Erin Baker: The Motor Show needs to evolve

Every year, motoring journalists, teams of PR and marketing wonks, designers, engineers and CEOs from manufacturers trot round the global motor show circus, which starts with CES and Detroit in January and then works its way through a smorgasbord of Geneva, New York, Paris, Frankfurt, LA, Shanghai and others, depending on what year it is, or whether there’s an R in the month.

And what do they all do when they get there? The PRs stand on their static stands, by their static car displays, which they’ve been forced to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds building, because no one can be the first company to dare to act on the questionable return on investment of being there. And yet at least three UK MDs of major car manufacturers who I’ve spoken to since Christmas have admitted they have no idea why they’re going to Geneva in March.

There’s no reason for journalists to be there either – we all have the information and pictures for the cars that will be unveiled, and have written the stories, under embargo. We just need the one remaining person in the office to hit the publish button on press day. Some journalists fix up interviews with CEOs, but these normally consist of round-tables, so you all get the same information – no one’s going to get an exclusive at a motor show, and what do the buying public care about the 10-year corporate plan of a car maker anyway? They want to know what they can buy today, or what they should hold out for next year.

No, by and large, the static motor show, with its scantily clad girls embarrassingly still adorning new models and men in suits sweating under hot lights in huge expo centres on the industrial outskirts of cities, should have died a death in the decade it’s currently stuck in – the Eighties. 

You might argue that static displays of cars have their place, and I’d be tempted to agree, if only one manufacturer were given the chance at a motor show to use their imagination, to innovate with the space allowed, to stick a tree and a remote-controlled off-road course in the middle of it, as Land Rover did at last year’s Festival of Speed, or turn the whole space into a giant toy box, as Honda did at the same event. But everyone’s constrained by yet more men in suits and must put their cars on a shiny floor, under hundreds of lights, and wait for the public to gawp from beyond the roped-off VIP area. It’s a wonder customers didn’t boycott these events years ago.

Talk to any manufacturer, and any member of the public (some journalists still like the networking element of a traditional motor show, so you won’t find them debating its existence), and the only motor show worth going to is one where the cars move, and the public is invited to smell them, touch them, hear them and sit inside for the journey. You can see where this is all leading – to a big thumbs up for the Moving Motor Show at Festival of Speed every summer. “You would say that – you’re writing a column for Goodwood”, I hear you point out. Only I’ve been a motoring journalist for nearly 15 years for The Telegraph, and only written for Goodwood Road and Racing for one, and yet it’s been apparent since day one of my career, that the world desperately needs more dynamic, lively, entertaining, welcoming motoring events like the Moving Motor Show, and that the traditional motor show is a dreadful idea. It’s a misogynistic, dull, staid, unfriendly event, off-putting for customers, families, women, the young and the old.

Time to knock it on the head.