Honda’s auto-show exhibit trades sales for brand storytelling
MONTREAL, QUEBEC Auto shows have been going on for more than a century in North America. Opening on Jan. 17 for a 10-day run, the Montreal International Auto Show marked its 77th year.
The Montreal event is also the first auto show on the calendar in North America, after the North American International Auto Show in Detroit moved this year from early January to mid-june.
You’d think the first auto show of the year would persuade all the major carmakers to showcase their latest vehicles, but that’s not the case. When it comes to auto shows, a manufacturer can set up what is essentially a remote showroom, or it can choose to skip the show, or you can show up and do something different — which is what Honda chose to do at the 2020 show.
There were no new Hondas to poke around on the show floor, at least not in the conventional sense — there was a wrecked Civic Coupe, though.
The company eschewed the static showroom display and instead introduced what it calls The Intersection, a science fair-like exhibit with a number of interactive stations that showcase the brand’s “core pillars.” These include the environment, safety, mobility, manufacturing and community. Each station represents one of those pillars.
The safety exhibit, for example, is where that wrecked Civic was on display. It was crash-tested last August for the purpose of gathering data. Despite having slammed its driver’s-side quarter panel into an immovable barrier at 64 km/h and causing extensive damage, data revealed a driver could have walked away from a similar collision. Also part of the exhibit is an interactive touch screen that lets you control video footage of the actual crash test from six camera angles.
A pair of robotic arms and a trio of Civic sedans were on display in the manufacturing station. The robotic arms were borrowed from Honda’s manufacturing facility in Alliston, Ontario, and were programmed at the show to put magnetic decals on a car body.
The three cars on display, two of which were bare chassis, were in different stages of assembly, and were also taken from the Alliston plant, which has been building Honda Civics since 1988.
A few Honda UNI-CUBS were available for demo rides. The UNICUB is an omnidirectional personal mobility device that allows the operator to move in multiple directions just by leaning, handsfree.
The exhibit in Montreal was the first time Honda has moved away from the conventional auto-show display, though it plans to set up the same exhibit at the Canadian International Auto Show in Toronto in February. Various components of The Intersection will also make appearances at events throughout the year, such as at the Toronto Honda Indy, Montreal’s Osheaga festival, and the Celebration of Light in Vancouver.
Of course, many people who attend auto shows are potential buyers, and they go to these events to see, sit in and compare vehicles, which is something you can’t really do at The Intersection. There is an interactive touch screen in the exhibit that essentially mimics Honda’s online vehicle configurator, and customer service reps will be on hand to answer product questions, but the hands-on experience of conventional auto show displays will be missing.
“You can do anything you can do online,” says Honda Canada’s Laura Heasman of the configurator screen, “which is what shoppers are doing anyway.”
According to Heasman, The Intersection is designed to “tell more of a brand story ” rather than focus on individual products. How the Canadian public will react to the exhibit as it appears across the country is anybody’s guess.
“I’m hoping to see people’s reactions,” says Heasman, who planned to visit the display at the Montreal show. “Are people confused? Are they excited?”
It will be interesting to see what Honda has in store for next year’s auto shows.