CARNIVAL OF CARS: A drive around the auto blogs block for the week of 2/9/13

Chicago's Auto Show opened earlier this week, which means there's lots of good stuff to talk about, so let's fire this thing up and head on down the road, shall we?

Among the stars of the Chicago confab was Chevy's new turbo diesel version of the Cruze. The Auto Prophet did the math and concluded that "break-even will never happen, mathematically, at current prices. Only if GM discounts the Cruze Diesel below the price of gasoline vehicle would it make economic sense."

So what do you do when you've got several brightly colored samples of Lamborghini's all-new Aventador but need somewhere to see if it really will pop 200 mph? Car Guys Chronicles' Marty Schorr points to the recent Aventador intro at Miami International. And there's more here at Classic Drivers.

Car sales slipped a bit north of the border, but Tim Cain at GoodCarBadCar says not to worry cause pickemups zoomed big time. Ford's F-series tops the list but the new Ram is hot, Tundras and Tacomas are selling, and Chevy is even selling Avalanches.

Who said it this? "The Internet is a crazy place. Where else can someone go with the intent of researching auto-industry news and end up instead looking at 7 bad pictures of Beyonce?" If you said TGriffith at Car Gurus Blog, you know about Chrysler's Dodge Dart gift registry.

Speaking of crazy, MotorAuthority has the scoop from the Chicago Auto show on the Superman edition of Kia's Optima Hybrid, VW's Beetle GSR, and a "menacing" special edition Camaro rendered in connection with an upcoming movie.

Did you hear all those thumps as the GM marketing suits fainted? It happened when AUTOEXTREMIST - in the person of head honcho Peter M. De Lorenzo, of course - laid a Bentsen on their Quayle:

"I grew up with the Sting Ray. I rode in the original Sting Ray in period. I know what the Sting Ray represents. And I can safely say that the new Corvette is no Stingray, no matter how it's spelled."

Go ahead, stand up and cheer!

"Unfriggingbelievable!" is all I could say when I stumbled into the reality of whiskers in cars, courtesy of Pawl Bearing's Auto Design Engineering Rant.

And now for the first time ever on Carnival of Cars, I must issue a PORNOGRAPHY WARNING! It's found on Car Throttle and illustrates what happens in wartime when a Bugatti has car-nal knowledge of a Bug. Just don't tell anybody you saw it here, OK?

If you watched American Idol, you'll instantly understand what's going on with The Truth About Cars' Future Writers project. I'd say Jeff Snavely - a military musician and car nut living in my own neck of the woods - absolutely nails it with his take on buying or renting an exotic.

And if you still haven't got enough of the Chicago Auto Show, go to TotalCarScore. If this doesn't satiate you, perhaps you should join the SCCA and be a corner worker or something.

Which brings us to our final CofC stop of the week where it's time for a big shout-out to my buddy Karl Brauer, the automotive journalist-genius behind TCS, who says the solution to high gas prices can be found right under our noses.

And I don't care who you are, that ain't crazy talk!

See ya next week, friends and neighbors.