It's always a pleasure to walk amongst the cars that are actually on the market, or soon will be. Orange definitely seemed to be the color this year. Last year it was Yellow.

I'll just rattle 'em off.

Here's the Acura NSX

Here's the new Dodge Viper. They took away the voluptuous curves, but it's still nice.

This is a Pontiac Aztek, with a tent (or is it camouflage?) Also, the Pontiac Vibe made a showing.

Despite the name behind it, this is the Saturn Vue, their new SUV.

We skipped the VW booth as it was too crowded.

This is the Audi Avantissimo.

This is the Aston Martin Vanquish, which is primarily hand-built.

This is the Jaguar X-Type, an all wheel drive competitor to the BMW 3-series, and the Audi A4.

Here is the Jaguar S-type sedan.

I'm not sure, but I think Jaguar's showing off their new Ultra-PolyGrip tires ;-)

This is the interior of the Ford Thunderbird.

Next, a surprise to me - Maserati's got a nice convertible here in the Spider Cambiocorna!

This is the Toyota Matrix, one of the new non-wagon Wagons that have come out.

And then, we get to Mercedes.

The next few pictures are of the SL55 AMG, a gorgrous, supercharged monster of a car. AMG was an aftermarket tuner for Mercedes cars, but recently, they were bought out by Mercedes, or entered in to a contract directly with Mercedes to sell their performance-enhanced cars directly in the dealerships. I tell you, this is one of the ultimate luxury convertible performance coupes you will ever find. Everything about the car is elegant, even the convertible top itself. It's a hardtop that folds in half to fit into the trunk. What's neat about it is how the rear window rotates opposite of how the roof folds. The best way to describe its action is as a "ballet of technology", to borrow a phrase from the late author Douglas Adams. Amazing. Rachel got these pix for me as well.

Here's another interesting thing - think about this - when you are getting in to a car with power seats that have a memory, where would you like to have the adjust and memory controls. Within a conveniently reachable spot, no? Well, Mercedes finally did it - they put them high up on the door, so you don't have to hunch over and fumble for them, possibly while you're carrying packages and the like. Simple, and yet I'm surprised no one thought of this before. True, there are those seat memories that reset themselves in different ways depending on which key or keyless entry system you use, but that's different. This is smart, and it works. Thanks are due to Rachel for getting this shot (notice how all the photos with PDRM in their name are Rachel's?? ;-)

Then, of course, there's the Mini. It's a very small car, but they're actually made well, thanks to them being owned by BMW, among other things. What you can't really see is that the roof of this Mini has an American flag on top. Unfortunately, their booth was also very crowded, so this is the only picture that hints at it/

Here's the latest Porsche 911

Here's another look at the Pontiac Vibe.

Here's a World Rally Subaru Impreza.

What in the world? A muddy melting truck?

Then, there was this Jeep Liberty display. The cool thing about it was that the platform beneath it had these columns that raised and lowered, depending on how you played with this control unit. A very busy display, but always active.

This Jeep CJ was definitely on the rocks ;-)

This other Jeep CJ had a very patriotic paint job.

Out in the North Pavillion, the NYPD display had this little Cushman motorized unit.

I believe this was the new Infiniti G35, but I can't be sure.

That's it for the Current section!