Glitz and glamour of L.A.
Auto Show dazzled with a few surprises and more new-model unveilings than expected
OK, so it is officially the 2019 Los Angeles Auto Show, going by the model year of most of the cars rather than the date of the event. The mood was somewhat sombre, what with the imminent closing of all those General Motors factories, announced just a couple of days before the press days for the show. But that’s a story for another time.
The show itself had perhaps more new model introductions than most of us were expecting, with a few surprises that had not been leaked to the Internet prior to the show.
We only have room for a few highlights, so here are some of the debutantes that caught my eye.
Mazda chose to lead off their introductions with a subcompact four-door hatchback, the sort of car you don’t see much in these Excited States of America, let alone in L.A. The new Mazda3 is a gorgeous little thing inside and out, and will eventually get Mazda’s brilliant SKYACTIV-X engine, which combines conventional fourstroke and diesel-like combustion cycles to generate high torque and ultra-low emissions.
The four-door sedan variant is somewhat more conventional-looking, but handsome in its own way.
BMW offered vehicles which ran the gamut, from a pair of new SUVs; the 4th generation X5 and the new three-row X7, both built in South Carolina; the convertible version of the 8-Series coupe; and their latest in self-driving technology, which suggests their marketing slogan might become “The Ultimate Self-Driving Machine.”
Has nobody else figured out that if the car drives itself, what’s the point of buying an expensive, good-handling car?
One of the splashiest intros — you can usually count on these people for a good show — was for the Jeep Gladiator pickup.
Pickups with a Jeep badge go ‘way back to 1947, but we have been without one for several decades now.
Since pickup trucks seem to be the only things Americans buy these days, you might be wondering : what took them so long?
The result seems to have been worth the wait.
Among other things, all four doors can be removed, and the windshield can be folded down on the hood for a true open-air feeling. Try that on your FSeries. The pick-up box is pretty short, but don’t expect Gladiator owners to be hauling four-by-eight-foot sheets of plywood from Home Depot.
The 3.6 litre Penastar engine (a 3.0-litre Diesel is coming later) is more likely to be hauling its occupants up impossibly steep trails.
Those taillights hanging well beyond the edges of the body sides look particularly vulnerable to rocks and trees, but I guess they have to keep the parts department profitable.
The interior is gorgeous, thanks largely to the influence of Montreal-raised Ralph Gilles, the company’s chief inkthrower for some years.
If there was a “can’t miss” prize for show debutantes, the Gladiator would surely win it.
Porsche showed an all-new 911 that didn’t look all that much different from the old 911. First, if they changed it much, their customers would cry like babies. Second, it’s pretty attractive the way it is.
It is a bit longer, a bit wider, a bit lighter thanks to increased use of aluminum, a bit more powerful and a bit more fuelefficient. In other words, still a 911, only more so.
Honda resurrected an old name for their new mid-size SUV — Passport. This was the name of the short-lived import brand GM Canada operated from 1988 to 1991 to sell SAABs and various Korean DaeWoo cars, and also the name of a badge-engineered Isuzu SUV Honda sold from 1993 to 2002.
This Passport slots between the popular CR-V and the bigger Pilot in Honda’s lineup, and will tackle rivals such as Ford Edge, Hyundai Santa Fe and Nissan Murano.
Kia showed an all-new Soul, which is marginally larger in most dimensions — people just keep getting fatter — but retains similar proportions and style. New boomerang taillights will make it even more distinctive. Contrary to what you may have read elsewhere, Soul remains front-wheel drive only. Kia has another smallish SUV coming that will offer 4WD, but you will have to wait for it.
From the Hyundai side of the Korean conglomerate came the big Palisade SUV, without even a hint of homage to Freddy Cannon’s 1962 hit, “Palisades Park” (my Dad told me about it...).
Palisade effectively replaces the Santa Fe XL in Hyundai’s lineup. It’s actually longer than a Ford Explorer, which helps provide more-than-usual room for third-row occupants.
The all-digital dashboard will surely be an ergonomic nightmare as these things always are, but I guess we’ll have to get used to them until some genius reinvents the round knob that you can operate without staring at it.
The 3.5 litre V6 engine operates under the modified “Atkinson” thermodynamic cycle, which typically provides lower torque in return for better fuel consumption. How this will impact performance remains to be seen.
Lincoln resurrected the name Aviator from an early-2000s Explorer clone to be the latest link in its SUV chain.
It’s also the latest in Lincoln’s wise move away from alphanumeric designations — MKT I think, in this case — that confuse the hell out of everybody.
The big seven-seater is still Explorer-related, and has all the luxo-touches you would expect from this brand.
The twin-turbo 3.0 litre V6 packs 400 horses under the hood, significantly more than most of the largely-European competition. A plug-in hybrid will add about 50 more.
We had a sneak peek at the Toyota Corolla sedan at the RAV4 launch a couple of weeks ago, but were sworn to secrecy.
It shares all of the plusses of the new hatchback — except that’s a more intelligent body style, but you can’t expect Americans to understand something as practical as that).
It’s actually a bit smaller overall than the previous model, but as with the RAV4, it packs more room inside. My view on SUVs is wellknown — station wagons are so much more intelligent. But I had another insight in the shuttle bus on the way to the show.
Some car maker was unloading a bunch of SUVs off a transport truck, moving them onto their show stand.
The vehicles were all wrapped up in some sort of camouflage covering.
Um, they could have saved a lot of time and money by just taping over the grille and the badges. I mean, who could tell what brand it was just by looking at the shape of the thing?
Good job most cars now have remote key fobs; how else could you find your car in a parking lot when most of them look exactly the same?