Well, I was a bit disappointed with the show this year. Maybe it's just that I'm moved on to looking at second-hand cars, but I found that it lacked the energy of last year, where most exhibitors were in 2 large rooms.
This year, Ford and Nissan had a room to themselves, Kia had a tiny room and the rest were in the large room. Kia especially seemed to suffer - only one trim of each car and I don't think they even had a Rio5 (only the sedan was there). The Rondo was the highest trim, meaning that you couldn't adjust the power seats. Great for Tim, who is relatively short, but useless for me as I am quite tall.
The highlight was definitely the 40 year old cars - the Corolla and Civic (look for it at the Honda display), especially).
Big 'cute' highlight was seeing 3 boys getting their picture taken. They had been let into the display area and were standing between the old and new Dodge Charger having their picture taken.
Not much news as far as what is coming up in subcompacts. Mitsubishi and Suzuki don't know when the Colt and EuroSwift, respectively, will be coming. Mazda is too busy with the 3 to allocate more production capacity to get the 2 over here. According to the Honda booth, the second generation Fit will be coming in April of 2009 (not this Fall). The person I talked to said that there would be some sort of announcement on the Honda website (I had the impression it was already there, but I think I'm wrong about that).
The Saturn Astra was below both Random and my radar, and I only thought about it on our way out. So Random was stuck at the entrance eying the time while I ran back to take a look at it.
Wow, I'm impressed. They had the power on and with everything backlit, the dash looked fine. Yes, it is all grey but that's OK. The information display in the middle of the dash also brightened things up.
Some smart person put a water bottle in the door to show that it can be done: I didn't notice cup holders anywhere in the car, although I was more concerned about taking a few quick pictures than checking out the features.
The build quality was great. When you compare it to the Nissan Versa, a car which is taller but the same basic design, you can't help but notice how much better the quality is. Its a quality car at a good price. It’s a shame, however, that its by a domestic manufacturer. But for those who still buy domestic cars, it's great. I hope it does well.
I'll post up my pictures as soon as I can get them downloaded from the camera, which has been complicated by the fact that there is car shopping going on in my household and the less mentioned about 'cars' and 'car shows', the better.
