I’m back from Chicago now, and totally exhausted. In the end, it was a good event for meeting other members of the press, but the amount of news was lacking.

Best news: the upcoming Pontiac G8, with a roomy interior, powerful engines, and international styling, looks very promising. The new Scion xB and xD also seem to be significant improvements in most ways over their predecessors. (The exception being the xB’s loss of glass area and space efficiency, and 600-pound weight gain.)

I’m less hopeful about the new Saturn Astra. It’s a good car, but doesn’t appear to have anything that will make it stand out in the crowded compact field. A 1.8-liter four good for 140 horsepower isn’t going to cut it when the name on the hood isn’t Honda or Toyota.

Worst news: Ford seemed clueless during both of its press events. I came away from Detroit thinking they had the focus and energy to fix what is wrong with the organization and its products. But in Chicago I saw much less energy, and the presentations were largely devoid of meaningful content, just hot air and forced explanations for why the Five Hundred was being renamed.

I personally spoke to Mark Fields, head of Ford in the Americas, following his breakfast speech the first day. A Ford engineer emailed me a month ago to say that the executive summary of my report to GM also described the situation inside Ford. I gave Mr. Fields a copy of my business card with this url written on the back, suggesting that he might want to take a look.

His response? He wanted to know the name of the engineer. No interest in the content of the executive summary. Totally wrong focus if the goal is to save Ford. Fields either thinks he already has all the answers, or he isn’t focused on the problem.

Not that I expected the poster boy of the fast-track career system to dismantle it.

For what it’s worth, I told him, truthfully, that I didn’t know the name, and that even if I did know it it wouldn’t be appropriate to provide this information.

I later learned that at one table during the breakfast speech people were speculating how much longer Fields would be at Ford. At least one person was wrong: he thought Fields might announce his resignation then and there.