RIP THE MOTOR SHOW
Has the bare-faced cheek of the motor show run its course? And if it has, does it actually matter?
With coronavirus killing Geneva,
Sam Philip asks whether there’s a future for the stuffy old motor show at all
As coronavirus swept across Europe, the Swiss government took the unprecedented decision to ban events with more than 1,000 people, a restriction that mercifully allowed Matt Cardle’s Switzerland stadium tour to continue unaffected.
We’ll never know if it was the correct move, health-wise, to cancel Geneva 2020. Assuming there’s at least one of you out there reading these words, and thus the human race hasn’t been wiped out since this magazine went to press, we can probably chalk it up under ‘sensible precaution’.
As coronavirus victims go, an auto industry shindig in one of the world’s richest countries hardly ranks as the most tragic. But, metaphorically speaking, it was tough not to see Geneva’s abrupt cancellation as a rather on-the-nose allegory for the plight of the traditional motor show itself: ailing old-timer dumped into quarantine, possibly never to be seen again.
Because there’s no denying the motor show, as a whole, hasn’t appeared in the rudest of health recently. Even before this year’s Geneva show was ordered to lock itself away with plenty of fluids and a box of tissues, it was hardly oversubscribed: Ford, Hyundai, Jaguar Land Rover, Vauxhall/Opel and Volvo had already decided to stay at home (on financial rather than respiratory disease grounds). Other members of the so-called “Big Four” motor shows have been looking even greener
around the gills. Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Volvo and JLR all snubbed the 2019 Detroit show, which this year will move from its traditional January slot to June in a bid to rekindle public enthusiasm. Last year’s Frankfurt show, already confirmed as the last held in the city (it goes to Munich from now on), was given the swerve by – ready for this? – Aston, Alfa, Chrysler, Fiat, Nissan, Mazda, Bentley, Toyota, Peugeot, Dacia, Chevrolet, Subaru, Volvo and Suzuki. (“Birgit, are you sure you put the right RSVP address on the invites? Check the mailbox again...”)
So, to extend the heavy-handed metaphor, here’s the question: is the motor show on its deathbed, or just self isolating until it’s got over this nasty bout of the sniffles?
It’s certainly a wizened old goat nowadays. The first auto show was held in Paris in 1898, earlier attempts to stage an event having fallen flat on account of the motor car not yet being invented. Records of that inaugural show are patchy, but Paul Horrell is believed to have attended, and given Albert de Dion a proper earful about the steering feel on La Marquise. The first Geneva show was held in 1905, where, the record shows, “17,000 visitors converged on 37 exhibition stands” to gaze in wonder at the latest automobiles, not to mention the stand girls showing up to two inches of bare ankle.
Auto shows grew in size and status until, by the Fifties and Sixties, they weren’t only big news in the world of cars, they were big news in the world at large. Motor shows – and their broader-brushstroke cousins, World’s Fairs – were beacons of optimism, the chance to see, and touch, the future before it happened. They were also a chance for car companies to introduce their new cars to a staggering number of people. The first Ford Mustang launched at the 1964 New York World’s
Fair, an event that sprawled over 646 acres and 140 pavilions. You know how many people visited that show? 51.6 million.
Just a smidge less than the entire population of the UK at the time. Apparently organisers were disappointed they didn’t hit their original target of 70 million. Still, 50 million punters. That’s a lot of potential Mustang buyers.
Though the Sixties represented their zenith, motor shows have remained enduringly – some would say inexplicably – popular until very recently. As late as 2016, the Paris show welcomed well over a million visitors through its doors. But the last couple of years have seen attendance – by punters and manufacturers alike – plummet. In truth, what’s surprising isn’t that the motor show has fallen out of fashion recently, but that it remained in fashion for so long. Auto shows are like air travel: they might have been glamorous, futuristic and exciting back in the Sixties, but today they largely involve a day wedged in an airless chamber under the armpit of a sweaty businessman. (And at least with air travel, you might end up somewhere nice. Attend the Detroit show, you’re definitely ending up in Detroit.)
Sure, a big motor show might sound like a ritzy gig for a car journalist: the world’s shiniest new cars crammed together in one place, the chance to buttonhole a CEO or chief designer for a juicy quote. But the reality is less ritzy and more Kettering Travelodgey: stuffy conference halls ram-jammed full of clammy journalists with terrible suits and terrible hair and terrible coffee breath, elbowing lumps out of each other to grab a grainy cameraphone snap of the revised Peugeot 5008.
Even ignoring journalists (generally a sensible policy), surely motor shows are no more inspiring for regular human visitors?
There are better ways to showcase the speed and dynamism of the latest motor vehicles than by lining up several hundred of them in what amounts to a large (and admittedly well-lit) multi-storey car park. Cars are designed to move, to be driven, not sit static on a plinth (with the possible exception of the Alfa 4C, which very much does its best work sitting static on a plinth). Want to experience the awesome potential of the modern motor car? You’re better off camping out on the bridge over your local dual carriageway than attending a big motor show. After the cancellation of the 2020 show, Chris Harris tweeted, “Will there ever be another Geneva motor show?” Maybe the bigger question is: if there isn’t, who would honestly miss it?
The car companies themselves, perhaps? I’m not so sure. I remember, a couple of weeks after the 2013 Frankfurt motor show, hearing a press officer for a big international car brand complain that their facelifted SUV hadn’t got the newspaper and magazine coverage they thought it warranted. I pointed out it had been unveiled 10 minutes before the surprise reveal of the Porsche 918 Spyder, which had rather snaffled the attentions of the world’s press. If said company had launched their SUV a week earlier, or a week later… well, they still wouldn’t have got much coverage on account of it being a very boring car, but the point stands. If, as a carmaker, you want to get people talking about your latest effort, surely revealing it on the exact same day as two-dozen other new cars is a little... counter-productive? I’m no film expert, but I’ve noticed that the world’s major studios do seem to spread their releases throughout the year, rather than screening the whole lot on the same Tuesday morning in early March.
Car companies are finally opting to give major motor shows a swerve, instead staging their big unveils at smaller events: Pebble Beach, or the Villa d’Este concours, or Goodwood’s Festival of Speed, which has in recent years incorporated a welcome innovation it grandly calls “the moving motor show”, and the rest of us call “some cars driving up a hill”. Or even ditching the big physical reveal entirely, and simply revealing their cars online instead. More convenient, more environmentally conscious and, crucially, far cheaper. “If all the manufacturers who normally spend multiple millions to take cars to a show,” Aston design boss Marek Reichman told TopGear recently, “get 80 per cent of the reach doing it online, for a tenth the cost… in the future that might be more and more considered.”
Especially a future where big public gatherings could prove as hazardous to the health as doing 50 lengths of front crawl in your local sewage treatment facility. The traditional motor show may not be dead, but it surely doesn’t have long left. But when it croaks its last, don’t blame coronavirus. Blame the internet.
“COMPANIES ARE OPTING TO GIVE MAJOR MOTOR SHOWS A SWERVE”