. More to come today.
1st Gear: Buick Avenir
What is the point of Buick? Why does it exist? Just to sell re-badged Opels to the Chinese? Buick must be able to do more than that, and General Motors apparently thinks it can. That's the idea behind this, the Buick Avenir Concept unveiled on the eve of the Detroit Auto Show tonight.
2nd Gear: Chevrolet Volt
The Chevy Volt offered GM a chance to show it was capable of quickly producing a car that was radically different than any car they'd made before. It wasn't a hit. With low EV-only range and a high price, what exactly was the reason to buy it? The 2016 Chevy Volt seems like a better deal.
3rd Gear: Nissan Titan
The 2016 Nissan Titan is an American-built truck with an American-built turbodiesel Cummins 5.0-liter V8, giving consumers a chance to own a V8 diesel in a light-duty truck. It'll tow 12,000 pounds and do it while saving 20% of fuel relative to other V8s they said.
4th Gear: Alfa Romeo 4C Spider
The Alfa Romeo 4C is often heralded as a kind of baby Ferrari. Something about that yellow paint job and open top on the new Alfa 4C Spider makes it look even more like the Ferrari 458 Speciale A's little brother. I like what I'm seeing.
5th Gear: Volkswagen Cross Coupe GTE
Last year at the Detroit Show, Volkswagen announced that they'd be building a new seven-passenger SUV starting in 2016. That's what we thought we'd be seeing from VW today. But instead, we have the Cross Coupe GTE, a BMW X6-esque coupe crossover sport utility vehicle.
6th Gear: Mercedes-AMG GLE63 S Coupe
Even though I like the upcoming Mercedes-Benz GLE, their replacement for the venerable ML-Class, I'll admit that it's not the most, uh, classically beautiful thing on four wheels. You know what helps me get past those looks? A twin-turbo V8 good for 577 horsepower. That'll do, pig.
7th Gear: Jaguar F-PACE
Jaguar will be tossing its own effort into the "luxury crossover" segment with the five door all-wheel-drive "F-Pace." It is expected to be similar to Jaguar's 2013 C-X17 concept vehicle. It will be Jaguar's attempt to offer a model to compete in a segment it currently hasn't entered.
8th Gear: Chevrolet Bolt
It seems Chevy focus-grouped the crap out of Volt owners to come up with their next-generation, all-electric concept, and what people told them they wanted was a crossover that incorporated design elements from the Renault Avantime, Honda CRX, BMW i3 paint, and some Tesla door handles. And it's $30K! Sort of.