A Cheerless Look at the Auto Show

So what’s a guy who drives an ’82 Honda with 85,000 miles on the speedometer and has no desire for anything newer or better doing at the Anaheim International Auto Show?

Well, for starters, someone told me that the Rams cheerleaders were going to be on hand to hype the cars, and there is one in particular I’ve been watching from the upper deck for several years that I wanted to see up close.

Then, I suppose, there’s the matter of reverse snobbery--like people who refuse to buy a color TV looking in on a show of wide screens.

And, besides, since it appears that the Angels owner’s myopia is going to delay the start of the baseball season, I wanted an excuse to sniff the air of the Anaheim Stadium parking lot where this auto bash is being held.

So I went.

I got off to a bad start when they nicked me $4 to park my car and then another $5 to get in the show. I figured this was a commercial for cars and they should romance me to come rather than charging me, but no one else at the show seemed to be upset about this.

Anyway, the Auto Show--which runs through Sunday--is housed in three enormous plastic tent-tunnels, each about as long as the straightaway at the Indy 500 and a little wider than the fins on a custom-made, $80,000 sports car in an annex tent at the rear of the show.

This car is enshrined--under a banner that says Armstrong Motor Works--behind restraining ropes and looks like a red Batmobile with a sight line so low that my miniature Dachshund could probably see out of the windshield, and if you got going too fast you could drag your foot to slow down. A man in a tuxedo (and loafers) was seated inside the ropes with a microphone to answer questions. When he saw me taking notes, he came over to find out why.

“Some reporter the other day,” he told me, “got us confused with the $32,000 car down the way and that caused some embarrassing questions. This one costs $80,000, and right now, there are only six in existence. We build two a month, and they are completely handmade. We can incorporate any features the buyer wants.”

I asked him if I could swing a deal with a $100 down payment, and he went back to his seat.

In the main tent, as might be expected, Ford and Chevrolet have the biggest displays. They face each other across the central aisle and both hold drawings for gifts every hour. I checked the gifts out, and Ford won. Ford was giving away a time-and-temperature alarm clock, while Chevy was giving away golf towels, coolers, book bags and insulated cup holders. I just missed a drawing and decided not to stick around for the next one since I wasn’t sure what I would do with any of this stuff if I won.

I also thought fleetingly about entering a contest at the door sponsored by the Motor Car Dealers of Orange County. The prize was a trip to Hawaii, but the official entry form wanted to know my family income and various other personal things, and it was clear I would be on mailing lists for the rest of my life. So I passed that one up, too.

I was curious to know what it would cost to upgrade my 1982 Honda Prelude--even though I like it just fine. There was a new Prelude going around on a turntable, and I was able to make out the price sticker on the third circuit: $18,680. I figured I could only get about $150 on a trade-in since my upholstery is a little shabby, so I pushed on, happier than ever with my loot.

The only real bargain I saw was a car called the Hyundai, which I’d never heard of before. The cheapest model went for $5,899, which in the rarefied atmosphere of the Auto Show was a steal. While I was checking it out, a young man in jeans and a work jacket stood beside me and said, “Pretty cheap, huh?” I said, “I wonder if it has a motor in it?” and he looked at me oddly and walked away. I found a fairly low tolerance for little jokes at the Auto Show.

I ran into one of my neighbors--the Republican one--poking around the sports cars. He has a 1970 Jaguar hidden under a shroud in his garage and only gets it out and drives it under a full moon. He told me he was trying to trade up for one of the newer models, and I told him about the Batmobile in the next tent. It would definitely raise the tone of the neighborhood--and probably our property values, as well--if he’d let it sit outside on his driveway once in a while.

There were a lot of fathers and some women in miniskirts, and middle-aged men looking lovesick wandering through the displays. But no Rams cheerleaders. I finally asked a man with a badge where and when they performed, and he told me they didn’t, that they were just scattered around working as models in the car displays and dancing here and there.

The only dancing I discovered was in the Chevrolet Geo section. Once an hour, four young women undulated to a rock beat and sang lyrics I couldn’t quite make out but went something like, “Everybody drives a Geo car.” If the Chevy people had been smarter, they would have billed them as “Geo Geo Dancers.” No one paid much attention to them--this was an automobile crowd--but I studied them carefully, and I’m reasonably convinced that none of them were Rams cheerleaders.

After about an hour of walking around, I was reminded of those big revues in Las Vegas with all the bare-breasted women. After awhile, the breasts all began to look alike, and that’s the way it was with the cars at the Auto Show. So I left. By then, it was mid-afternoon, the parking lot was almost full, and people were pouring in. It was going to be a good day at the Auto Show.

I looked up at the silent stadium and wished all these people were here to see baseball instead of cars.

My ’82 Honda purred to life as if telling me not to be seduced by the blandishments of all the pretty bodies I’d just seen. As I pulled out of the parking lot, it occurred to me that I could have spent the nine bucks it cost me to park and get into the Auto Show on a commercial car wash for my Honda--with enough left over for four lottery tickets. Oh, well, I probably would have lost, anyway.