Somehow it always sneaks up on you, if you live in the Chicago area. Things go slack after the excitement (or stress, or both) of the holidays, it snows, it sleets, routine closes in … and then you look up, and it’s time for the Auto Show. It’s not exactly a soft-stepping harbinger of spring, but it’s still a lot of fun. Learn more about the Chicago Auto Show here, and consider looking in if you’re close enough to the city.
This will be this blog’s first Auto Show, and starting next Monday you can expect a full week of posts featuring pictures from the show floor, as pretty as I can make them, and more than a few sarcastic comments. Even if you’re not a car buff, stick around: I’ll also be critiquing the show, reviewing the coffee, churros and other show floor snacks, and sharing the best of this year’s weird booth designs and equally weird color names. Will I get any offers to test drive expensive luxury cars? Will I make any of the manufacturer’s representatives really mad? Will I lock myself in a truck and have to be rescued? All of these things have happened before.
(By request, one of these stories is told in full in the comments below.)
To celebrate the approach of the Auto Show, here’s a great link from one of my favorite car blogs, Gawker’s always entertaining Jalopnik (jalopnik.com). If you ever wanted a good, tight, coherent explanation of the correct terminology to use when talking about a car’s window pillars, just read this. Now, when you are talking about a car that has two different models, one a notchback sedan and another a hatchback, and you want to describe how the front ends are the same, you can say they’re identical from the B pillar forward, and sound like a real pro.
Oh, I think we need some major expansion on one of your adventures mentioned above.
No, not how you got locked in a truck and had to be rescued, that makes perfect sense to me.
What I want to know is, How did you make a manufacturer’s rep really mad? What manufacturer? What was the rep touting and just how did you go about it?
Details, Gal! WE NEED DETAILS!
OK. By request. One Auto Show, some years ago I was hanging out in the Chrysler stand looking at the new Pacifica on the turntable. I don’t know if you remember the Pacifica, which was a minivan variant with a slightly lower, sleeker body. It was, supposedly, “sportier” than the standard Town and Country, though I don’t remember that the running gear was much different. They actually sold a fair few of them, and you still see them around once in a while.
Anyway, I’d heard about this Pacifica and seen some concept drawings, but this was the first time I (or indeed anyone much outside Chrysler) had seen it in the metal. I was, as they say, underwhelmed. As I was standing there, I was approached by an extremely well dressed young woman from Chrysler corporate, who asked me what I thought. I thought, I said, that it looked like a minivan. (Which indeed it did. The stance is unmistakable.) She, of course, immediately started in on a spiel about how it was lower and sleeker, and also sleeker and lower. Plus it had leather seats and a fancy radio.
“Any way you slice it,” I told her, “it’s still baloney.” She turned about 8 colors and choked her clipboard. It was great.
ROFL! Ohhh BRAVA ma soeur!