A biweekly roundup of automotive news, good, bad and just plain weird:
It's that time of year again, already, oh dear.
Car show season kicks off early in 2016 with the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. It's been a mix of big reveals and relative quietness for this show, and while there've been a few surprises, it's mostly a soft start to the year.
Fewer wild concepts, however, means more in the way of production machines you can actually buy. Here's a look at some of the newsmakers out of Detroit.
Infiniti Q60 Coupe bows with 400 h.p.
Hear that nervous wrenching at German neckties? It's all thanks to Infiniti's just-unveiled sport coupe, the Q60. Yes, we know, nobody can figure out the naming nomenclature yet, but just remember that the Q50 is the sedan and the Q60 is the two door.
It's a good looking car, if slightly fussier than the pretty simplicity of the original G35. The big news here, however, is how comprehensively the Q stomps all over competition like the BMW 440i and the Mercedes-Benz C450.
Gone is the old naturally aspirated V-6, a big hearted lout that many loved. In is a new 3.0-litre twin-turbo six that looks to have picked up a trick or two from the mighty Nissan GT-R. Total power output for top-trim variants? 400 horsepower and 350 foot-pounds of torque.
That's most of the way towards an M3, and unlike the fastest Bavaria offers, you can get the Q60 with all-weather friendly allwheel drive. Eighty more horsepower than the Teutonic competition? You can bet the engineers are scrambling.
Chrysler brings back Pacifica as a minivan
And now, as they used to say on Monty Python, for something completely different. Never mind the heating up horsepower wars, here's Fiat-Chrysler's replacement for the Town and Country minivan.
The original Pacifica was a crossover intended to take the place of your average minivan, so having a refreshed van with the name somehow makes a strange sort of sense. Peep closer at the sort of options the Pacifica redux offers, and things get even better.
For one thing, the baseengined minivan comes with available all-wheel drive, something Canadian hockey parents will love. For another thing, the Pacifica is the first plug-in hybrid minivan to market: mixedmileage fuel-consumption for the van is just 2.94 litres/100 kilometres.
For those looking to have a single vehicle that does it all, a hybridized minivan just makes sense for the school run. All the Pacifica needs to do now is get past that minivan stigma.
Nissan Titan Warrior takes on the Ford Raptor
Where trucks are concerned, subtlety takes a back seat to raw brawn and body armour. Both Nissan and Ford came out swinging in their efforts to get a bigger share of the bro-dozer market, with Ford's newly refreshed Raptor taking on Nissan's Warrior concept.
This latter is just as aggressive as the semi-Bajaprepped Ford F150 we've all started to get used to. Lifted and widened, it's got the same literally enormous street presence, but with a distinctly Japanese flair. Nissan even calls their matte grey paint job "Thunder," and describes the additional skid plates and fender flares as body armour.
While it's only currently a concept, the Titan's real body blow comes in the form of its 5.0-litre Cummins turbodiesel engine, capable of providing some 555 footpounds of torque. You might never need to use that kind of twist, but it's got the bragging rights for arm wrestling.
Chevy Bolt gets 320 km range
While the big rigs posture and preen for the camera, over at Chevy a much quieter revolution is taking place. Their Bolt compact car - not to be confused with the Volt - is a pure EV that cracks two major milestones in electric car manufacture. First, it can go 320 kilometres (200 miles) on a single charge; second, after rebates, it should cost right around $30,000.
Unlike the Tesla Model S, which owes much of its success to the prestige of having an early adopter car with great acceleration and luxury car looks, the Bolt is a far more pragmatic option. Buy this, GM says, as an alternative to that compact hatchback you were thinking of. It'll pay for itself by saving at the pump in just a few years.
Well, in the United States, making your money back is going to take a little longer. Part of the reason those gargantuan trucks are so popular is current extremely low pump prices.
However, as a practical choice for the rest of us, the Bolt makes a pretty compelling case, and should easily outperform the Nissan Leaf, currently the EV sales volume leader. Add in a sprint to 100 kilometres per hour in less than seven seconds, and this little Chevy has very few real-world drawbacks.
Henrik Fisker unveils rebodied Viper
Less pragmatic is the VLF Force 1 V10, a Dodge Viper made even more insanely aggressive looking by noted designer Henrik Fisker. Fisker, you may remember, is the man behind such gorgeous cars as the BMW Z8 and the Aston-Martin DB9.
However, the line between genius and madness is apparently a thin one, and Mr. Fisker seems busily involved in dipping his toe across it. The Force 1 is the car nobody asked for: a Viper that's even more ludicrous? I think Dodge's SRT division already had that covered.
VLF hopes to sell 100 or so Force 1s per year, pricing each one around the same as a Lamborghini Huracan. Good luck, Henrik, you madman.
Follow Brendan on Twitter: @brendan_mcaleer, or submit your own auto oddities to mcaleeronwheels@gmail. com.
