There was a traffic jam on the floor of the Detroit Auto Show Monday afternoon, but it wasn’t cars going bumper to bumper. The floor was lousy with presidential candidates and their surrogates trying to gain some traction in the final day  before Michigan’s Tuesday primary.

First came Sen. Joe Lieberman stumping for his man John McCain, followed by a modest entourage of media and handlers. Then came native son Mitt Romney, whose late father George was a popular Michigan governor in the ‘60s, but, more important to this crowd, was CEO of American Motors in the 1950s. Romney was accompanied by his wife Ann, son Tag and a mob of media. After checking out Ford’s new pickup truck, he headed for the big General Motors display next door, where GM VP Mark LeNeve gave him a politically correct tour of the automaker’s greenest vehicles – the hybrid Chevy Malibu family car and a hybrid Tahoe SUV. The gas guzzling 602-horsepower Corvette ZR1 sitting a few feet away did not merit a walk-by from the candidate.

But then, as Romney gave an impromptu press conference on the fake grass in front of a fuel cell powered Chevy SUV, another mass of media moved into his orbit. Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was taking his own tour of the GM display, looking over the very same eco-friendly models Romney had just worked for photo ops. The candidate near-collision caused a commotion among GM’s traffic controllers. A GM official quickly approach company VP Debbie Dingell and said: “When McCain comes in later, you need to lead Huckabee around the back of the Saturn display.” Dingell, who knows the ways of Washington as wife of powerful Democratic Congressman John Dingell, moved into action. And no presidential pile-ups were reported on the show floor.

Let's go to the tape:

Automakers spend millions at the Detroit Auto Show to carefully script flashy introductions for their new models that stand out among the wall-to-wall press conferences at Cobo Hall. Chrysler, which has a history of dropping cars from the ceiling and smashing them through plate-glass windows, came up with a new gimmick this year that it might want to steer clear of in the future. To introduce its macho new Dodge Ram pickup truck, Chrysler corralled 150 Texas longhorns (the bull type, not the football type) to ride herd with its truck in the streets of downtown Detroit.

But when the Ram broke free of the running of the bulls to receive its close-up in a press conference just outside Cobo Hall, the longhorns had other ideas. While Chrysler President Jim Press gamely attempted to describe the truck’s new features, the longhorns got, well, horny. They began to mount each other, causing the giggling crowd to look away from Press and watch what appeared to be Animal Planet’s newest reality show. Noticing he was losing the crowd, Press joked: “The bulls just want to see the truck.”

The longhorns’ cowboy handlers attempted to settle down the frisky beasts, which milled and mooed just a few feet away from Press and his truck. But then the cattle began moseying a little too close to the fascinated journalists, who had their cameras trained on the herd, not the truck. Suddenly, someone screamed as a longhorn nearly gored her and a cameraman dove for cover to avoid having his lens speared. At this point, Press used his best schoolmarm voice to overcome the upstaging steers: “OK,” he said, “look at the truck.” After all, there’s a lot riding on the Ram, Chrysler’s top selling model. But it was too late. The cows had won the crowd, and Chrysler learned an old Hollywood lesson: Don’t share the stage with kids of animals.

In advance of its press conference, GM sent a juggler out to entertain the crowd. It was an apt metaphor for the incredibly shrinking automaker that is juggling a dizzying array of eight different brands, from Chevy to Hummer to Cadillac. GM Chairman Rick Wagoner acknowledged as much when he took the stage and said: “The auto industry has a lot of balls in the air,” especially as it tries to adapt to the new reality of $100-a-barrel oil.

You can add to that the looming threat of recession, which a number of economists now view as likely. Does that worry Wagoner, as he struggles to end three years of losses at GM? Sure, but tough economic times are not foreign to Detroit and Michigan, which has the nation’s highest unemployment rate. “It feels like the auto industry has been in a recession for a while,” says Wagoner, who tried to remain optimistic. “If I had to bet on whether we’d go into the classic definition of a recession [six months of negative economic growth], I’d say no. But I wouldn’t bet a lot.”

Wagoner is also hedging his bets. He said he’ll announce a new round of buyouts for his workers this month, adding to the thousands who have already headed for the exits at GM. Despite all the downsizing, Wagoner still refuses to say when he’ll steer GM back into the black. That’s one ball he’ll keep hidden for now.

This year's Detroit Auto Show, which opens to the media today, will be so overrun with green concept cars it should be renamed the Detroit Lawn and Garden Show. Hot off the wheels of its Washington Waterloo over the tough new gas-mileage regulations, Detroit is anxious to show the world that it finally gets green and is working hard to engineer cars that sip instead of guzzle. They'll roll out hydrogen-powered concept cars with names like ecoVoyager and fuel-friendly engines like the EcoBoost (eco, apparently, is the new i). There's just one problem with this eco echo chamber: The most important new model introductions at the Detroit show are actually two hulking pickup trucks, the redesigned Ford F-150 (with a grill inspired by steel girders) and the Dodge Ram (with what its creators call "get-out-of-the-way" styling). That sure throws a monkey wrench into this garden party.

Read the Full Story