NY Auto Show

I think the NY auto show happens once a year, although it is not as big as the Detroit show, it is quite significant. As for myself, I am not such a big fan of cars and I am not too much into its technical aspects as well. I wanted to go for it though just to see the progress in cars (the last show i went to was in Delhi 3 yrs back).

The show was in Javits center in Manhattan and it was pretty crowded as expected. My friend with whom I went is quite interested in cars and was all excited. All the big guys whom you would except in the world of cars were there with the exhibits. Ford, Chevrolet, Mazda, Ferrari, Mercedez, BMW, Honda and the list goes on. Each company had their latest models on display and also some concept cars which are not ready for production. I believe most of those concept cars will never hit the market. Ford Airstream was the concept car that i liked the most and it seemed very much practical that it might come on the mainstream market. I got a fair idea in terms of the types of cars that are in the market and their price ranges. There were lot of value for money cars, cars with a lot of style, some useless cars, cars with a ton of features that nobody can remember, big cars, small cars, 10 seater minivans, a few bikes, rally cars and the list goes on.

My main grouse with cars is that there is no revolution in car technology for the last 30-40 years. The technology is more or less the same, there is no big change in terms of alternative fuel or improving the fuel efficiency by a big margin or coming up with something new and exciting. The improvements that i could see were the safety standards and ease of use for the driver of the car. There were features in some cars like revving up your engine 200m away, keyless start and lock opening, refrigerator within the car, place to heat up your coffee (only starbucks of course) , on the road entertainment system, parking a car by itself and others.

The car companies have to keep coming up with new models, good marketing and competitive pricing to compete and grow. From the looks of it, it is a grind with so many competitors involved. There was a separate accessories exhibition where there were no auto accessories and they were signing up for credit cards and had some games. Another interesting aspect was the marker on the hand when you entered the exhibition was invisible, but was flourescent when put under a scanner.

Overall, it was a US car market 101 session and it might prove useful to me in the future.