a visit to the Auto Show

It has been years since I ventured into the Auto Show. My friend Sam called to say that he was going to the show and asked if I would like to attend. Sure, sounds good and off I went. (it was also good for me to get out of the house that I have been spending far too much time in these days)

Growing up in the Detroit area afforded me a love of the automobile and an annual trip to the Detroit Auto Show. It was great to go down with my family to check out all the cars and get all the freebies (which are very different now). It's funny, 'cause now I don't even want the freebies and since I am not in the market for a new car, I have no reason to pick up the new car brochures. The brochures always spurred on dreams of a new cool car and the fun times that would be had in it. Now it is just more paper to add to a landfill or hopefully a recycling center.

I did spend time looking at the cars. I got in a few of them but behind the wheel of none. The kids seemed to love getting into the cars and I was hit by a few anxious kids running from one car to another to get in to the car of their dreams. Kids don't really see adults they just seem to see what they want and go for it. There were some very cool cars there. Some crazy 4-wheel thing from Jeep (a concept vehicle) and a pretty cool looking truck from Dodge called the Dude? I have tried to locate it on one of the websites, but cannot locate it. I said that Sam needed to buy the Dude(Assuming it is a real truck) since he says "dude" a lot. The only thing I could think of is the movie "dude, where's my car" or in this case, truck. How much research was done on this name? I am sure it must be a challenge to name a vehicle that isn't already used by another manufacturer, but Dude? Could it be confused with Dud? You wouldn't want to buy a dud... Perhaps they are marketing this car to the 18-25 year old male pot head or surfer that says Dude far too much. Not sure, but thought it was an odd choice.
There were lots of convertibles to look at. Honda has a new one that reminds me of the Mazda Miata. I thought it could have been cooler looking. Honda makes a nice car.
The other thing I noticed was that many of the cars look like the cars by other manufacturers. Like they are all trying to compete for the same buyer so all the cars regardless of manufacturer have very similar features. Nothing really stands out as "brand x". They seem to be homogenized.
There was a Kia that had the front end of the Jaguar and a few brands that had the same back ends. (Not like GM vs Pontiac but GM vs Jeep or Ford.)

Pricing was interesting. Some of the cars you would think were "cheap" actually had a higher price tag (Kia was a good example of this). Also, there were some cars that seemed awfully expensive for the style and fuel efficiency that they had to offer. With the price of gas these days, I was surprised to see so many gas guzzlers on display. However, there are people making lots of cash and feel it is important to look good in whatever car/truck/Hummer they buy. My car has not gone up much in 4 years which is good.
All in all, it was good to go downtown GR to people watch, look at cars and have something to blog about. : )