New York Auto Show 2016: the latest news and coolest cars

Auto shows tend to be pragmatic affairs: they're usually arranged and promoted by local dealer associations with the simple, straightforward hope of bringing in people who need to buy a new car sometime in the next year. Yes, there are concept cars scattered across the halls — little glimpses of the distant future — but in between those concepts are hundreds of workaday Camrys and Jettas and Malibus, each with small crowds of daily commuters hopping in and out, touching the dials, playing with the shift knobs, forming opinions.

The New York International Auto Show, which opens to the public today, will be no different. I walked Javits Center's two levels of halls during the media days earlier this week, constantly reminded that these shows are really showrooms — Ford, for instance, has an entire kiosk devoted to demonstrating a system for its F-150 pickup that helps you back up while towing a trailer. It uses technology, I suppose, but it still speaks to the very real, practical needs of transportation's present, not its future.

The lights around me are flashing bright white, then blue, then purple. "Where Are Ü Now" is blaring through speakers that hang from the ceiling above me. Both of these details are making me feel weird, because it's 1PM and I'm at the New York International Auto Show. Manhattan's hottest new club is apparently the otherwise quiet North Hall of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.

Coming right off the parade of exotics and hypercars in Geneva, it's not easy for the New York Auto Show to make a splash. Still, there was enough news to keep us occupied for a couple days: we got a refreshed Godzilla with more power, a crazy Lincoln Navigator concept SUV with gull-wing doors, and a beautiful look inside the future of Hyundai's premium Genesis brand.

And then there were the drop-tops. Mazda basically shocked the world with the MX-5 RF, a beautiful targa version of its new Miata, while Audi chose NYIAS to show off the R8 Spyder. We'll take either one. (Actually, we'll take both.)

Even though the new Prius is just a few months old, Toyota has already made major changes to the interior of the new plug-in version, the awesomely named Prius Prime. Unfortunately, the only Prius Prime on display at the New York Auto Show yesterday was a locked-up model we couldn't get close to — we had to wait until today for Toyota to bring one out onto the floor that we could touch. The software is still early (a representative tells us that they're on the first release of four prior to the car's launch), but we were able to get a pretty good idea of where Toyota's going with this.

The updated interior, which will be an option on the production car, is surprisingly cool. Toyota replaced the standard touchscreen with a big, 11.6-inch portrait display — a trend first started by Tesla and recently implemented by Volvo in its newer models. There's also a full-color heads-up display (HUD) available.

Hyundai's upstart luxury brand Genesis — think Lexus to Toyota or Acura to Honda — has unveiled its next car. It's a sports sedan called the New York Concept and, refreshingly, it actually looks rather special.

It's not special in the sense that it's unlike anything else on the market, but at least it doesn't look like everything else on the market. One of my wife's most frequent complaints about all the cars I drive is that they all blend together. None of them stand out.

There are a lot of beautiful cars here at the New York Auto Show, but the most head-turning ones on the floor aren't new. In fact, a few of them are really old. Nissan, which is here this week to show off the updated GT-R, has assembled a handful of classic Skylines dating back as far as 1969.

The GT-R was born from the Skyline brand, so it's a fitting homage to the car's heritage. And the collection here mostly runs the gamut. The most striking is probably the oldest one: the GT-R 1969 C10 Skyline, which was the first Skyline generation to parade around in Nissan branding. (Skylines started up as a part of the Prince Motor Company, which merged with Nissan in the 1960s.)

The future of transportation is a tough thing to peg down. It could involve Hyperloops, or self-driving cars, or some strange mix of both. Two years ago, Nissan started up an experimental wing called "Future Lab" to address this shifting landscape. And the first project is the Nissan New Mobility Concept — a squat, four-wheel electric vehicle that Nissan has taken from Renault and modified for the United States.

Nissan brought a substantially updated 2017 GT-R to the New York Auto Show this week, featuring more power, an updated look, and a touch of refinement inside the cabin.

Basically, Godzilla is more terrifying — but also somehow friendlier — than ever.

Toyota today announced the Prius Prime, a plug-in hybrid version of the Prius, which I drove last year and quite liked. But the new name, quad-LED headlights, and fancy new taillight design unique to the Prius Prime suggest Toyota sees this car as something a little more than another Prius.

And, to be honest, I'm not quite sure why. Sure, it can go 22 miles in all-electric mode at up to 84 mph — but that's less than half of the new Chevy Volt, which GM says can go more than 50 miles electric. On the other hand, the Volt is supposed to get 106 MPGe on the EPA's combined city/highway (electric) test while Toyota thinks the Prius Prime will 120 or higher.

The new Lincoln Navigator Concept is a massive beast of an SUV. That's not surprising, given that the current Lincoln Navigator is also a massive beast of an SUV.

But this concept, which is meant to give us a good idea of what the next-generation Navigator will look like, is also meant to carry that weight in a much more elegant way.

The Mazda Miata has a new, hardtop brother: a targa called the Mazda MX-5 RF.

In front of a packed house of journalists in a Chelsea loft, Mazda execs rolled out the car, which looks exactly like what you'd expect (only a lot, lot better) — a Mazda Miata with a hardtop, but with a gorgeously complicated targa roof retraction mechanism. And oh, is it gorgeous.

Chevy just released a few images and a quick teaser video of its Bolt EV going through pre-production on its Michigan assembly line, one of the final steps before actual production. The Bolt is expected to be in at least some dealerships by the end of this year, promising a reasonably practical 200-mile electric range and a price around $30,000 after credits.

The new model of BMW's flagship 7 Series sedan is getting support for controlling the Spotify, iHeartRadio, and Pandora apps on Android phones, making it possible to use the services through the car's user interface — no fiddling with the phone required. BMW has supported similar functionality on iOS for several years, but the Android integration is new.

This new capability isn't Android Auto, though. BMW has pledged support for both Android Auto and Apple's CarPlay in future vehicles — but in the meantime, it's using integration points between specific apps and the car's dashboard, similar to Ford's AppLink system. An open-source version of AppLink called SmartDeviceLink was recently adopted by Toyota, suggesting that there's still a lot of hunger among major automakers for controlling the UIs of their dashboards more tightly than the systems from Apple and Google allow.

Ahead of this week's New York International Auto Show, Ford, Shelby, and Hertz have announced the Mustang Shelby GT-H, basically a souped-up Mustang GT — complete with the 5-liter V-8 — that you can rent just like you would any other rental car. (Except, you know, it's not really anything like a normal rental car.) It'll be built at Shelby American's facility in Las Vegas, and only "around 140" are expected to be made.

This is actually the third time Ford has collaborated with Hertz on a so-called rent-a-racer: the series kicked off with the Shelby GT350-H in 1966, then the Shelby GT-H a decade ago. Like its predecessors, the new GT-H is painted in unique black with gold accents — a shout-out to Hertz's branding.