Los Angeles Auto Show: It’s Got the Goods
Ben Wong can hardly wait.
The Greater Los Angeles Auto Show opens its doors to the public Jan. 6, and nothing short of illness will keep Wong, a lifelong car buff, from being there.
In fact, he’ll beat the crowd as one of more than 60 vendors displaying their wares in a relatively new but increasingly popular part of the show--one that deals with all the bits and pieces people buy to improve on the cars and trucks they drive off the dealers’ lots.
Wong is marketing director for Kaminari USA, a Fountain Valley-based designer and manufacturer of a popular line of automotive body components: things like lightweight carbon-fiber hoods and molded urethane or hand-laid fiberglass spoilers and wings and side moldings.
His company is part of a $21-billion-a-year collection of performance, appearance and entertainment parts and equipment makers and retailers collectively known as the automotive aftermarket industry.
The L.A. show--sponsored by the 250-plus members of the Greater Los Angeles New Car Dealers Assn.--first and foremost is about cars and trucks from the major vehicle manufacturers. About 1 million spectators are expected to attend the show at the Los Angeles Convention Center from Jan. 6 to 14 to see not only all of the 2000 and 2001 production models on the market but several dozen concepts and prototypes as well. (The Times is a media sponsor of this year’s event.)
But increasingly, the L.A. show also is about the aftermarket. In the last four years, its show-within-a-show has become one of the busiest public displays of automotive goods in the country.
For the second straight year, the show’s organizers have pulled together the aftermarket exhibitors to outfit a “project” car with examples of some of the equipment that will be on display. The car this year is a Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder whose kit-modified body is draped in a coat of color-shift paint that changes hues depending on the angle from which it is viewed. The car displays custom 18-inch wheels, high-performance tires, a tuned exhaust system, a giant rear spoiler, custom upholstery and a plethora of high-tech electronics.
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The granddaddy of all aftermarket shows is the huge trade-only event held for a week each November in Las Vegas by the Diamond Bar-based Specialty Equipment Market Assn., or SEMA. It regularly draws about 80,000 manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers from around the world and is the third-biggest show in Vegas each year. (Only the computer industry’s Comdex show and the consumer electronics industry’s CES exposition are bigger.)
Wong said Kaminari and other specialty parts manufacturers love the SEMA show because “everyone in the industry sees us and we always pick up some new vendors for our products.”
But he said he likes the L.A. auto show even better.
“That’s where we go for the retail consumer to see us--and, hey, without retail customers, all the vendors in the world won’t help,” said Wong, whose company will display five Kaminari-customized sport compact cars at its booth.
Amir Zamzelig agrees.
His Beverly Hills-based Class Auto Design, just 6 months old, is making its first major public appearance in the L.A. show’s aftermarket exhibition hall. The blunt-spoken businessman said he signed up for a space at the show “to find customers.”
Zamzelig is the U.S. distributor of a line of kits, made in Belgium and sold throughout Europe for several years, that are used to make older Mercedes-Benz S-, E- and C-Class cars look like the newest versions. So for a mere $7,400--or $10,500 to have the stuff installed and painted to match--the owner of a 1994-99 S-Class can get a new hood, front fenders, front lights, front and rear bumpers and rear-corner lights to change the chunkier premillennial version into a sleek copy of a restyled 2000 S-Class sedan.
Zamzelig can only guess at how much his business will pick up because of his presence at the auto show, but he believes it will give a big boost.
That’s Chuck Navarro’s hope too. His family’s business, Chuy’s Auto Electric Shop, is taking a big step this year from its base in East Los Angeles to the aftermarket hall at the show.
Chuy’s, in business since 1963, has developed a new high-output automotive alternator designed to provide a big power boost to the growing number of enthusiasts who outfit their cars with air suspension systems, hydraulic pumps and thundering stereo systems with arena-sized speakers.
“We get kids who drive in here with six to eight compressors in their cars to make the air suspensions work, and the stock alternator just won’t provide enough power,” said Navarro, whose father, Jesus, founded and still runs the business.
But a small shop like Chuy’s can’t afford to do much advertising, so Chuck Navarro, a regular visitor to the annual L.A. show as a consumer in years past, decided to set up shop there this year.
“We know how many people walk through,” he said, “and we decided it was a great way to let them know we’re here.”
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That, of course, is also why the auto makers come.
The aftermarket show, with everything from superchargers to super-sized 20-inch custom wheels, fills the Convention Center’s 160,000 square-foot Kentia Hall.
But cars and trucks and SUVs fill the remaining 600,000 square feet of floor space spread through four other halls.
The official vehicle count is somewhere just north of the 1,000 mark, or about one for every 1,000 people expected to thread through the Convention Center during the show’s nine-day run.
The price range extends from the $9,345 Kia Rio subcompact to the $359,990 Rolls-Royce Corniche and includes 47 different models of sport-utility vehicles, most presented in three or four different trim levels.
World introductions include the Isuzu Axiom and Suzuki XL7, a pair of seven-passenger SUVs from two of Japan Inc.’s smaller auto makers.
Ford Motor Co. is expected to show off a new alternative-fuel vehicle as well as a limited-edition version of its popular Mustang and its electric-powered Think Neighborhood car. Mazda Motor Corp. will unveil a concept--likely to make it into production--of a super-tuned Protege “pocket rocket” aimed at the go-faster crowd.
And celebrating the first anniversary of General Motors Corp.’s Advanced Design Studio in North Hollywood, Chevrolet will unveil the Borrego concept--a sporty car-cum-pickup with off-road capability--that represents the first completed work from the studio’s designers.
Illustrating the truth of essayist Alexander Pope’s claim that “hope springs eternal,” Daewoo Motor America--ignoring the possibility that its bankrupt parent in South Korea might not make it through 2001 without being absorbed by someone else--will display a new concept car and a “mini-minivan,” the Rezzo, that is sold in Asia and exemplifies the kind of tiny commuter vehicles that one day could have a place on urban streets in a gasoline-starved America.
For those who prefer unbridled speed, there is Porsche’s sleek 200-mph Carrera GT prototype.
And the safety-conscious will get the first look in North America at the latest concept from Volvo Cars, with features such as visibility-enhancing see-through windshield pillars (called A-pillars in auto-speak) that illustrate how performance and safety can be blended in the same vehicle.
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A special treat, marking the relocation late next year to Southern California of the U.S. headquarters of Ford Motor’s Premier Automotive Group family of luxury and performance cars, is a display of Jaguar roadsters from the earliest days of the venerable British marque through its new supercharged XKR model.
The new U.S. offices of PAG--the umbrella name for a consortium that combines Jaguar with Aston Martin, Land Rover, Lincoln and Volvo--will be located in Irvine, sharing space with the world headquarters of Ford’s Lincoln Mercury division.
And that bodes well for the L.A. Auto Show and the consumers who visit it each year, either for post-holiday entertainment or a place for one-stop comparison shopping in their hunt for a new set of wheels.
“It’s now our backyard show,” said Lincoln spokesman Jim Trainor. “With our headquarters here now and the new facility and the rest of the PAG coming late next year, we’ll have to do something special.”
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Times staff writer John O’Dell can be reached at john.odell@latimes.com.
