Go Go Hall; If this is parity, give us some more of it.(New cars at the Detroit car show)(Brief Article)

This year's Detroit show is so good, we almost dissed it. After walking the floors of Cobo Hall, we sat down to debate potential award winners and, well, there were no jaw-dropping, exceptional superstars to be found. The North American International Auto Show has given us Boxster and Viper, New Beetle and PT Cruiser, Thunderbird and SSR, and so we've come to expect a stunner. When we didn't see one right away, we figured, pah!

It took only one more tour of the floor and a little thought to realize how very wrong first impressions can be.

So high is the level of competition in the international auto industry that it's more difficult to stand out in the crowd today than ever before. And what a crowd! If the show had no perfect 10-if the GT40 was too much like a 115 percent photocopy of the original, the numerous tall 4x4 wagons too mundane, even the best-in-show Pontiac Solstice almost predictable-there are a lot of 9s out there. More, we'd venture to say, than we've ever seen at Cobo in a single show.

Industry experts have long predicted that we were coming to a day when the qualitative differences between cars would shrink to insignificance, a day of parity among carmakers. That day would seem to be near, if not already here. The dogs on the show floor were all leashed Alsatians employed by the security staff to sniff for explosives, though some might ask ...