Vancouver International Auto Show

Morning Drivers!


Last weekend I attended the Vancouver International Auto Show with my dad – we had hopes of talking to brand experts and getting some insider tips on new vehicles. For the most part, what we found was a really crowded Vancouver Convention Centre with a serious lack of people to talk to. To quote my dad – we could have found out more at the Richmond Auto Mall.

While it was difficult to impossible to find someone to talk to in any depth, I did garner some overall insights.

After standing in an insanely long line to get tickets to get into the show, attendees were offered the option to stand in line again and have their picture taken with a Subaru Sumo wrestler. Big kudos to Subaru’s marketing team that they’ve generated enough excitement with their ads that people actually opted to do this.



With the state of the auto industry over the last few years, I was expecting to be really wowed by the various manufacturers as they were either trying to rebrand themselves, overcome recall setbacks or take back their market shares.

First, Ford got it! They had driving games that allowed them to show off their new technology and seemed to attract young and old. While they did not have a ton of sales people and many of the cars were locked, preventing you from looking inside, they had a large and very interactive display that worked well with their new lifestyle marketing strategy.

KIA came as second runner up by having the most staff, although I believe most of them were lot boys due to their age and lack of product knowledge – but they were friendly and helpful. KIA also had some fun interactive gadgets that got people’s attention. KIA has been consistently posing a challenge to the more well-known manufacturers for best value. Their new models such as the Soul and Rondo (a seven passenger cross-over vehicle) combined with their awesome hamster filled advertising campaigns have them poised to be a serious contender.



Honda market shares experienced an unprecedented dip last year, and our own personal experience at Winston Auto Group is they don’t generate interest (the exception being the old style Civic hatchback and Civic Si). My dad had received over 4 emails from Honda encouraging him to come to the Auto Show to see the new Civic. This was big news – the Civic has not been updated since 2006. Our expectations were running high for the Honda display. The display stood out in it’s very Honda beige-ness. The practically staff-less area was set up around a large turning dais that supported a new red Civic Si with music pumping. We wanted to see what the regular Civic looked like and had to do a bit of searching to find it – when we did there was very little signage or information. Perhaps Honda chose to have such a completely boring display in order to highlight the red Civic Si – but the lack of information and staff did not encourage people to look at their other models after spending two minutes watching the loud spiny red car.

We moved from Honda to Toyota and were similarly non-plussed. I paused to allow a sales person to brush past me as we headed out the door.

Not to forget the more luxury brands, they were mostly overrun by kids (literally – people seemed to think it was ok to let the Mercedes convertibles act as baby-sitter to the 12 and under kids who sat in the cars blasting the radio and preventing anyone else from looking) or by young guys dreaming their fantasy of owning a new BMW. If their intent was to attract the next generation they hit it out of the park.

To sum up this long post, I was really surprised by what appeared to be a lack of interest on behalf of Toyota and Honda and Ford may be garnering a new fan.

This was my first International Auto Show and I would be interested to hear your experience of this one or others.

Until next time – Happy Driving!