Detroit may be collapsing, but Los Angeles’ car show must go on.

This induced a certain schizophrenia in the convention center, at least where domestic carmakers were concerned. Why, exactly, was Ford trumpeting its future while GM and Chrysler were staring into the abyss?

GM fessed up to its pain. "We don't like to go into auto shows and cancel press conferences," said Scott Fosgard, the company's global director of auto show communications. "But it was a prudent decision." He also stressed that GM was still committed to Los Angeles. Arriving in town without any new product, he said, "is not a long-term strategy for us."

That might be true, but it's clear that GM is circling the wagons, focused on dominating its backyard at the immodestly titled North American International Auto Show, which takes place in Detroit in January. That event, Fosgard said, "will be full of GM news."

There's a Detroit-Los Angeles rivalry in the car show world; in 2006, the L.A. show's organizers actually moved their event from January to November so that it could stand out from Detroit and officially kick off the car-show season. Despite that, the Detroit show has always come out on top. Ford's approach this year, however, suggests that a tectonic shift is under way. California urgently believes that it's more important to the destiny of the automobile industry, particularly on environmental issues, than Michigan. The replacement of Michigan's John Dingell by California's Henry Waxman on the House energy and commerce committee seemed to sum up the trend: The needs of consumers and the planet are more important that the Big Three's legendary Washington clout.

Toyota and Honda have corporate headquarters near Los Angeles, and both took the opportunity of the L.A. show to unveil, respectively, a natural-gas-powered Camry sedan and a wildly futuristic hydrogen fuel-cell concept car, the FC Sport, as well as a redesign of the Insight hybrid. Californians are obviously car-crazy, but they are also convinced of their leadership role in a brave new world of sustainable mobility. The state's drivers were early Prius adopters, and there are numerous startup electric car companies, from Tesla to Aptera, that call California home.

Still, this year's L.A. show boiled down to the fate of the embattled Detroit Big Three. But even as much the grim news cycled conspired to suck all the air out of the convention center, the time-honored giddiness of the car show reasserted itself. It was a far cry from what auto shows are supposed to be—events that, as the Los Angeles Times' Ken Bensinger characterized them, draw "battalions of reporters to their new models and concept cars, they build buzz and then throw open their doors to hundreds of thousands of potential buyers."