2007 New York Auto Show Review

April for me always marks the end of auto show season. While I only go to two annually, Detroit and New York, I think that’s enough. The lure for auto shows, beyond my the passion for cars is also to experience immersion in the brands. See it used to be that car shows were a pretty straight forward events. A bunch of vehicles were parked in a convention hall, some basic signage was hung from the ceiling and maybe you’d have a car or two on a rotating platform. All that changed in the late 80’s. Automakers began to invest more and more in their stand design as an added component in brand communications. Today, auto shows are spectacles, owing some of the evolution to GM’s Motoramas in the 50’s.

So when I go to a show, I look at everything. The cars, the design of the stands, the lighting, the materials, graphics…..everything. Sometimes the results are jaw dropping, other times you wonder if the manufacturer is asleep at the wheel. New York this year was a pretty mixed bag. So here’s a few of our highlights:

Best stand(s): BMW.
Although a lot of this stand is not totally new, it’s nice to see it evolved from last year. The design beautifully incorporates architecture, lighting and graphics. The vehicles themselves were well placed and there was plenty of room to circulate around them. The material palette combined large doses of white with matte aluminum and wood flooring. What really sold me on the design wasn’t even the large car booth upstairs in the main hall, but the smaller SUV one downstairs. BMW got a pretty crumby corner space way in the back. They smartly used the same architectural panels as upstairs, but modified them to include lighting. This way they could easily be set up and not use any union labor to mess with hanging lights from the ceiling. The panel used the same graphic style as those upstairs.

Best continuation of an auto web trend: Mini for Hammer & Coop.
BMW started it. Mini is the latest. You could even sit in the actual car from the film at the show.

Best brand/model graphics: Toyota for the Tundra.
How much is Toyota committed to making the Tundra a success? By putting it everywhere they could in the NY show. There were a few upstairs mixed in with the cars, and a bunch downstairs. The graphics campaign for the Tundra is bold, strong, and reflects the attributes of the vehicle. I like that they didn’t try to soften it because for a truck to really be successful, the core users need to endorse it. This looked miles better than anything Ford, GM or Dodge had up.

The new PSFK company car would be: the Jaguar XKR.
While we’d much rather have the C-XF concept, it wasn’t at the show. The XKR is limited and only 225 are coming to the US. It’s supercharged ( no mucking about with turbo lag ) but has some seriously beefy brakes with nice red calipers. The midnight blue convertible shown looked black at first glance and worked nicely with the matte aluminum details.

Our flickr gallery is up and is arranged from right to left/ upper hall to lower for those familar with Javits. Our Day 1 and Day 2 media galleries are still available too.