America is back.

At this year's North American International Auto Show, Ford and Chrysler stole the show with their exhibits and products. As they say in America, "Bigger is Better" and their exhibits were on-par with the Germans (the krauts always set the bar for exhibit design,) but much, much bigger. Besides exhibition design, both Ford and Chrysler are rolling out great new product after great new product. They both killed it; I can't emphasize enough how well they showed.

With the exception of the vintage Corvette, the GM booth, on the other hand, wasn't very interesting. I later realized that I didn't take many shots of their exhibit -- not to mention that there has been more than enough pictures of a hybrid disguising itself as an electric car. It has one-sixth the range of a 4-year-old Tesla Roadster and none of the beautiful proportions that made the 2007 concept car penned by Nigerian-born designer Jelani Aliyu so exciting.

Speaking of American car companies and Tesla, Tesla didn't have a prototype Model S on the stand, but they did have an Alpha build body and powertrain in glorious raw aluminum und schteel exploded view. To fully appreciate how awesome the design engineering of this car is, watch the Vimeo films with Peter Rawlinson (formerly of Lotus and chief engineer of some of the best cars in the world) below.

Tesla Vehicle Engineering - Part 1 from Tesla Motors on Vimeo.

Leaders a few short years ago, the Japanese were relatively unimpressive. Toyota rolled out the new Prius family, consisting of four vehicles, including the larger Prius V and the small and sporty Prius C. Honda was...meh. Nissan and Infiniti didn't even exhibit this year. The Lexus booth was interesting for using all LED for architecture.

The most interesting technology was Porsche's hybrid 918 RSR. Check out our previous coverage with a Q+A with Porsche Design Director Michael Mauer. It has, what looks like, a mini nuclear reactor where the passenger seat should be that stores electric power that can be used as a boost -- like NOS. Good description of it at Jalopnik.

Other observations: Mercedes usually has the most challenging exhibit design. They kind of phoned it in this year. A very nice, but not very innovative exhibit. The cars were great. The SLR E-cell is my ultimate dream car... in a less cop-target paint job.

The Koreans kicked ass with product. Hyundai and Kia had bad exhibits, but really impressive product. Hyundai's styling is still cringe-worthy, but Kia is taking a leadership role in good design.

Audi wins again for best booth design. Their lighting and attention to detail is beyond challenge.

Check out the full gallery below!

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