L.A. Auto Show Earns Bigger Industry Role

Take Detroit, Tokyo and Frankfurt, in any order you wish, and you’ll hit the three annual auto shows the world’s car makers take most seriously.

Those three rank highest in terms of the number of vehicle premieres they attract--and thus in terms of greatest ultimate influence on consumers in the mass market.

Bracketed as it is by the big boys--in particular Tokyo in October and Detroit in mid-January--where does that place the 2000 Greater Los Angeles Auto Show? In a pretty comfortable spot, thank you, based on the comments of company representatives and auto analysts as they look ahead to the L.A. show Jan. 8-16.

With its massive consumer base, cultural fascination with cars and brain trust of automotive designers, Southern California has always been vital to the industry, and now its largest auto show, preparing for its 96th installment, may be starting to reflect that importance.

Manufacturers plan to use the event at the Los Angeles Convention Center to take the wraps off nearly 20 vehicles never before on public view. These include vehicles such as the much-anticipated Acura CL sports coupe. They have scheduled North American premieres for as many as 12 other vehicles, including the BMW Z8 roadster featured in the current James Bond movie “The World Is Not Enough.”

The annual show, whose organizers hope to exceed last year’s nine-day attendance record of 860,229, is presented by the Greater Los Angeles New Car Dealers Assn., which represents 250 dealerships throughout L.A. County. Among the show’s corporate sponsors is Times Mirror Co., parent of the Los Angeles Times; the newspaper is one of the media sponsors.

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Honda Motor Co. executives chose Los Angeles to introduce the 2001 Acura CL because they believe the high-performance sports coupe from the company’s luxury division will go over well with Southern Californians, who for years have been perceived by the industry as the bellwether of automotive consumer trends.

“It’s the ideal show for us to debut a car that reflects the new direction that Acura is heading,” company spokesman Kurt Antonius said.

Even dogged Detroit loyalist General Motors Corp., the only major auto maker without a design studio in Southern California, has planned world premieres in Los Angeles for three vehicles that won’t be shown at the Detroit show, not even as part of GM’s overall display.

“We’ve never had a presence like this at the L.A. show,” said Nancy Libby, Western regional public relations manager for GM.

The show’s anticipated 30 or so scheduled premieres, compared with 19 last year, are one indication of its growing clout, industry observers say. By contrast, Detroit’s North American International Auto Show, which opens to the public Jan. 15 for a nine-day run, has 50 premieres scheduled.

Vehicle premieres, analysts say, are the main yardstick of an auto show’s importance to the industry. The more unveilings an event has, particularly world firsts, the more national and international press it attracts. Manufacturers count on media coverage to generate buzz and ultimately consumer interest in their new concepts and, more important, new production models.

To attract more journalists, L.A. organizers moved the show’s media preview days--when the all-important premieres occur--from the last week of December to Jan. 6 and 7, just two days before Detroit’s media days. Auto show spokesman Barry Toepke said the move was meant to encourage international journalists bound for Detroit to stop by the Los Angeles show on their way.

“We’re telling them to come to the U.S. a couple of days earlier and get more bang for their buck,” Toepke said.

But with higher stature comes higher expectations. GM and Mazda Motor Corp. of Japan, for example, are betting the kickoff of two high-profile production models on the Los Angeles event’s increased prestige, using the show for the world launches of the Pontiac Aztek and Mazda Tribute sport-utility vehicles, respectively.

“There has been a lot more light shed on the L.A. show in the last couple of years, and manufacturers are paying more attention to it,” said Shari Gold, manager of corporate communications for Irvine-based Mazda North American Operations.

That growing awareness is no accident, auto show spokesman Toepke said. Event officials, he said, have been working closely with manufacturers in the last few years to increase the number of premieres and, in the process, boost the show’s standing in the industry.

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David Cole, director of the University of Michigan’s Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation, said the L.A. show trails only Detroit in importance among U.S. events, beating both the Chicago and New York auto shows.

George Peterson, president of AutoPacific Inc., a Tustin-based automotive marketing research and product consulting company, agrees, but thinks the show has years to go before posing any serious threat to Detroit’s dominance.

“The L.A. show has become more well-respected in the course of the last three to four years,” Peterson said. “It’s on the right track, but it’ll take some time to reach to its full prominence and prestige.”

Mazda, for one, is hoping for as much of a media bang as possible out of the Los Angeles show.

The company hopes the unveiling of its new Tribute will make a splash in the highly competitive SUV market--from which Mazda has been absent for five years, since it stopped marketing its Ford Explorer twin, the Navajo. Mazda’s goal, company spokeswoman Gold said, is for the Tribute to become nothing less than a leader among smaller SUVs with its V-6, 200-horsepower engine and sports sedan handling.

“We think we are going to redefine what customers come to expect in this class of vehicle,” she said.

Mazda hopes to get media tongues wagging at the Los Angeles show, Gold said, with “a very dramatic reveal” ceremony that will show off the all-weather capabilities of the vehicle. She declined to elaborate.

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General Motors chose Los Angeles to unveil the Aztek largely to gauge initial response to the vehicle from the consumers who will get the first chance to buy one. The cross between a sports sedan, minivan and SUV--the company calls it an SRV, or sport-recreation vehicle--is scheduled to hit showrooms only in California by the summer. Spokeswoman Libby said GM wants to see how the car will sell here before shipping it to the rest of the country.

“It’s a great place to launch,” Libby said. “If it sells out here, it’ll be easier to sell it everywhere else. This is the hotbed for gauging consumer reaction. Most of the trends start here.”

Indeed, AutoPacific has been hired by one manufacturer to poll 200 Los Angeles auto show patrons on their thoughts about one of the 13 concept vehicles making their world debuts.

“This is the right place to get at the right type of people who will be shaping the future of automotive design,” AutoPacific President Peterson said.

The University of Michigan’s Cole agrees: “L.A. is a city built around cars. It makes cars very central players in its culture. If you are going to try and sell a new design theme, you really want to test it out in California and see whether it gets a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.”

The region is home not only to the world’s most car-conscious consumers but also to more than 20 automotive design studios and one of the world’s foremost automotive design schools, the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

At least 40 graduates of the school, which plans to have its own display at the auto show touting student designs, currently head design studios and departments for 33 auto makers, including the Detroit Big Three.

Greg Brew, assistant chairman of the college’s transportation design department, said part of the region’s allure and inspiration for designers is the weather.

“Cars just look better when it’s sunny. It’s that simple,” Brew said. “When it’s gray and overcast, they just kind of sit there.”

In other words: Wintry Detroit better watch out.

Stephen Gregory is a frequent contributor to The Times’ business section. He can be reached at highway1@latimes.com.