I'm back home from the Detroit Auto Show. I'm working on a full photo gallery, which I'll have ready tomorrow, but in the mean time I have a couple of cars I'd like to show you.
No question, the domestic automakers are the stars of this year's show. We've already talked about Ford's new 2013 Fusion, a gorgeous car backed up with some serious engineering. From GM, we saw the new baby Cadillac, the ATS. I don't know if photos do this car justice; in two dimensions, you might dismiss it as a scaled-down CTS. But in person, this car has just the right amount of Cadillac attitude without looking like it's, er, compensating for it's small size. (And I never thought I'd see a "2.0T" logo attached to the back of a Cadillac.)
Finally, Chrysler showed the new Dodge Dart, a compact sedan based on the same platform as the Alfa Romeo Giulietta. Chrysler tells us the Dart come with three engine choices and a $15,995 starting price. And like the 2011 Charger, it would appear that Chrysler has left no i undotted and no t uncrossed -- the Dart is beautiful inside and out.
Check out the photos:
I think this is going to be a very good year! -- Aaron Gold
Photo © GM/Chrysler
Aaron;
I have to agree that the domestic car makers finally seem to get it. Although the Cadillac seems a little too ‘Cadillac’ for my tastes (looks too much like every other Cadillac), I guess that’s how modern cars are being designed whither I like it or not.
The new Dart looks very promising. I had initially thought it was going to be a half-sized Charger, but, I see that the Dart shares little with the Charger other than a similarity in the taillights. I’ve read several complaints that it looks too much like the Neon, however, as I recall, the Neon was well received when it was first introduced. It’s main problem was build quality, which the new Dart should overcome. Now, if only Dode would offer the car with 2-door for a little extra sporting flair…………..
Wow! It is starting to look like the not-too-distant future will be dominated by American and Korean automakers. The speed and nature of the innovation is staggering. It really seems as if they are pulling in the best engineers and designers.
….Which is excellent for consumers. European cars are mostly too expensive+unreliable and Japanese cars are mostly too boring.
This resurgence (on the American side) seems to be in part because the UAW has given these companies sufficient margin to make a profit and invest in design/engineering. Hopefully its new-found wisdom isn’t destroyed by its historical and structural greed.
I kinda hope that they maintain sufficient pull in the respective boardrooms of these companies to also debase their acrimonious tendencies. It is more difficult to blame management for the color of the moon if you ARE management. Now they can also see how big wage increases sometimes come at the expense of future competitiveness if they aren’t acting to protect some of the bottom line. We’ll see.
Regardless, may the best car win.
Okay all I can say is wow. The new Dart is the first Mopar that I did like the looks of in a long time. And it doesn’t look like RAM truck!
The ATS could actually compete with Audi in looks. I am impressed. If they reliability is good they will sell like hot cakes. Of course you will always have those that will never by American but you can not fight that kind of attitude.
I think Cadillac misspelled the name of the car… The second letter should be an “S”. It would better reflect the looks that would make baby Jeebus throw up in his mouth a little.
I agree with most of the others here about the looks of the ATS: it does look good. However, its rounded shape also makes it look heavy. I just hope that it isn’t too heavy for the 2.0t engine to do a good job hauling it around.
I am less enthused about the looks of the Dart. To me, it seems to be something of a hodgepodge, looking like any other compact car, but with a Dodge cross added to the grill and Charger taillights tacked on.
But one thing about the Dart that does impress me is the speed with which Fiat brought this car to market. It literally takes years to bring a car from boardroom idea to the point where you actually have something to sell, even if you do base the car on an existing platform. And the fact that the government is so heavily involved with certifying car safety and emissions performance further slows development down to a crawl.
So, I think the real question here is, how did Fiat get this car ready so fast?
I think we have to remember when it comes to Chrysler that pretty much anything they are bringing to market right now was already in the works BEFORE Chrysler was handed to Fiat by the government. They just didn’t have the resources pre-bankruptcy to build them.
In the Dart’s case, all that was required was a suitable platform to build upon, which ended up being the Alfa Romeo Giulietta, and of course, finalizing the Model name. Had Chrysler/Fiat had to start the design process for this car from scratch, it would have taken far more time to bring to market.
Eric, I don’t know about that — I don’t think Chrysler could have gotten very far on the design of the Dart without knowing what platform it would be built on. I rode with a Chrysler engineer during the Fiat 500 press preview, and he said that things are moving at a lightning-fast pace under Fiat management. The fact that the Dart is based on the Giulietta platform no doubt saved a *lot* of time, but I think the car has a distinctly Dodge feel, rather than looking like a Fiat with a crosshair grille slapped on. To me, it really does look like what I’d expect from a next-generation Neon. That’s a pretty neat trick, and I was genuinely impressed.
I wish i couldve gone to the detroit auto show. The Cadillac looks really good. In a way it reminds me of the 300c . I dont know what is it but the “grill” did it for me.
The dodge looks vicious as well