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I'm here in Detroit, at what had been, until this morning, the 2013 North American International Corvette Show. That's not me dissing the 2014 Corvette, mind you. It's fantastic. But by making Detroit all about America's Sports Car, General Motors also dealt itself a shotgun blast to the foot.

Because everyone forgot about the 2014 Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups.

Those trucks are GM's cash cows. They're more important than the Corvette, because their mere existence helps enable GM to build Corvettes in the first place. Any other year, they are GM's Detroit Auto Show news cycle. But the Stingray turned them into the backup singers whose names you don't know.

And then Ford dropped a bomb with the unannounced Atlas concept truck this morning. What's the Ford Atlas? To GM's truck PR folks, it's the elephant in the room, covered in 900-pound gorillas carrying Kate Upton, naked, in a sedan chair.

They can be forgiven for breaking any nearby furniture.

The Atlas is a teaser for the next-generation Ford trucks. A showcase of styling and features that you can expect when the new F-Series rigs arrive. Stuff like active shutters in the grille and wheels, an active front air dam, retractable running boards, and a slick combination tailgate step/cargo cradle. Most importantly, the Atlas was a surprise. It's the thing everyone's talking about today.

The Chevy Corvette distracted everybody, and the Atlas flew into the ring as an unlikely tag-team partner to deal the finishing blow. So, instead of a big story, the new GM pickups become a footnote at their hometown coming-out party.

Surprises are rare at the Detroit Auto Show, but gamesmanship, as Ford showed, is a bumper crop.

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