Ford showed off this update to the super popular Explore earlier this year, but chose the Detroit show for its official debut. Visually, Ford isn’t fixing what isn’t broken. Buyers like the Explorer, and so they should like this one, which offers three rows of seats and the option of a 2.3-liter or 3-liter conventional engine, or a 3.3-liter hybrid.
The original Toyota Supra won fans in the 1980s, so the traditional, even old school, feel of this year’s show is appropriate for Toyota to bring it back, after a nearly two-decade absence from the US market. The new car is a German and Japanese mashup, with Toyota’s styling underpinned by BMW’s Z4 roadster chassis and powered by a BMW straight-six engine. Expect to pay around $50,000 later this summer.
Kia is joining the bigger-is-better club, with a deliberately large and boxy machine it’s calling the Telluride. This upmarket SUV is aimed squarely at the US market, and is being built stateside too, in West Point, Georgia. The design moves away from the sleek and pointy trend for mid-sized SUVs and crossovers, and goes for a square, upright grille up front, and tall tail lights, emphasizing the bulk of this hulk.
This year’s superlative award goes to Ford, for the Mustang Shelby GT500, the most powerful version of the muscle car to date. The Mustang survived Ford’s discontinuation of every car it builds for the US, but it will live in a stable with SUVs and pickup trucks, the big selling profit centers that the car builder wants to focus on now.
The latest Cadillac isn’t a classic sedan, but a three-row land yacht from General Motor’s luxury brand. Designers appear to have taken the XT5 crossover as inspiration, and stretched it out a bit. The front end gets an update with thinner headlights and bigger daytime running lights. The toned down angular look is unlikely to offend anyone, but it won’t stand out on the school run either.
Foreign manufactures want in on this expensive American sports car action too. Lexus is using the Detroit show to reveal a track edition of its gorgeous RC F. Count on the prolific use of carbon fiber (in the roof, hood, and a partition that replaces the rear seats) and a slight bump to the V8’s power for a ton of fun on the track. The price is likely to be over $65,000, with only limited numbers being made.
Even the few electric cars at the Detroit show are SUVs. Infiniti is showing the QX Inspiration Concept, a swoopy crossover, it calls a look at its fully-electrified future. Infinit hasn’t, though, offered any details on the drivetrain, so it has some wiggle room before it commits to bringing something like this to market.
Cadillac is also alluding to a high-riding electric future. Along with the XT6, it teased an SUV that’s so fresh off the designer’s pad, it doesn’t even have a name yet, let alone specs. But GM says Cadillac is going to be its lead brand into an all-electric future, so you can bet that a production car will come out of these sketches. Sometime.
Chinese manufacturer GAC brought one of the most futuristic visions to the Detroit show, with the Entranze EV, a minivan that looks like it auditioned for a part in Bladerunner 2049. GAC is keen to sell cars in the US, and a seven-seater like the Entranze could be the way to do it.