In an impressive effort to resuscitate struggling North American sales, Jaguar’s new XF model sedan has made its royal American arrival. Although by no means a replacement for the XJ upon which Jaguar has built its rich legacy, the XF is certainly a welcome departure from the expected. Initially introduced as the C-XF concept car at the 2007 Detroit auto show, the XF was quick to identify itself as the new, contemporary face of Jaguar.

Chrysler showed off their ENVI trio this weekend at Media Weekend at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show with the Jeep Renegade Diesel-Hybrid being the greenest of the bunch. Running on two electric motors fueled from a lithium-ion battery pack the Renegade can run 40 miles on a charge. However, with the assistance of the BLUETEC diesel engine and its added 115-hp (watch-out!) the extended range of the Renegade is 400 miles with a fuel rating of 110-mpg. Ofcourse, this is just a concept vehicle and is not meant to be taken literally. It is merely to show you what Chrysler could do, but is not quite ready to do just yet (ever the optimist).

After what could be considered a successful opening for GM at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show a little snippet from Bob Lutz escapes to lay more smack on the new CAFE Laws and to generally “Poo Poo” on everyone’s good time. Both sides that pushed for or against the new CAFE Laws and their requirements of 35mpg by 2020 did their own fair share of “fearmongering” some are just not ready to quit.

Bob Lutz levied his warning to an eager audience that the new CAFE requirements are going to result in an increase in car prices of between $4,000 and $10,000; or $6,000 on average. His warning translates that the research necessary to discover a means to reach those standards and the development of the technology that will be implemented into our future cars will raise the price tag on cars by 2020. Considering the leap in prices I have seen in the last 10 years a $6,000 may be getting off light.

While the new CTS Sedan has been out pounding the pavement and garnering numerous awards GM designers have been quietly cutting their diamond inspired CTS Coupe out of clay. The CTS Coupe takes many styling cues from the Sedan and yet has many distinctive lines that are all its own. The lower sport-tuned stance, the steeper rake from the front to the trunk, the angular cut and handle-less doors and the short rear all give the CTS Coupe plenty of aggression to separate it from the rest of the Cadillac field.

Currently the CTS Coupe is still labeled as a concept car, but it seems impossible that Cadillac would not be rushing this design into production. With space for nearly any engine configuration that GM has available beneath the hood the CTS Coupe already has the base design for the next CTS-V and the bones and brass to carry, dare we say, the new LS9 Corvette ZR1 engine. …Maybe we are getting ahead of ourselves.

GM brought out the heavy star power to dress their runway Style show at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show. While the performers are used to getting all the attention they were merely poised as accessories, highly paid, well dressed accessories to the new designs for 2008 coming down the GM runway.

Those in attendance for the GM Style runway show were Mary J. Blige, Kid Rock, Maroon 5, Jeff Gordon, Adrian Brody and the Mayor of Detroit Kwame Kilpatrick (who was not hurting for Style points himself).

The Auto Industry has been using star power for decades to draw the buyers eyes to their new designs, but GM’s Style show raises the bar beyond flashy unveiling’s and smokey entrances. Below are two galleries of some of what you might have seen.

Back in the 1980’s when the small car or compact car segment was booming what you found were commonly stripped down econo-boxes. As North America moved on to SUV’s and worked to negate its compact past Europe was moving forward and melded the small car segment into a sophisticated and high selling class of vehicles. With the Verve 4-Door Sedan Concept Ford is attempting to introduce some of that European class into the newly revived small car segment in North America.

The Verve Concept is built off a sharing between Ford North America and Ford Europe to bring one of its winning designs over to America. Ford has thus brought to the 2008 Detroit Auto Show their 4-Door Verve Concept that is intended for North America and their European 3-Door hatchback Verve.