Same old cars, same old sales pitch
The New York International Auto is just like the others I attend. I peruse elaborate displays and listen to teleprompted pontifications delivered by auto-company spokesmen and women.
Before the event officially opened to the paying public (March 25 to April 3), hundreds of automotive writers from far and wide arrived to schmooze (code for eat and drink) with automaker representatives and generally have a jolly time in The Big Apple.
The vehicles shown at major events such as this vary from the eye-popping and stunningly new, to been-there-seen-that boring, and everything in between.
Of course there are some highly anticipated gems that get everyone’s salivary glands working overtime. Most others tend to be ignored and barely mentioned, if at all, in dispatches from the companies to various media outlets.
For the public-relations flacks, it doesn’t seem to matter whether the vehicles they’re referencing are newly minted from rubber to roof, or merely “refreshed.” That buzzword is currently the in-vogue expression that usually signifies a new shade of paint, new wheel designs and a bit of minor interior redecorating.
If “refreshed” doesn’t quite cover it, other cars or portions thereof might be characterized as being “repurposed” or “re-imagined.” Or, putting it in normal language, not really new.
In this time of ultra-competitiveness among the various makes, it’s tough to point fingers at the PR types. They’re under pressure to provide support for the brands they represent in the never-ending quest for sales and market share. Their jobs focus on influencing people such as myself who report on cars for a living and ensure that we get their facts straight in our stories. That’s not always easy when the companies are only telling us what they want to tell us, often glossing over key areas with flowery language that actually doesn’t say much or anything at all.
Perhaps the most awkward part of this scenario for credible auto writers is that we just don’t care about the sales pitch. It’s of no use, and the more we see it, the more turned off we get. (I don’t do flowery, as you can tell).
The speeches and the fancy press materials with their hyperbolic prose don’t generally sway most auto writers. We can see it (or read it) coming a mile away and, with few exceptions, avoid the rosy/ happy spin like swine flu.
Most scribes will, however, absorb the various vehicular pitches and graciously accept press releases and reference materials. But in the privacy of our offices or hotel rooms and hovering over computer screens, the verbiage and over-the-top rhetoric usually gets tossed aside, save for point-form stats and specifications and perhaps a smattering of historical footnotes.
Automaker attempts at gaining traction with the press are most successful with all-new or substantially changed vehicles that are worthy of actual press coverage. But when it comes to vehicles where only a bit of powder and lip gloss has been applied, we would much rather get information that hasn’t been run through the propaganda machine. That would make all our jobs easier.