NY Auto Show

I attended the 2010 NY Auto Show press day last Thursday with other Wall Street types. I am amazed of how out of touch East Coast Financial types are when it comes to cars. The kept asking about the Nissan Leaf. Over and over it was the Leaf and hybrids which were on the minds of Wall Street types. They were amazed that performance is still a selling point of manufacturers. Every brand touted a sporty or high-performance models. When our host, Road & Track's Shaun Baily, broke down some numbers, many were surprised. For instance, I was the only person in the group who drove on a dirt road at least once in the past week. According to Shaun, most Americans do so. I have worked on Wall Street for 22 years and the people t here are more disconnected than ever with the rest of the country.

They giggled at the Mustang and Honda CRZ. They couldn't see the point of a Miata. They saw no use for trucks and mini-vans. It was all BMWs, Merecedes, Volvos and Hybrids.

There were many cool cars there. Volvo has a nice sport coupe. The new WRX Sedan was displayed, but no other surprises. Shaun was not high on GM, but was on Ford. I agree and recently purcahsed Ford shares. Toyota is planning on bringing a sporty car for 2012. No other details yet. It was a fun day and sure beat working.

Moparman wrote: Shaun was not high on GM, but was on Ford. I agree and recently purcahsed Ford shares.

I had a chance to speaking with a Ford trainer last month. He's the regional guy who learns new vehicles from the engineers, then goes around training the dealership techs. As such, he gets to play with new cars well before they ever hit dealer lots, and oftentimes, he says, his daily driver is a manufacturer-plated preproduction vehicle.

He, and the people at Ford he talks to, are absolutely giddy over the things they've been doing. They aren't even considering GM a target, their aspirations are far higher.

I was a little disapointed by the lack of race cars this year. The Ford people did seem very excited. I got to spend time talking to one of the engineers they brought and got to learn more than I ever thought about the cars I was interested in, the Fusion and the new Focus. I think I could build one at home if I took better notes and I certainly bored the wife to tears when I rambled on after every question. The Toyota people were not quite so evcited. They didn't think it was odd that every display was crawling with kids and theirs was not. The guy I talked said sporty cars in bright colors don't sell cars, Toyota quality does, they will all wind up in our dealers soon enough. I still don't think I would have brought so many brown and tan cars. I also thought the Lexus LFA was a neat car but for $375,000 and up I would want paint. I don't know why they decided to leave the car in primer if they would have taken a few more days to put some color on it they may have had something. At least they were giving away these cool stuffed Scion Tc's My dog hasn't put his down yet.

I went to the show on Monday and left somewhat bored. I think I can count on one hand how many cars interested me enough to sit in them:

MINI Countryman (eh... whatever...) Mustang GT500 (NICE!!!!) Grand Caravan (it bothers my friends how much I like these) Freightliner Sprinter (it has become a traditional joke for me to seek this out as soon as we enter)

I think the coolest thing I saw was the motorcycle trike set-up for wheel-chair use. Complete with a lift in the back.