Detroit, L.A. Shows Go Head to Head: Auto Promoters, Start Your Engines
The Great Simonize War is under way. It is Motor City versus the Big Orange. Your father’s Oldsmobile on Michigan Avenue against the kid’s Porsche on PCH. It’s a shoot-out between the 1989 auto shows of Los Angeles and Detroit.
And to the victor--at least to Detroit’s way of thinking--will go world prestige and a city’s reputation to stand alongside Geneva, Tokyo, Birmingham and Frankfurt on the international auto show circuit.
“We are indeed going head to head with Los Angeles,” said Pat Fitzgerald, a spokesman for the Detroit exhibition. “We are unabashed about our intention to become the national (auto) show and to expand into a Frankfurt or a Geneva.”
International Ambitions
So unabashed, in fact, that the name of the show has been changed to reflect its international ambitions. This year, it is the North American International Auto Show. Last year, it was known a little more parochially as the Detroit Auto Show.
With even craftier calculation, Fitzgerald said, the dates of this year’s show were moved forward (from the middle of January) to clash with Saturday’s opening of the Los Angeles exhibition.
Further, Fitzgerald said, Detroit’s press conferences and product launches have been scheduled as far in advance of the show as possible “and with four or five (product) previews we should beat them (Los Angeles) by 24 hours.
“We are going to make a lot of news here. We are going to publicly introduce 15 new production cars, and more than a dozen concept cars are being shown for the first time anywhere in the world.”
According to some planners of the Greater Los Angeles Show, however, such media manipulation smacks of a deception naughtier than rolling back odometers.
They point to a recent issue of Automotive News (published in Detroit) and a photograph of the 1990 Chevrolet Lumina all-purpose vehicle. A caption noted the car will be introduced at the Detroit show.
“There is no mention of the fact that the Lumina will also be at the Greater Los Angeles show, and that the unveilings will be concurrent,” said Joseph Molina, public relations director of the Los Angeles show. “We have written Automotive News and clarified this point.
“Detroit is somehow trying to achieve world status by using the media and mirrors.”
Then possibly the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show should fight fire with chrome and change its name to remove any folksiness from its image?
“Unlikely,” he said. “We don’t feel any need to call ourselves the inter-galactic, all-knowing, all-seeing auto show. We’re already a world event.”
Mickey Garrett, executive vice president of the Greater Los Angeles Motor Car Dealers Assn., which endorses the Los Angeles Convention Center show, sees some Detroit panic in the new rivalry.
“Now, all of a sudden, they (Detroit) are realizing that their importance as the national automotive capital is being eroded,” Garrett said. “California is the nation’s largest automotive market. We are a capital of the Pacific Rim. The design studios are here. The national headquarters of the Japanese manufacturers are in Southern California. New plants aren’t being located in Michigan, but elsewhere and especially in the South.
“The glitter of Detroit has gone.”
This week, with sides clearly drawn, the name-calling and casualties have continued.
Casualties Mount Up
Detroit may have more concept cars, Los Angeles said, but Detroit won’t be displaying the Range Rover, or the latest cars from Daihatsu.
Los Angeles might be staging as many press conferences, Detroit counters, but Los Angeles won’t be visited by as many chief executive officers of major manufacturers.
It was a tempest in a crankcase begging for a tie break.
And that may have occurred when it was learned that the North American International Automobile Show will open without two of the most prestigious vehicles on the North American and international automobile scenes.
Yet Rolls-Royce and Bentley will be exhibiting their cars at the Los Angeles show.
“Detroit is not a place we consider fertile (sales) ground,” a spokesman for Rolls-Royce and Bentley said. “The only shows that we support and regard as national shows are New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.”
The thinking, he explained, is patently bottom line.
“The United States is the biggest single market we (Rolls-Royce) have got and we sell 42% of our production in the United States. Within that market, our best customer is California.”
Similar economic reasons guided Bitter.
But there was another consideration.
Said a show official: “C’mon, who thinks about buying convertibles in Detroit in January?”
