January’s North American International Auto Show has traditionally kicked off the car-show season with the kind of festive, over-the-top hoopla that make one proud to be an American. Defenestrated Jeeps, rapping violinists, and, even as recently as last year, a herd of longhorn cattle have all made appearances at the so-called car show of car shows.

However, this year is different.

Overseers from Washington are in town to make sure their TARP funds aren’t being spent AIG-style, and high-end automakers such as Porsche, Ferrari, Infiniti and Rolls-Royce haven’t even shown up this year.

But Detroit has always been a scrappy town, and there are glimmers of its perseverance here. The Big Three have dominated the first day of the press preview with cars and trucks that reveal a back-to-the-wall industry reconciling the new priorities of green-ness and economy in the face of collapsed consumer demand. Early on, a theme emerges: smaller, greener and battery-powered.

General Motors, up first, delivers a press conference that is more like an ersatz pep rally for the company — it has its own cheering section, made up of GM workers and dealers, to hype its products and concepts. It is strangely appropriate that the only real cheer at the show this year turns out to be manufactured.

After rolling out all of its high-mileage vehicles for benefit of the Beltway Boys in attendance, GM also shows the forthcoming Chevy Equinox, Buick LaCrosse, and Cadillac SRX. But the show-stopper is the company’s second plug-in hybrid, a complement to its 2010 Volt. It is called the Cadillac Converj and it looks like a foreshortened, more angular version of the CTS coupe concept shown last year.

For its press conference, Ford follows the same playbook as GM: a parade of high-mpg vehicles followed by some very well-edited new-car reveals. There are many company employees in attendance, although they are far more subdued than their counterparts at GM, uttering nary a rah-rah. Bill Ford himself promises the company will renew its commitment to hybrids, plug-in hybrids and battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) as part of what he calls a “global electrification strategy.” It means four new BEVs by 2012. A Focus-sized sedan, available to 5,000-10,000 customers in 2011, will have a range target of 100 miles.

Amid all this environmental responsibility comes the caterwauling of tires from two new high-performance Mustangs — the GT500 coupe and convertible —  but these are quickly hustled offstage to make room for the new Taurus. This is a surprisingly non-boring-looking full-size sedan, a nice correction to the rudderless design of the current, underrated car.

Finally, we come to Chrysler. It shows nothing but electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles, including the Lotus-based Dodge Circuit. With the freedom of a man whose company is swirling the bowl, Chrysler vice chairman and president Jim Press speaks candidly and somewhat nonsensically about the federal bailout money. He says that Chrysler’s like a college student who ran out of money at the end of the semester, but just got his  bank account topped off by his  parents. Let’s hope Chrysler won’t spend all the money on beer and other mind-altering substances like most addle-brained undergrads would.