classic car

By now you've probably all heard that GM has reached an agreement to sell Saab to Spyker, and hopefully that deal doesn't go the way of Penske and Saturn. But how exactly did we end up here in this confusing array of events? The Car Blog has dug in to get the full timeline on the Saab fiasco. So here's how it went:

Baring a non-Minilike face, this is your new Mini Countryman. There aren't many details yet, but this is one of three photos that have been circulating for the past few hours.

This is one car that definitely doesn't deserve the fate of being relegated to the Electric avenue, filled with boring Chinese compacts that aren't getting anywhere soon. The Revenge Verde may get 100+ miles per gallon, but that doesn't mean it's not an exciting car. One look at this rolling sculpture and you'll be transfixed. There aren't many details available yet, but their eco hybrid version will get 400 HP, the Ford Performance version will have 605 HP, and the GM version will have 638 HP. The car has been advertised in the duPont Registry as renderings, but the car obviously looks even better in person. Revenge designs is mostly known for tuning Pontiac GTOs and Solstices, but they have made one supercar, the GTM-R, in the past.

Since NAIAS hates The Car Blog and wouldn't let us into the Press Preview (more on that later), we were forced to go to the public show and give you guys horrible coverage. Even at that, going to the Detroit show is never a bad thing (going to Detroit in general is another matter), and the authors of The Car Blog definitely had some fun hunting down Mustang "experts" who ended up being models who couldn't tell us anything about the 5.0 and almost crashing electric cars in the Electric Xperience section, even though we weren't even in the cars at the time. Okay, maybe that second part was made up, but all in all our bloggers acted like excited kids for most of the show.

According to a source near Ford, the next Ford Fusion will be a world car, with everything shared with the Mondeo. It'll become the third Ford to go into this new world car strategy. Predictably, when it debuts in a couple years, it'll share the new styling theme previewed by the new Fiesta and Focus. Though we've heard rumors of this for two years or more, it's finally coming true.

BYD, a company famous for its blatant Mercedes-Benz copy, the S8, has been trying to get into the US market for some time. They've made considerable progress towards that goal at the Detroit Auto Show so far, releasing the E6 Electric crossover that's supposedly bound for the US, but one other US debut has been eclipsed by this car, even though it debuted last year. Enter the BYD F3DM. Based off of their last-gen Toyota Corolla-copy sedan, the F3, the F3DM is an all-electric small sedan that starts at about $22,000 in its home market, with technology that should be considered groundbreaking for a Chinese car. In fact, this technology is almost a better system than that in the Chevrolet Volt in that it uses the combined power of the electric motor and a small gas engine to power the car, where the Volt uses the gas engine only in braking. This means the car seems more powerful, if louder. The F3DM debuted as a concept at Detroit last year, but production didn't start until recently. The F3DM is supposedly bound for the United States in 2011. You can see the F3DM and E6 electrics along the Electric Avenue at the Detroit Auto Show this year.

Amidst the confusing Chrysler/Maserati/Jeep/Fiat/Dodge/Ferrari display at Detroit, a Lancia hatchback stood out. It's not every day that a Lancia gets major attention at a U.S. auto show, but the reason this stood out was because of blatant badge engineering. As you get close to this automobile, you notice the lack of the middle Lancia strike of chrome down the grille and Chrysler logos on the wheels instead of Lancia. What...?

Tata, the company famous for creating the cheapest car on Earth, has been trying to break into the world scene for some time with both more microcars for their home market, India, and larger cars bound for the rest of the world. One of these larger new car concepts is the Tata Pr1ma, an attractive compact sedan with dimensions almost exactly like the Volkswagen Jetta. The company contracted the famed design house of Pininfarina to design the car, and the results were great. The concept was first shown at the 2009 Geneva Auto Salon, and it showed most of the world that Tata was a more formidable up-and-coming force to be dealt with, at least stylistically. If the Pr1ma was to come to the US as a production model, it would be a major force in the compact market. Though it doesn't quite fit in with the sporty econoboxes that make up most of the current US compact market, that is definitely not a bad thing. This smallish sedan gives the impression of a much higher-class vehicle, showing that Pininfarina design makes a big difference.