Gadgetory

hey I'm Chris from the verge and I'm joined by Jordan Golson and Sean O'Kane we are on the floor of the Detroit Auto Show 2016 also known as the North American International Auto Show or næss depending on who you ask that show has many names no one calls it that except no one calls the Venice itself people yeah so we are in front of the Buick Avista concept which is I think in arguably one of the most interesting cars of the show and not just the car itself is interesting but the fact that there's a trend here that I don't think any of us saw coming which is that several manufacturers here have debuted luxury sports coupes coming into the show it's like a year yeah and it's like coming into this show who saw that coming like who would have thought that that would be a thing here but we have the Avesta behind us which again is a concept we'll talk about it more in a second we have the Lexus LC which we'll also talk about and we have the Infiniti q60 which we'll also talk about let start with the Avista though so the story behind this vehicle is that it is based on the new Camaro it has a twin-turbo v6 I think for 400 horsepower which is not too shabby whatever concept specs are worth yeah well so the the underlying story you should take away there is that it's it shows how adaptable the Alpha platform is which is what the Camaro is on if they have a lot of flexibility for doing very different cars with it as you can tell I talked to mark Royce earlier who is GM's senior executive vice president of product development and implored him to make it because it's beautiful both in press photos and in person but yeah I'm not sure it's gonna happen we'll see he I don't think that he was particularly bullish on the prospects they just need to make a business case for it and I don't think that they have but the design elements of the car are going to go into future Buicks do you I mean is this your car your your the show or no I think it's I don't know it Buick they're their ads are very accurate in that that's a Buick and this car I think I'm sums that up whether they make it or not I don't know GM makes a lot of cars that sort of crossover and compete with itself and you know it the use cases is does it make sense to build this when you have a Cadillac ATS and you have the Cadillac CTS right and is there room for multiple cars from one company I don't know that that's true I think from a design perspective it looks great and if this is the new vision of Buick then I think they'll do really well yep it is definitely the car that I've heard more people talk about walking around the last two days I don't know I told you up front from yesterday on this is the thing that I wanted to see the most yeah Acura which we'll talk about was the thing I wanted to see maybe the least and then I saw him and that sort of flipped him in my mind which is really strange this is for sure the my favorite interior just because it's so kind of cool-looking a little bit that did with the headrests and then that carbon fiber titanium yeah its arguments when you open the door it is really cool it is one of the ones I could see myself driving around and not feeling self-conscious about but over the course of two days I think it's slip from that top spot and one of the things about about auto shows in general especially this one this year is that we knew so much we knew coming in or we had a good idea of what was coming and this was a surprise yes coming in and so I think for that reason alone people were oh I got to see this because I haven't seen leaked concepts or videos or whatever right well so let's talk about another luxury sports coupe and this one is real which is arguably more exciting than a concept Alexis LC yes you just saw them just walked by it for the first time and I think did a double-take and it looks amazing yeah and I almost think it's a concept yes it's so out there and for Lexus to do that something that's that interesting is really exciting yeah and and you know you sort of get away from the it's reliable and beige and boring and it gets you from point A to point B in comfort and this is something else entirely so this should be a lot of fun so the back story with this car that LC is that it first debuted as a concept in 2012 at the same show as the lf-lc I would argue this is one of those very rare cases where the production version of the vehicle is prettier than the copy made it better yeah but like the taillights on the concept for a really bizarre they kind of toned him down for the production model but fundamentally what we're looking at here is a very large luxury like a grand tourer it's designed to compete with the like that BMW m6 the S Coupe from Mercedes even a Maserati GT somewhere in that range it has the engine from the RC F driven and it's it's fantastic the responsiveness is great it makes a wonderful noise and I think this one is supposed to make an even better noise and more willingly and it also it also makes you wonder if they're gonna do an LLC F and what engine that would have yeah will they put like a twin turbo on this or no that well they're really naturally as it is naturally aspirated which I live in Colorado and we lost a lot of power from altitude and it is a very heavy car and so I was missing that and I think there are rumors that they're going to turbocharged it and do something to give it some more power it has 467 which is a lot but when we compared at horsepower 4 and 6 seven horsepower which when you compare to the competition it's a little bit lacking but we'll see what they have and they arguably make up for that with design yes styling wise it looks amazing yeah it looks really good my favorite thing about that car there are two things about that car one I'd forgotten how many new Lexus cars have that really wide grille on it and it's our size yeah and it's the first one that really actually makes it look good yeah just because that low that front end is so low and so wide and that grille finally looks like it fits yeah but my other favorite thing is that it is it's very much like infinities Carney car here the redesign q60 in that it took lexus is a brand that I don't usually love the look of its cars and they just they did enough to it that really made me like it so if you like this car really ever that I've looked at it I meant oh man I really like that like I can see myself driving it but infinity you do the same thing with the q6 t I think that's a good that's a good segue because the Infinity is a car I really like yeah I think the q6 looks great and I think I think we all like it alright so I used to own a g35 coupe which is the first generation this is sort of the success or the spirit if you kept buying them yeah 37 and now you get this I think this looks a lot better than the old yeah I agree I love that they did this car as a concept at the show last year I loved it then and and yeah I think it looks really good the one shortcoming potentially is that and correct me if I'm wrong I'm pretty sure they're still in 37 litre v6 no 3 3 litre you got two options at the top and three litre for 400 horsepower another option for 300 and they were doing a 2 liter for 208 horsepower at the bottom it's so and then they're pushing that all to the q50 line too so they really took a new engine and did a lot with it but why don't they make a GTR version of this car they should I mean yeah I don't know if you guys remember what was that four or five years ago they did the the Arusha infiniti q50 when a man four of them are whatever I did the the 3 5 litre inline-six from the GTR and they should have just that they should have got a lot with this so yeah I built that this is another good opportunity to do a really high-end performance car with this charge the same amount is gonna be with the m3 or they'll see even what they'll see is probably gonna be a 100 $120,000 car the q6 t even with the top engine I'm guessing is gonna be what 50 55 maybe I will say announced so they should just stick a giant engine in there and go all out I thought that's that's my look I'm not a businessman I just like cars and so that's the coupe's that's the create a lot of those and then wait lest we forget Acura oh yes no sorry that's well you shouldn't forget it before we move on to all we are then finishing up the concepts there's the Acura precision concept they're really terrible name but a really accurate sedan concept is what we will call it yes that's better yeah and I just sat down with the designers of it and it's not a car that they're planning to build certainly not like that but it's their vision for the future of the Acura line yeah and honestly the Acuras have gotten a little stale yes they're they're very reliable they have nice interiors if you really like fan letters not a car for you there they're very nice Honda's but if like Buick with this and like you know the Infiniti you know sort of getting the new design language the new Lexus if that's the vision for Acura I think we're in to see good stuff from them especially with the NX s NSX coming along later this year yeah well it sounds to me and this is what they sent the press conference to that this car really is a design exercise that encompasses everything that actor is going to be doing with their new production cars over the course of the next couple years so a lot of the design elements like the new grille which they have a name for it's called the the diamond pentagram I mean it looks like something out of a chick ad it's like it looks like you could cut your beard off with I mean it's really bizarre and you can't really tell diamond pentagon that looks like the least ridiculous part of it up until I got up close and then you get up there and there are all these diamonds coming out at you from the grille it's a smile really bizarre like one of the weirdest things and I think that's why I actually came away liking it more than anything else here because in the to press photos that we got of it it looked just angular for the sake of being angular and then you get up close to it and it actually isn't quite as aggressive on the bodywork at least there are all these really weird little touches like the headlights have these lightning like almost looks like 3d printed like lightning sharp edges I noticed that all that is being printed and there's like flaking in the back windows it just it's super weird and I and then it has the suicide doors and it's just it's crazy well one thing about about Acura that I've seen in the past is that there a lot of their concepts look really good and then when they make it to reality they're coming down so much they're not as good the NSX hopefully will in view a little excitment into that into the brand and you know the brand and get things going and so we have that to hopefully look forward to one I really like their cars but yeah I mean like you said before it's it's it's a nice Honda and it's a reliable car they just need some fresh blood in that brand one more thing we should say about the precision concept it also has a new infotainment system which i think is probably one of the most production-ready elements of that kind it's very obvious that's what's coming that's definitely coming right now they have a dual screen thing which sorry Acura it's well yeah there's a lot of terrible infotainment systems out there there's is one of my least favorite yeah it's another pretty interior but pretty in a different way from what this one has like yeah I like the concept look it sort of reminded me of the interior the the BMW i8 Spyder concept it's very wide screen but narrow lots of room to show information yep it seems like that might be a trend in infotainment over the next couple years but we should talk about what's next what else do we have lots of exec your big sports sedans yes and there's a boatload of them so just good then you run a company even if it's not very big this might have been the show for you because there are a lot of cars that you're probably gonna get driven around in some time yeah yes there's the well hande didn't just launch a car they launched an entire brand yes Genesis yes which is basically Genesis is to Hyundai as Lexus IS to Toyota or Acura is done to Honda you were at the g9b event yeah what'd you think it was I as far as the press events here go is probably one of the better handled ones different in a sense from the Continental which we'll talk about in the because they spoke all about traditional car stuff and Tamara Warren wrote a really good piece about why this show still matters or whether it still matters after CES has become such a big car show and Genesis played right into that they were talking about engines they were talking about comfort is wrong about ride the body design all that stuff and not as much about some of the features that they do have like you know forward-facing collision warnings rear-facing whereas the it it was it was cool it's a nice car it probably wore off on me that over the next 10 years who whereas we had the Continental this morning yeah we're the Continental and that that was a total that was a totally different experience it was like feature feature feature also yeah the Continental is all about the experience they had a jazz band in the morning which was awesome and they talked a lot about the interior they didn't talk about engine specs at all they didn't talk about anything like that they talked a lot about China and how many dealerships they have and all that that's a very China focused car Genesis mentioned that too in their press conference yeah that's a clear that's a big market for everybody right now but Ford is is hitting that hard with that car and we'll see we'll see what the reception is here it didn't blow me away yeah you know the last few when I saw the concept I I thought that it was a really interesting car and it feels like some of that was lost in translation but they did keep the one really trick feature which is the eel a CH door that works so basically there and I'm not sure why but I think they they just wanted to make it special getting in and out and so on the outside you sort of pull and there's a little electronic button you press and it pops open the door and then on the inside there's a physical button that you press and that pops open the door and I was talking to one of the engineers who worked on that and he said there's actually a super capacitor inside so if you lose battery power for whatever reason you can still open the door and get out it's amazing actually tested it under water for thirty minutes they started underwater and then press the button to make sure that if something happened you could still get out you were underwater in your continental for thirty minutes you have bigger problems there's like there's like one person in the world who has very specific needs like safety guys you got to have safety so just finishing up the last couple things one the Volvo s90 which we'd seen pictures of before looks great in person as you know my the taillights the read the car looks great the interior looks amazing the taillights I think are low polarizing that's my opinion we'll see I mean they took an exit 90 which just won Truck of the Year they are calling it and this is the sedan version of that and it's great so also seeing the m2 before the BMW n2 this is the first time we really got a closer rate in person you're already you already have your check in the mail right if I could afford that car like it's they took a standard too and made it way wider it's the most m looking more like wonderful yeah it's great and then finally the last thing was introduced which might be the biggest announcement of the show that people are ignoring because it's we may not ignoring but we're leaving it to lasses in the Mercedes e-class yeah which is the flagship it's the car that all these other sports sedans you know not an executive sedan but the big sedans are competing with and they drop the mic they came out and said here's the new one it can pretty much drive itself down the highway up to a hundred and thirty miles an hour we were only on the ground here before there I mean Mercedes just like kind of kicked back the rest of the show thank you guys go ahead and do your thing yeah you know the funny thing about Mercedes strategy a number of people pointed this out now is that they have three they have the the CD in the ass and they are all identical now except like one is slightly larger than the other which is I like I guess if you're in a phase of consistent design language that's great but like I just walked by the e again and it like if that drove by me I'm not sure I could tell the difference read that into see okay that's I could because this is really big but the C in the ER so close in size that it would be really tough to yeah but you know what everybody's still chasing them that's true that's from BMW well that's it from the Detroit Auto Show another one in the books lots of stuff coming up we have Geneva in just a few weeks we need we need to get some sleep first we have the New York Auto Show basically immediately after that so lots of stuff in the pipeline lots of announcements coming a lot more models and variants so so keep it tuned we have a YouTube channel you should check that out it's the verge we have our own Twitter account it's called verge cars you should definitely check that out we did a lot of cool stuff on periscope and Facebook this week that and snapchat Sean was great on on Facebook live this week's network just verge on snapchat all of these social media things you should be checking out or trying to reach or they're everywhere yeah which whatever you need to pick you and you know what it's the only January 12 we have a long year you're the person who can use a Lincoln Continental underwater for 30 minutes then all we want to know doesn't show for you hey guys thanks guys we'll talk to you soon bye