Nicholas Maronese
Editor-in-Chief
Taking a walk through the 2011 Canadian International Auto Show? You may want to slap a brace over your chin — unless, of course, you prefer picking your jaw up off the floor every few minutes.
While this year’s Auto Show was admittedly not as big or impressive as previous years’ exhibitions, it is still a ton of fun, with hundreds of hot new cars for the auto buffs, some classics that you’ll stare at for hours and some outright oddities that’ll intrigue just about anyone. Here’re five of the coolest things I saw at the show.
1. Dancing electric car-loving polar bears (Nissan) [above]
It takes some logic to explain what, exactly, the bear is there for (car with no emissions equals no melting ice caps — equals happy polar bear?) but whatever the reason, he sure grabbed the media’s attention at the Nissan Leaf booth. It’s not every day you see a ten-foot mammalian predator hug a hatchback, I suppose.
2. Three-seat 750-horsepower Canadian-made supercars (HTT Plethore LC-750, in the Concorsa Exotica)
I’m really digging the new Quebec-made HTT Plethore, which’ll be coming out next year. It’s got a three-seat layout with the driver centered in front of the passengers (the scissor doors don’t make it that much easier to get in). If this $495,000 Corvette-powered version doesn’t please, HTT president Sebastien Forest notes there’s a 1,300-horsepower model in the future.
You’ll find the car in the new Concorsa Exotica supercar exhibition on the 100 level of the North MTCC — it’s parked across from the vintage Lamborghini Miura and down the way a little, by the Aston Martin Rapide.
3. 1886 Benz Motorwagen three-wheelers — that work (Mercedes-Benz)
Okay, fine, it’s a replica, but the 1-hp tiller-controlled Motorwagen — recreated to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the automobile, as designed by Carl Benz — is still pretty neat. I’m thinking of taking up Mercedes Canada president Marcus Breitschwerdt’s offer to take me on a test drive — at a whopping 8.8 miles an hour. (“Where we’re going, we don’t need they didn’t have roads!”)
4. Growling V-8 Chevrolets and Pontiacs (Icons: Camaro and Firebird)
The Shelby exhibit last year blew me away, but these vintage and new Chevys aren’t hard on the eyes, either. The spotlight marque this year is General Motor’s Mustang-fighter, the iconic Camaro and Firebird. Examples include the legendary KITT Knight Rider Trans Am; a replica of Burt Reynold’s Pontiac from Smokey and the Bandit; and replicas of the new and old Camaros from the recent Transformers movie franchise.
Call me a car nerd, but I’ll skip those attention whores and go drool over the (also flashy) 1969 Camaro Indy Pace Car, thank you. Mmm, orange stripes never looked so good.
5. Unboring press conferences (now with 400 percent more auto enthusiasts!)
This is really just a peeve of mine: after four years of attending the show’s media days, you sort of begin to memorize the basic script each manufacturer’s executive reads off at their respective press conference podiums. (Unfortunately, they haven’t — a lot of them seemed to use teleprompter-style screens.) Honda started off like that, but then mixed it up by introducing us to four Civic assembly plant workers, including welder Jamie (pictured) who shared his story of what it’s like to work on, drive and tinker with Hondas — no script required. Why don’t more manufacturers just let auto enthusiasts, y’know, enthuse?
The Canadian International Auto Show runs February 18 through 27 in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre near Union Station. For more information, check out www.autoshow.ca
I really wish there were more arciltes like this on the web.