There was little technological innovation on display, mostly intimidating bulk.

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• It actually feels intimidating standing next to a vehicle like this GMC Yukon Denali when the hood is level with your shoulder.
• If you want less chrome and more mean black with your monster-sized machine, there’s always the Chevrolet Suburban.
• If you’re going to do a Carhartt edition truck, I expectnay, demandthat the seats be made of brown cordura. That was not the case here.
• Even the spokesperson standing next to this truck complained that the height race has meant it’s just plain harder to get stuff in the truck bed.
• The view from the top. If you’re a small child, you’re invisible until about 12 feet (4m) away.
• If the SUV wars are to be won on size alone, GM is going to take some beating.
• Oddly, if you put one of these big-faced buggers on caterpillar tracks, I don’t find it so objectionable.
• This is probably where we’re headed.
• There was little evidence of GM’s $2.2 billion bet on electric cars at the Chicago show.
• Cadillac’s new Escalade was nowhere to be seen, but its deadly rival the Lincoln Navigator is pointed directly at the Cadillac booth.
• The Land Rover Defender’s shape is growing on me.
• At least if you get bounced up on top of this hood, there are bits you could grab hold of.
• The Defender has rather interesting LED tail lights.
• Volkswagen is another OEM that’s in the midst of a massive electrification push, but the message at Chicago was tailored for the midwest.
• The new-look Atlas probably won’t make small children cry, unlike some of the other big SUVs at the show.
• Toyota is about to sell a RAV4 with the Prius Prime plug-in hybrid powertrain. Everyone who doesn’t want a Tesla is going to want one of these.
• A relic from a bygone age?

After essentially flat sales in 2019, (most of) the auto industry came to Chicago this week for the first big auto show of the year. In terms of making headlines, the 2020 Chicago show is yet more proof that the days of the big trade show are almost at an end as OEMs increasingly opt for standalone events to premiere new products. Two laps of the McCormick Place convention center was more than sufficient to take it all in, and while there was little new, a clear trend was evident. Efficiency, electrification, or advanced safety systems mostly took a back seat to size, with monster-faced SUVs and trucks everywhere I cared to look. As a harbinger of things to come, I dare say there was even a sense of menace lurking in the shadows.
Arguably the biggest product news of the weekalbeit one of little interest to most of this audiencewas the launch of Cadillac’s newest Escalade. But that took place in California earlier in the week, and the biggest, brashest, body-on-frame behemoth didn’t show its bluff nose (or anything else) in the Windy City. The closely related Suburban and Denali (and their full-size pickup cousins) were out in force, and I’m not being dramatic when I say some of them felt physically threatening to stand next to even when they were stationary. I’m 5′ 7″ (1.7m) tall, and some of the hoods are now level with my shoulders, which is a recipe for vast, child-swallowing blindspots in front of their drivers. At a time when pedestrian safety is headed in the wrong direction, one has to wonder how we can get this pendulum to swing the other way.
Chicago’s press preview coincided with a string of financial results, and as ever there are winners and losers. Lots of OEMs are changing the way they share their results, ending monthly sales. General Motors saw profits decline by nearly 20 percent in 2019, but it still ended the year $6.7 billion in the black. GM might have made a Super Bowl splash with a teaser for an electric Hummer, but the best its combined booths could boast if you were looking for evidence of its $2.2 billion electrification investment were a couple of Chevy Bolts.Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, in the midst of a merger with Europe’s PSA Group, saw a similar 19 percent drop but still recorded a profit of $2.96 billion (2.7 billion), mostly from North American sales of full-size pickups and Jeeps, particularly the new Gladiator.
Ford’s balance sheet was quite literally thatbalanced. It neither made nor lost money in 2019, and it expects the first half of 2020 to be a rough one as it invests in electrification and mobility and grapples with higher warranty claims and a declining credit business.
At Volkswagen, new Chief Operating Officer Johan de Nysschen introduced a face-lifted Atlas SUV. That model, together with the Tiguan crossover, has been a strong seller for VW, which saw its 2019 US sales rise by 2.6 percent on the back of strong SUV growth. The VW crossover most of us wanted to see was the battery electric ID.4, and that had already been postponed to New York in April. (Or perhaps Detroit in July, according to the UK’s Autocar.)
“If the market wants 300 miles, it’s no good offering 150”
“We will show the car when the time is right,” de Nysschen said during a roundtable discussion. “We need to get the [European market] ID. 3 introduced and launched without creating a distraction with news of the next car. But sometime this year.” He wouldn’t say why the ID.4 schedule keeps slipping, but one has to wonder if the combination of an extremely range-conscious market and savage EPA ratings for both the Audi e-tron and Porsche Taycan have caused some sleepless nights in Germany. VW dealers need a competitive product, and “if the market wants 300 miles [of range], it’s no good offering 150,” he said.
Toyota reports according to the Japanese financial calendar, but of the world’s biggest automakers, it might be in the strongest health. Everyone is patiently waiting for the new RAV4 Prime, which drops the plug-in Prius powertrain into one of the country’s most favorite SUVs. We’ll review it as soon as we can get our hands on one, but it’s probably a foregone conclusion it will sell like hotcakes.
The most notable new car at Chicago was the hybrid version of the Hyundai Sonata. The not-hybrid version is a car that’s gathering plenty of plaudits for the way it looks and the way it drives. Actually, you could say that about most of the new Korean vehicles on the market. If we’re rating big SUVs just on size, Detroit is still clearly in the lead. But if we’re rating big SUVs on whether they’re any good or not, then these days the benchmarks to beat are the Kia Telluride and Hyundai Palisade. (I’ll note that the hood heights of these two are comfortably below my armpits, which feels positively benign compared to some of the monsters out there.)

• The three-row SUV to beat right now is this Hyundai Pallisadeand the closely related Kia Telluride.
• Genesis was launched as a luxury brand right as the luxury market switched from sedans to SUVs. The new GV80 three-row arrives this summer.
• More than one person said they thought this was the best use of Genesis’ grille so far.
• The GV80 concept car featured wheels that looked similar to these.
• The two-spoke steering wheel sends a message that this car is more about comfort than performance.
• The headlights are highly distinctive.
• And there’s not much you’d mistake it for from behind, either.

Over on the luxury side, sedans have been all Genesis has had to offer since it was set up as its own brand, a move that coincided with the market moving en masse to more vertical vehicles. When the GV80 goes on sale this summer, it will finally be able to offer the three-row SUV it’s needed to get people interested. You’d probably expect the GV80 to be a rebadged Telluride/PalisadeI know I was, particularly because the fit and finish of Kia and Hyundai have been so good every time I’ve been in either. In fact, the GV80 uses a completely new rear-wheel drive chassis that will also show up in the next generation G80 sedan. I was pleased to see design touches from the GV80 concept make it into production, although the latticework B pillar was not among them.
The other inescapable impression from Chicago was that the days of big media attention on a big auto show are extremely numbered. Again, that should be obvious from the fact that the most notable new car at Chicago was the hybrid version of the Hyundai Sonata. Rather than spend millions on an impressive booth in a convention center just to fight for attention with everyone else, automakers are choosing to hold standalone eventsat similar costswhere they get to be the sole attraction. For those with fond memories of the glory days of the auto showwhich surely applies to most of the automotive mediathat’s a bittersweet reality to accept.
Listing image by Jonathan Gitlin