It seemed like everything at the car show started at 50 grand, but we began in the truck section, with all the crazy truck-innovations such as the back bed gate that turns into a staircase so you can clamber up into the bed to do your truck-bed stuff. Everyone near me who had to experience this incredible innovation for themselves said the same thing (along with me), which was “How convenient! Why didn’t they do this 20 years ago?”
This getting-up-into-the-truck assist bar looks like something we are going to see incorporated into a violent movie fight scene real soon. Ow!
The fold-out tailgate-step innovation was from GMC, which is a mortal truck enemy of Ford, so I think Ford had to come up with something quick, and if it’s possible to make a sarcastic technological response in a technological arms race, I think Ford done gone and did it with their real life manifestation of a stick-drawing of a tailgate step. “Stairgate? Oh, yeah, we got that.” It worked fine, I climbed up on it and everything.
This is another thing people at the auto show were wondering about, as in “it’s about time,” to wit; taking advantage of dead space in the body styling to ram in some storage space.
Trucks are all about manifestations of physicality, the ability to do work, POWER. That’s not a psycho-aesthetics observation, that’s what the trucks tell us.
Everything on trucks is Extra Duty Heavy Duty. Look at this battery! It is wearing a coat for the Polar Vortex! I am Battery! The clamp to connect my positive terminal to the positive cable has five visible bolts connecting it! I will start your sand-colored Dodge Ram Power Wagon! We will do stuff! Ramming speed!
Another thing about trucks lately is they are SCARY. Look at these fearsome grilles. I was talking about this with a friend after the show and he said they are totally Fronts on your Grille, as in those metal pieces you can wear over your teeth to look all gangsta. This is Truck America reverberating the aesthetic. Truck yeah, man. Truck me? Truck YOU!
The race for each truck to be taller and more domineering than the last truck is killing people, but the trucks only answer to other trucks. Amid all the terrorizing, this Jeep grill is very old fashioned and chill.
However, Jeep is not immune to all this trucktosterone aggression, they are going to make a pickup truck called GLADIATOR. Are you not entertained?
Another thing I guess, is sort of a biological imperative of automobiles. This tag was on one of the Dodge Challengers, another $50K sticker-price car.
This was the #DodgeDNA-mobile, a Dodge Challenger with a modest 3.6-liter V6 engine, but you can get some DNA in a Dodge Challenger with a Supercharged 6.2L HEMI® SRT V8 Engine with 717 HP and 656 LB-FT of Torque (whew), which, to put it in perspective, means the engine in one of these things with the horse nostrils—
—is equal to six of these, a Ford Ecosport, with a 1.0L Ecoboost engine.
As far as hashtag DodgeDNA goes, here’s the big ol’ Drunk Uncle of the family, the Dodge Durango SRT AWD with a 6.4L V8 SRT® HEMI MDS engine, wow, that’s a lot of initials, I know. Here’s the easy part to remember: 70 thousand dollars to smoke the other SUVs off the line from the school parking lot.
This Dodge Durango SRT AWD also featured “Demonic Red Laguna Leather-Trim Performance Seats, Demonic seat with black accents.” That’s great, but they’ll never top Corinthian Leather!
Wheels are a whole other thing, one of these wheels might cost more than I paid for my whole pre-owned 2005 Pontiac Vibe!
Here are some more circles. They are the exhaust pipes of the mighty Chevrolet Corvette, which I didn’t even bother to check out for price or anything, it’s a Corvette, that’s all you need to know.
There were some other two-seater type cars at the show and I really liked this one from Fiat. It’s called, I think, a Fiat Spider, and there’s a badge with a scorpion on it, so I guess this is the Fiat Spider Scorpion. Sixteen legs’ worth of combined arachnid power! Plus a stinger and a web! Feisty-crawly!
Poisonous animal names are a tradition in the world of cars, which brings us to the Ford Mustang, which starts out as a horse, but then is combined with the power of a snake to become this Ford Mustang Cobra. Hiyo-Sss! Watch out!
Out of the many cars and engines I saw at the Motortrend International Auto Show, the thing that really grabbed me was the ridiculous and tub-like Toyota 4Runner, which seems to be aimed at the action crowd, so the sharpies at the Toyota dealership will see me coming from a mile away as an obvious 4Runner customer when I walk in with my kayak.
Will you look at that thing? Look at that blue! It is somehow an Exclusive Color, namely, TRD Pro Exclusive Color VOODOO BLUE, and I cannot impress upon you how blue this blue is. There’s some kind of voodoo that blue do, I’M NOT KIDDING. I even selfied myself in it, but not on purpose, I was just trying to capture this blue, and for $48,958 it can be mine.
Speaking of electric, everybody’s all excited about Electric Car, and Chevrolet makes them, but I think they really fell down on the names because it’s confusing. This is the Chevy Bolt, and this one here is in the color called Shock, okay, we get it, electric.
So that’s the Bolt, and now here’s the plug-in hybrid Volt, which is a real walk on the mild side. It’s a sedan, and it’s got the more electrical name, I think, Volt, they could have even gone more electrical and called it Volt-exclamation point, “Volt!” These names are too close, you have one sorta boring sedan and one snappy, and they almost have the same name. This is bad.
The Volt, the sedan, has a “range extender” gas engine that is 1.5L, which means that besides its electric power, the Electric Car also has gas power that is one half of a liter bigger than our pal from the insanely-huge-engined Dodge hashtag DNA Hemi discussion, the 1-liter Ford Ecosport.
Chevy should call all their electric cars VOLT, and then have different flavors like that pothead Elon Musk did with Tesla. They are all Tesla! So the Volt sedan is the Volt Sedan, and the tennis-ball-colored one could be the SportVolt or the VoltSportsBall, whatever. If they make a station wagon, though, they should not call it the VoltsWagon. Volt!
A very popular exhibit at the Motortrend International Auto Show was this video game that had an enclosure which moved around as you pretended to drive a car.
As far as Value, here’s what you can get for about $20K, one of these tricycles with the two wheels in front, which is supposed to be safer.
This was a little sad-making, the last year of the VW Beetle. A Final Edition ragtop like this would be around $30,000. Maybe they’ll make a bug-shaped car again, an electric one.
This is the rug at the Auto show, it’s like a little road, except no cars, only people.
