2023 NORTH AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL DETROIT AUTO SHOW

She Ain’t What She Used to Be!
By Steve Purdy and Thom Cannell
TheAutoChannel’s Detroit Team

The handwringing and consternation among fellow journalists and hangers-on were nearly palpable during the media preview day and for a few days thereafter. “She ain’t what she used to be,” was the refrain.

It’s unquestionably true that the North American International Detroit Auto Show (its official name, though we’re not sure if the “international” sanction remains) is barely a shadow of what it was at its peak in the 1980s, ‘90s, and up to the late ‘00s. But, we might want to take a larger view of what she needs to be now. At her peak she was truly the North American International Auto Show, certified by the international tribunal responsible for such designations because the most auto industry news was made in Detroit - product news, business news, engineering news, marketing news, and always a few surprises. Journalists from all over the world came to Detroit in the dead of winter, worked their tails off for up to a week gathering the news, making contacts and heartily partying.

Auto shows all over the country, beginning with Chicago, New York and Detroit, grew naturally from the need of local dealers to get their cars in front of potential buyers, and the buyers desire to see everything available in one place at one time. There seems to exist in the souls of many American a lust to see the cars we can’t afford as well as the ones we can. The car-buying frenzy after WWII let loose the flamboyance of both automobiles and the manufacturers’ willingness to spend great deals of money advertising and promoting ever flashier cars, culminating in the glory days referenced above.

In both contrast and confirmation, the IAA show in Munich, Germany took place the week preceding NAIAS. It combined a business-to-business trade fair with city-wide displays of everything Mobility. Inheritor of the now-defunct Frankfort Auto Show, the German VDA (Verband der Automobilindustrie e. V.) which represents German suppliers and auto makers) selected Munich and its open space concept of total mobility distributed throughout the city, with driving experiences available to all. This may be the future of auto shows and is what Detroit/NAIAS hoped to be. 700,000 tourists were expected to visit Munich in addition to its million-plus populace.

[NAIAS Rides]

The 2023 Detroit show is essentially back to being a dealers’ show. This year at the media preview, less than a handful of formal events with no newsworthy product announcements punctuated the day. While there were 37 brands represented on the floor, we’re told, only 5 manufacturers presented displays – GM, Ford (with a very nice but understated display for Lincoln), Stellantis , Volkswagen and Toyota. Most of the other makes, including exotics, were crowded into a back corner of the hall without so much as a potted plant to decorate the space. Ford and Stellantis presented some flash and pizzazz, but the hall was otherwise unadorned.

That shrunken show of vehicles left room on the floor for four, count ‘em four, driving tracks where you can get in dozens of different cars and light trucks and experience them more dynamically. Wisely, they won’t let you drive them, but you could spend all day getting a feel of a Jeep or a Celestiq or a something more mundane. At one time the exhibition halls – nearly a million square-feet both upstairs and down – were overflowing without a square foot to spare. One of the most photographed cars in the hall, the only car representing auto heritage that we saw, was in Stellantis’ Fiat display where sat a powder-blue old Fiat 500 – cute as an Anime puppy.

The future of major auto shows like Detroit is certain in one respect: it will never return to past glory. It will, though, likely evolve in a healthy way to what it was meant to be in the beginning – a place and event where the family, or a pack of teenagers, or a bunch of gear heads, or anyone can come and see nearly every car in the market without being pestered by a salesman.

One more tidbit of nostalgia, if you please: the Detroit show was where we often got a glimpse, or a sneak peek, at the future. And, like auto shows beginning in the 1950s, we saw a flying car this year in Detroit, though it might be more accurately called a two-passenger drone, or maybe a horizontal, multi-blade helicopter. But it was pretty cool.

So, worry not. The world is changing at an ever-increasing rate, and that goes double for auto shows.