 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 NAIS, depending on who you ask. The show has many names. No one calls it that except NAIS itself. NAIS itself. Yeah. So, we are in front of the Buick Avista concept, which is, I think, inarguably 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- It's the theme of the year. Yeah, and it's like, coming into the show, who saw that coming? Who would have thought that that would be a thing here? But we have the Avista 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's 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. For whatever concept specs are worth. Yeah. The underlying story you should take away there is that it shows how adaptable the Alpha platform is, which is what the Camaro is on. 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 I'm not sure it's going to happen. We'll see. 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. Is this your car of the show, or no? I think it's... I don't know. Their ads are very accurate, in that that's a Buick, and this car, I think, sums that up. Whether they make it or not, I don't know, GM makes a lot of cars that sort of cross over and compete with itself. The use case is, does it make sense to build this when you have a Cadillac ATS, and you have the Cadillac CTS, 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. 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. The Acura, which we'll talk about, was the thing I wanted to see maybe the least, and I saw him, and that sort of flipped him in my mind, which is really strange. This is for sure my favorite interior, just because it's so kind of cool looking. I love what they did with the headrests. And that carbon fiber titanium treatment. Yeah, like sparkles 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 slipped from that top spot. One of the things 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 gotta see this, because I haven't seen leaked concepts or videos or whatever of it. Right. Well, so let's talk about another luxury sports coupe, and this one is real, which is arguably more exciting than a concept, the Lexus LC. Yes. You just saw the LC. I just walked by it for the first time. What do you think? And I did a double take, and it looks amazing. Yeah. And I almost think it's a concept, because it's so out there. And for Lexus to do that, something that's that interesting, is really exciting. Yeah. And you know, you sort of get away from the, yeah, 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 backstory with this car, the 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 concept. They made it better. Yeah. Like the taillights on the concept were really bizarre. They kind of toned them down for the production model. But fundamentally, what we're looking at here is a very large luxury, like a grand tour. It's designed to compete with the BMW M6, the S Coupe from Mercedes, even a Maserati GT, somewhere in that range. It has the engine from the RC F, which I've driven. And 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 makes you wonder if they're going to do an LC F and what engine that would have. Yes. And it's like a twin turbo on this. Or no, the V8 is naturally aspirated, right? The V8 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 turbo charge it and do something to give it some more power. It has 467, which is a lot, but when you compare it, horsepower, 467 horsepower, which when you compare it 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 had forgotten how many new Lexus cars had that really wide grille on it. And it's the first- Hourglass. Yeah. And it's the first one that really actually makes it look good. Just because 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's very much like Infiniti's new car here, the redesigned Q60, in that it took... Lexus is a brand that I don't usually love the look of its cars, and they did enough to it that really made me like it. It's the first Lexus car really ever that I've looked at and I'm like, oh man, I really like that. I can see myself driving it. But Infiniti did the same thing with the Q60. I think that's a good segue, because the Infiniti is a car I really like. I think the Q60 looks great, and I think we all like it. So I used to own a G35 coupe, which is the first generation. This is sort of the- The successor. The spiritual successor to the- If you kept buying them, maybe you'd be- A 37, and now you get this. I think this looks a lot better than the old. Yeah, I agree. They did this car as a concept at the show last year. I loved it then, 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 on the 3.7 liter V6? No, 3 liter, you got two options at the top end, 3 liter for 400 horsepower, another option for 300. Yeah, they're doing a 2 liter for 208 horsepower at the bottom end. 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 don't know if you guys remember, what was it, four or five years ago, they did the Aruge version of the Q50. The Q50. They made four of them or whatever. Yeah, it had the 3.5 liter inline six from the GTR, and they should have just... They should have gone all out with this. They should have built that. I mean, this is another good opportunity to do a really high end performance car with this. Charge the same amount as you're going to charge the LC. Compete with the M3. Or the LC even. The LC is probably going to be a $100,000, $120,000 car. The Q60, even with the top engine, I'm guessing is going to be what, 50, 55 maybe? We'll see. They haven't announced. So they should just stick a giant engine in there and go all out. That's my... Look, I'm not a businessman. I just like cars. And so that's the Coops. That's the Coops. We had a lot of those. And then... Wait, lest we forget, Acura. Oh, yes. They're calling it Acura's concept. Yeah, but that's not a Coop. That's not a Coop. Oh no, sorry. That's a sedan. Well, we shouldn't forget it before we move on to all the crazy executive classes. We'll start with them. We'll start with them. Finishing up the concepts, there's the Acura... Precision Concept. Yes. A really terrible name, but a really exciting looking car. It's that Acura sedan concept is what we'll call it, because that's better. 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. And honestly, the Acuras have gotten a little stale. Yes, yes they have. They're very reliable. They have nice interiors. If you really like tan leather, it's the car for you. They're very nice Hondas. If like Buick with this, and like the Infiniti, 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 NSX coming along later this year. Yeah, well it sounds to me, and this is what they said in the press conference too, that this car really is a design exercise that encompasses everything that Acura 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 diamond pentagram. I mean it looks like something out of a chic ad. It looks like you could cut your beard off with it. I mean it's really bizarre. And you can't really tell. Or diamond pentagram. 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 wild. It's 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 two 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 body work at least. There are all these really weird little touches, like the headlights have these lightning, like almost looks like 3D printed, like lightning structures. I noticed that. I'll bet it is 3D printed. And then there's like flecking in the back windows. It's super weird. And then it has the suicide doors. It's crazy. Well one thing about Acura that I've seen in the past is that a lot of their concepts look really good. And then when they make it to reality, they're toned down so much they're not as good. The NSX hopefully will imbue a little excitement into that. Into the brand in general. Into the brand and get things going. And so we have that to hopefully look forward to. I really like their cars, but. Yeah. I mean, like you said before, 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 concept. It's very obvious. That's what's coming. That's definitely coming. It's got a touchpad. Right now they have a dual screen thing which, sorry Acura, it's terrible. There's a lot of terrible infotainment systems out there. Theirs is one of my least favorite. It's another pretty interior, but pretty in a different way from what this one has. Very different, yeah. This one's like, I like the concept look. It sort of reminded me of 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 big sports sedans. Yes. And there's a boatload of them, which is good. If 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 going to get driven around in sometime in the future. Yes. Yes. And when Lexus launched 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 to Honda. You were at the G90 event. Yeah. What did you think? As far as the press events here go, it's probably one of the better handled ones. Different in a sense from the Continental, which we'll talk about, 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, they were talking about ride, the body design, all that stuff. And not as much about some of the features that they do have, like forward facing collision warnings, rear facing. Whereas the... It was cool. It's a nice car. It probably wore off on me over the next day or two. Whereas we had the Continental this morning. Yeah, we had the Continental. And that- That was a totally different experience. It was like, feature, feature, feature, also let's talk about the engine. 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 to you in their press conference. Yeah. Clearly that's a big market for everybody right now. But Ford is hitting that hard with that car. And we'll see what the reception is here. It didn't blow me away. Yeah. You know, last year when I saw the concept, 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 e-latch door. The door handle. Yes. Explain how that works. So basically they're, and I'm not sure why, but I think 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 that if you lose battery power for whatever reason, you can still open the door and get out. That's a good thing. And they actually tested it underwater for 30 minutes. They put it underwater and then pressed the button to make sure that if something happened, you could still get out. If you're underwater and you're continental for 30 minutes, you have bigger problems. There's like one person in the world who has like very specific needs. Yeah, who is like, yes. Safety guys, you got to have safety. So just finishing up the last couple of things. One the Volvo S90, which we'd seen pictures of before. Looks great in person. As you know, I'm a huge fan of the Volvo. Those tail lights, I just don't know, man. The tail lights, I agree, the car looks great. The interior looks amazing. The tail lights I think are a little polarizing. That's my opinion. We'll see. I mean, they took an XC90, which just won truck of the year, they are calling it. And this is the sedan version of that and it's great. We've also seen the M2 before, the BMW M2, but this is the first time we really got up close to that. Looks great in person. You already have your check in the mail, right? If I could afford that car. They took a standard two and made it way wider. It's the most M looking. More wonderful. Yeah, I mean, it's great. And then finally, the last thing that was introduced, which might be the biggest announcement of the show that people are ignoring because, maybe not ignoring, but we're leaving it till last is the Mercedes E-Class. Which is the flagship, it's the car that all these other sports sedans, not an executive sedan, but the big sedans are competing with. And they dropped the mic. They came out and said, here's the new one. It can pretty much drive itself down the highway up to 130 miles an hour, which is great. People were hardly on the ground here before. I mean, Mercedes just kind of kicked back the rest of the show. Like, here it is, what's up? You guys go ahead and do your thing. The funny thing about Mercedes strategy, a number of people pointed this out now, is that they have the C, the E, and the S, and they are all identical now except one is slightly larger than the other. I guess if you're in a phase of consistent design language, that's great. But I just walked by the E again, and if that drove by me, I'm not sure I could tell the difference between that and the C. Like, S I could because S is really big, but the C and the E are 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 true. BMW. 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 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 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- Snapchat. And Snapchat. Sean was great on Facebook Live this week. We're just Verge on Snapchat. All of these social media things you should be checking out. We're trying to reach you. We're there everywhere. Yeah. Whatever you need. You. And you know what? It's only January 12th. Oh, we have a long year ahead of us. How did that happen? If you're the person who can use a Lincoln Continental Underwater for 30 minutes, then call us. We want to know. This is a show for you. Thanks guys. Thanks guys. We'll talk to you soon. Bye.