It’s that time of year again, folks. We’re a mere day away from kicking things off in Deeeeetroit and this year is shaping up to be one to remember.
There’s going to be an awful lot to take in at the COBO Center, but these are the 10 most significant debuts in no particular order.
The next-generation Chevrolet Volt is going to bow next week, marking a big step forward for General Motors’ efforts in the electric car segment. The new Volt will ride on its own platform and be more efficient than the current car, not to mention a new look previewed briefly in Las Vegas last week.
Nissan hasn’t been relevant in the half-ton truck market, well, ever. But with the new and improved Titan, they just might be able to steal a little bit more of the market from mammoths like the Ford F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado. An available 5.0-liter diesel V8 from Cummins will be one of the marquis features that will serve as a key point of differentiation with the new Titan versus other manual labor machines.
Nissan won’t be alone in unveiling a new truck next week. Toyota also plans to pull the sheets off of its new Tacoma mid-size pickup. Official information hasn’t been released yet, but photos of it show that Toyota’s designers went to town making it look more aggressive than the outgoing model. The biggest question is whether the old powertrain will carry over or be replaced by more efficient engines.
There’s a popular rumor going around that Ford is going to go bananas with its Detroit display by showing several high-performance products. The most serious of those is a replacement to the GT supercar. The door is wide open on this one.
Cadillac has a luxury sledgehammer of a sport sedan to showcase this year. It uses a 6.2-liter supercharged V8 that can push the car up to 200 MPH. It boasts 640 hp and 630 lb-ft of torque sent to the rear wheels exclusively through an eight-speed automatic. Yowza!
After teasing the world for years with the concept preview, Acura is finally ready to reveal the honest-to-goodness NSX. Honda is hoping to challenge cars like the McLaren 650S and Ferrari 458 with its new hybrid exotic. The last NSX was ultimately hamstringed by a high price and relatively few updates over its lifespan. Will Acura repeat mistakes from the past or will the new NSX fare better?
Last year VW confirmed that it planned to build and sell a mid-size three-row crossover. This year the company is widely anticipated to offer an update on the progress of that project. Volkswagen is hurting in the US and a mid-size crossover that will sit between the Tiguan and Touareg could help to turn that around.
Along with Ford’s return to selling supercars, there’s also a rumor going around that they will show some sort of successor to the SVT Raptor. The company hasn’t officially confirmed what it will show next week, but the Raptor was a hit and an aluminum-bodied version would only be that much better.
Mercedes plans to bridge the sizeable gap between its basic products and their hi-po AMG siblings by offering AMG Sport models. The first two – a C-Class and GLE Coupe – will be on display at the Mercedes stand. They use a version of Mercedes’ 3.0-liter V6 tuned to make 362 hp and 384 lb-ft of torque with cosmetic touches to make them loo more aggressive.
Cadillac isn’t the only company with a luxury mid-size performance car just around the corner. Lexus will debut the new GS F in Detroit with a 5.0-liter naturally aspirated V8 that sends 467 hp and 389 lb-ft of torque. That’s well below the the output on tap from everything it will compete against, but keep in mind that it’s still going to be one heck of a powerful car.