GM’s new Alpha rear drive architecture, which prefabricated its global debut under the new Cadillac ATS at the Detroit Show, is one of the most important pieces of hardware the company will launch this decade. Light and flexible – it can be stretched or shrunk, and widened – Alpha not only gives Cadillac a genuine [...]

The new 2013 Dodge Dart is one of the stars of the 2012 Detroit auto show. Its design, its interior and its attitude should make compact buyers forget the ill-conceived and ill-executed Caliber in a hurry. We’re probably a couple of months away from a first drive, so I’ll reserve judgment on whether an Alfa [...]

So Chevy wants the people to decide: Which of its 2012 Detroit auto show concepts — Code 130R or Tru 140S — should be turned into a production model? Dumb question, really, because only one of these Chevys is a no-brainer. And that’s the 130R. Why? Because Honda could build the 140S. So could Ford [...]

Every year the Motor Trend team rolls into the Detroit auto show already knowing a lot about the show’s big reveals so we can bring you the first photos and information as it breaks. But staring at over-photoshopped studio shoots and pouring over preliminary specs can only go so far to give you a true [...]

“I’ll never forget the 2009 show,” Christophe Georges, the president and COO of Bentley said to me as we admired his new V-8-powered Continental GT but also the buzz in the air. “It was grim.” And if the 2009 Detroit show was grim, the 2008 Los Angeles show was frostbitten. To refresh your memory, Chrysler [...]

DETROIT — Call, write, email, tweet Chevrolet right now and tell them you want the Code 130R. The red one. GM’s advanced design chief, Clay Dean, says the vote so far is overwhelmingly for this rear-drive car over the Cruze-based Tru 140S, the white car, which frankly (my opinion, not his) looks like a Mitsubishi [...]

Just after the Acura press conference, I ran into Chrysler hot shot Ralph Gilles giving the NSX concept the evil eye. Gilles, as you should know by now, is known for his many Pentastar design contributions, including the Chrysler 300 and, lately, as the company’s design chief and CEO of the new SRT performance division. [...]

While taking in the all new Dodge Dart I ran crossways an old friend and stud car Mazda car designer Derek Jenkins.  I sat back in the cut watching as Jenkins and a colleague examined the new Dart from top to bottom; jumping behind the driver’s seat, poking and prodding materials and taking pictures of [...]

DETROIT — The 2012 North American International Auto Show has barely opened to the international press, and already the hottest rumor on the show floor is that Chrysler/Fiat is working on a replacement for the Dodge Challenger. It will be called Barracuda (though probably not Plymouth) and could be ready in time to launch for [...]

“We broke a lot of our own rules,” says Dave Masch, chief engineer of the highly anticipated 2013 Cadillac ATS, Cadillac’s new 3 Series fighter. He’s a GM lifer, and that term carries a lot of baggage — GM lifers are supposedly dull, plodding, buttoned-down company men who worship system and process over product. They [...]