Just like a show dog or thoroughbred race horse, the Chevrolet Cruze has a good pedigree—good enough to compete in the compact segment currently ruled by the Toyota Corolla and Honda Civic.

General Motors will debut the North American version of its new, global small sedan, the 2011 Chevrolet Cruze, at the L.A. Auto Show.

As cab rides go, the one I took the other day wasn’t all that interesting despite the pastoral scenery of rural eastern Pennsylvania. What really caught my attention was the blast of cold air coming through the door handle of the previous generation Chevrolet Malibu. The last time I felt a draft like that was in a 1946 MG TC, a car that didn’t have roll-up windows. The MG had side curtains, which only approximate a seal against the weather. While I could take the easy-cheesy way out and turn that drafty Malibu into another trite weather analogy for what ails Detroit, I won’t. There’s a far more direct point to made.

Green Car Journal, a magazine dedicated to covering vehicles friendly to the environment, will present its Green Car of the Year Award this morning at the L.A. Auto Show. The nominees this year are the BMW 335d, Ford Fusion Hybrid, Saturn Vue 2-Mode Hybrid, smart fortwo and Volkswagen Jetta TDI.

The L.A. Auto Show starts this Friday, filling the Los Angeles Convention Center with the industry’s latest offerings. The show hasn’t always had much in the way of exclusive debuts and, before moving to the current November dates, it overlapped the Elvis Presley of car shows, Detroit. Now it leads off the U.S. auto show season, which includes Detroit and Chicago.