Hasta La Gadget!

The 2009 Detroit auto show (a.k.a. the North American International Auto Show) was a bit soft on mainstream car introductions compared to shows in years past. Still, Ford showed off its white bread-and-butter Taurus sedan, and Cadillac made its SRX tall wagon/crossover more SUV-like. And the non-Michigan autoamakers, such as Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, and Toyota, all had great new cars, too.

All in all, there’s enough to easily compile a list of the 10 best mainstream (gasoline-burning, non-hybrid, non-electric) cars from the show. That’s apart from the 10 best green cars of the Detroit show. We omitted cars that might have been worthy in other years, such as the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500, a $45,000, 540-hp ode to go-fast-in-a-straight-line technology. And the most important car or car technology of the Detroit auto show wasn’t a car–it was Ford’s unveiling at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show of a new version of Ford Sync that adds rudimentary navigation, no extra charge, to its already impressive features set of Bluetooth, voice command, and iPod / music player integration.

Detroit’s 10 best cars, after the jump.