Los Angeles Auto Show
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Part 1 (Saturday 8 January) | Part 2 (Sunday 16 January)
I think we outdid ourselves this year, even though we skipped the tuner/aftermarket hall.
Mitsubishi, Subaru, Spyder, Panoz, Lambroghini, Brabus, Mercedes, Chevy, Buick, Ford, Honda, Mazda, Porsche, Maserati, Ferrari, Saleen, Bentley, Mini, Audi, Lexus, Acura, VW, Scion, Saturn, Nissan, Infiniti, Cadillac, Dodge, Jeep... and I'm sure that list is incomplete.
Too much to list. Check Los Angeles Auto Show's offical site for more.
Exotic highlights:
- Spyder - who the hell are they? Exotic make we were unfamiliar with.
- Ferrari - F430 and the SuperAmerica were both impressive in their own ways.
- Maserati - very comprehsive display.
- Venturi - who are they? Their display car had Monaco plates. Interesting...
- Panoz - carbon fiber everywhere...
- Porsche - as usual, they had their own hall to themselves. The Carrera GT was on present again. Looked just as beautiful. New 997 looks good, but not quite as sexy as the 996. Plenty of GT3's and Turbos on hand... yummy.
South Hall highlights:
- Audi - comprehensive display. One of their sample A8L's had a misaligned trunk lid, though. Really bothered us for some reason. *shrugs* A3 doesn't look bad. The bigmouth grille still looks ugly, but on the A4 in person it seemed toned down. (it still looks like *ss in the pics...)
- Subaru - forgot to do a Legacy 2.5GT wagon. Oops. Such a pretty car for a Subaru, and they didn't have it!
- Lexus - LF-S concept was pretty sleek. New GS looked good. Hard to tell though, as it was on a platform and the stage lighting sucked. RX400h was the same as at the Lexus Taste of Luxury event we were at this summer.
- Mini - their "safety" display with a cutaway body was cool. Didn't spend much time looking at it, though.
- Acura - new RL looked good. Interior was quite nice-- superbly executed and almost made me forget I was sitting in a Honda.
- VW - snore. New Jetta is ok, but didn't excite us.
- Scion - the tC continues to draw crowds. Very nice interior for a $16k car, if you want
"luxury"nicely made for $16k, this is it... - Saturn - the Relay is one ugly pile.
- Chevy - Cobalt SS isn't bad. Not nearly as well made as the Scion tC, but no one would expect that from Chevy. Corvette was nice, but the display was packed- made it hard to appreciate the car, which is very beautiful. Sadly, the new Z06 was not present. The Noman concept was... unexpected, but it had a manual gearbox... hmm...
- Buick - the concept van was pretty sleek for a van, but why? The new LaCross is another pile of wasted effort.
- Cadillac - new STS-V looked ok. Backseat looked small for such a big car. Having driven the CTS and XLR previously I will refrain from commenting extensively.
- Jeep - passing shot at Jeep. Looks ok.
West Hall highlights:
- Ford - Mustang, Shelby Cobra, and GT are all well-received. The look of the new Mustang is growing on me when it's in GT trim (the V6 still looks lame).
- Infiniti - new M35/M45 is surprisingly well done. It looks very well executed and pretty sharp for a 4000lb sedan. Interior quality is really is quite good, unlike the improved-for-05-G35 interior (which is "improved" from before but still not truly nice). The Acura RL is still nicer inside by a small margin.
- Nissan - Pathfinder is meh. Big and nice, but it's been getting bigger/heavier/fatter/more expensive since it was first introduced, and this new model looks distinctly expensive. Hopefully the new X-trail will be the affordable SUV for Nissan.
- Mercedes - new CLS is nice. Damned nice. Still couldn't sit in it, though. McLaren SLR was on display too. I still don't like the shark-gill-vents, but the rest isn't bad. For a half-million though, it should have a real gearbox.
- Dodge - Viper coupe looked good, but the improvements over the roadster were hard to spot. The Slingshot concept was interesting-- a Pontiac Solstice fighter? Neon SRT-4 isn't bad for a $20k car, but it's still cheap inside. (the Evo8 is cheap inside too. Interiors obviously don't matter much in that class!)
- Honda - nothing new. Accord Hyrbid is nice, but is it a $3k improvement over a regular EX V6? S2000 was old news. Civic Si is still slow.
- Mazda - Mazda's promoting the RX-8 hard. The Mazdaspeed Miata was invisible by comparison. The Mazdaspeed6 looked ok. It was much more subtle than I expected, although from the sub-par performance quoted by Mazda, it does not look like a car to buy.
We ignored quite a few makes who did not have anything new, particular since we had just been to the California Auto Show in October and friends had gone to SEMA in January. This included Suzuki, Volvo, GMC, Hummer, Lotus, Maybach, and others, including the entire tuner aftermarket. Many got the short shift, too, due to time and sore-feet-imposed constraints. This includes Saturn, Buick, Mazda, Honda, Lambroghini, and many others. To be fair, we had seen many of the cars before, and some ordinarly exotic makes are rather common here in Los Angeles-- in particular, Lambroghini and Mercedes are common sightings in parking lots for me. The Maybach booth was identical to 2004, so we completely skipped it.
It was an ok show. Not as good as last year, not as fun as the California Auto Show, but the Los Angeles Auto Show has panache all its own, so we felt like it was worth our time.
Part 2:
The start of the Detriot Auto Show a few days after the start of the Los Angeles Auto show changed things. Several debuts, including the 2006 Corvette Z06, were made in Detriot... and then added to the LA show after they debuted in Detriot. So, I went again. *sigh*
These pictures are focused on what I missed the first time around: Porsche Boxster, Corvette Z06, Lotus Elise, Spyker C8, Pontiac Torrent, Pontiac G6, Toyota Avalon, Mitsubishi Eclipse, Chrysler ME412, Dodge Magnum SRT-8, Mitsubishi's new truck, and others. Several actually were vehicles that were not present when I was here last week (since they hadn't debuted yet)-- namely the 2006 Eclipse, the 2006 Z06, the 2006 Avalon, etc.
Lots more focus on some cars, too. Plus more exotic car pictures. Porsche 959 in particular. Mmmm. Drool.
All images (c) 2003 Brian J. Won (homepage). vq30de.net and brian1.net are property of Brian J. Won. VQ30DE is Nissan's engine designation for their all-aluminum 3.0L gasoline DOHC engine. No infringement or misuse of the VQ30DE designation is intended.
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