#DetroitAutoShow

After a brief flirtation with warmer-weather months, the North American International Auto Show, also known as the Detroit Auto Show, is returning to a January date.

The Cadillac CT5 is getting an overhaul for 2025, bringing revised interior and exterior styling, new tech, and more standard safety features. The car’s powertrain remains unchanged, and there’s no word yet on a performance variant, but the updated sports sedan should still be compelling enough to be competitive in the new world of electrification.

I hate to repeat QOTDs, and I know I've asked a version of the upcoming QOTD at least twice -- but I am struggling a bit with ideas today, and I am also thinking, still, nearly a week later, about how dead NAIAS was in Detroit.

DETROIT -- The 2024 Ford Mustang arrives early next summer, but Ford isn’t waiting for next year to take the wraps off.

In an attempt to own the 2022 North American International Auto Show/Detroit Auto Show news cycle, Ford has set up a “stampede” of Mustang owners who are traveling here to the Motor City. That’s ahead of a prime-time unveiling in downtown Detroit.

I should point out, for the sake of context, that as important as the reveal of any new Mustang is, it is not hard for Ford to own the news this year, since there isn’t much else going on. Unless hot-rod Tahoes and special-edition Jeeps tickle your fancy.

You may have noticed a dearth of posts today. That's because one of us was driving to Detroit for the North American International Auto Show and at least one of us has been working on some news we cannot yet share...look for that info as embargoes lift.

Next year's Geneva Motor Show is canceled, moving instead to Qatar. The media-preview day for the upcoming North American International Auto Show in Detroit is down to half a day -- it wasn't long ago that the festivities started Sunday night and carried through Tuesday or Wednesday.

In a little over a month, the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) will allegedly be returning to Detroit for the first time since 2019. But the really big news is that there will be a brand new Mustang for everyone to look at if everything goes according to plan this time.

The North American International Auto Show is reportedly back on schedule, with NAIAS organizers announcing that the Detroit-based event will be returning on September 14th, 2022.

But we’ve been burned before. A central theme of the last two years has been the announcement of trade events before their subsequent cancellation or transition into a virtual approximation of the real thing where out-of-touch CEOs read things in front of poorly rendered backdrops.

The Detroit Auto Dealers’ Association recently got some good news. Michigan lawmakers have decided to give them a $9 million grant to put on a Detroit Auto Show — the first since 2019 — and effectively “reopen” one of the world’s biggest auto shows. And, while it’s good for the dealers, I have to admit that the news has left me angry with rage.

But why? I’m a car person, so I should be happy, right? After all, Detroit is a major show, packed with cool concept cars and big, international reveals. That stuff’s exciting, who wouldn’t want more of that!? But, sitting here and facing down the start of 2022, I can’t get past the feeling that the traditional auto show is dead — and should stay dead.

The North American International Auto Show, aka Detroit Auto Show, can’t catch a break.

Organizers decided to move the show to summer and the outdoors for 2020, and boom, COVID comes along and cancels it. They rebrand, move it to late summer and outdoors — at a different site — and boom, Mother Nature decides to assert herself with a day and a half of deluge. So much water fell from the sky that the second day was canceled.

The 2021 Detroit Auto Show has been canceled.

The North American International Auto Show, aka the Detroit Auto Show, is moving. Again.

It never even had a chance to take place in summer, due to COVID. Now, it will be moving to September.

That’s right – assuming the pandemic is under control enough to allow for large gatherings by then, the NAIAS will take place just over one year from now, starting on September 28, 2021. The show will conclude on October 9.

North American International Auto Show organizers broke with tradition this year by moving the premier trade event, for decades held in January, to a more pleasant and marketable June date. Now they’ve broken with tradition again — by scrapping the thing altogether.

The reason behind it is so glaringly obvious it hardly needs to be stated, but the specific, logistical reason is even more grim: the show’s venue, Detroit’s TCF Center (née Cobo Center), is turning into a field hospital.

One of the repeating refrains I heard in Detroit this year went something like, “It’s the last winter show, and yet it’s not even that cold!”

Cold, of course, can be relative – Southern Californians tend to define it differently than Midwesterners. Still, Sunday and Monday were tolerable for life-long Northerners like myself, but Tuesday did offer a chill that reminded us that it was still January.

The weather is always a major topic of discussion at Detroit – whether there’s piles of snow downtown or mild temps in the 50s (I’ve experienced both). The Sun Belt folks whine while the Rust Belt residents whine about the whining and so it goes. I don’t know exactly how much the weather plays into the decision to move the show to the summer, starting next year. Only the Detroit Auto Dealers Association employees are privy to those discussions. Obviously it’s a factor, but how much of one compared to other factors is unclear.