Wheels Are Down… Auto Show Season Is Off And Running

Auto show season — like holiday shopping and presidential electioneering — seems to start earlier every year. The quaint tradition of letting the Detroit International Auto Show get things rolling on its mid-January schedule is a faint memory.

Major car shows are now underway in Tokyo and Los Angeles. Tokyo makes news with new eco-friendly technologies including a Prius–looking Toyota hydrogen fuel cell vehicle that the company is preparing for mass-market distribution by 2015.

The size of the car buying population of California, its deeply rooted car culture, and its international influence through movies and TV, makes the once upstart Los Angeles Auto Show very influential. Among the most significant LA red-carpet reveals is the new Porsche Macan a compact affordable luxury SUV. With the new Macan, 64 percent of Porsches sold will be SUVs — only 24 percent traditional sports cars.

For sheer bravado, it’s hard to match the spectacle of the Dubai Motor Festival opening earlier this month, where a supercar convoy of 500 privately owned Ferraris, Bugatti Veyrons, Porsches, Mclarens, Bentleys, Aston Martins with an escort of Lamborghini police cars, paraded through the streets of the city.

This George Polgar of GT Marketing for KYW News Radio.