Slightly belated but here is my review of the 2009 Chicago Auto Show (CAS) along with almost 200 pictures for your viewing pleasure.

To start, I had fairly low expectations for this year’s auto show. After the 2008 (100th year anniversary) that was very mediocre for a centennial I figured this one would be less special. To further encourage this sentiment I assumed with the current state of events in the Auto industry no one really would be willing to bring out too much. Some of you may recall that many makes actually threatened not to even show up. In the end most showed, and the one’s that didn’t had dealers from around pitch in to set up a showing, at least something (E for effort). Also, take note that I went fairly early on to the show instead of near the end when all the buttons are missing on the cars, shift ***** are stolen, and cars are abused and ripped apart. So I feel I had a fair view of the cars as they were originally presented.
The cars at the show were well presented. The layout seemed very well done compared to past years (besides 2008 which was fine too). It used both sides of the main hall.
The catalogs for the cars this year were very weak. In the past every brand had a catalog for nearly all their floor models individually. This year they stuck to having one catalog for every brand with all the models inside. I assume this is a fairly easy cost cutting measure against those who just take every single catalog they see. The catalogs were fairly well done (especially Lincoln’s which had an actual page of what feels like leather in there, very fancy and nice; Scion’s “book” was also worth mentioning).
It seems to be a CAS tradition to give out the brand bags every year for nearly all main stream makes. I recall in the 94 or 95 Chicago Auto Show these bags were fairly high quality and had zippers and buttons and were well made. This year only a sparse few had been giving out bags in very limited quantities. Toyota’s were very nice and were the only brand to have a very high quality one. Ford also gave out some shoddy plastic bags. It seems like something trivial to mention but it was odd not seeing them.
Some kind of little gift or incentive were often given out in past years and I noticed each year it becomes less and less popular to receive such a thing. For example, the past two years the most popular gift was the Scion key ring, made of fairly hefty and of nice quality. This year the only company I noticed giving out anything nice was Bridgestone who gave out a backpack and VW who gave out a plastic VW Bug model to hold a pencil.
I noticed a decline in amount of “models” and information people. The amount of desks has become much more sparse and harder to find. The few people who were around were friendly, but often lacked knowledge. Of special note was the VW staff who were able to answer a lot of my questions, knew for the most part the abilities and workings of the car, and even went to the length of obliging to a request to open and close a roof on one of their convertibles for me. I did notice one specific person from last year’s show; In 2008 I mentioned to him the rotors on the Challenger seemed to be on backwards (they were slotted) and were mixed among the 4 hubs. He knew nothing of how it worked but said he’ll find out about it in the future. Well, low and behold Dodge is still putting a few cars on the showroom floor that had slotted rotors displayed. Now this time the rotors seemed to be on correctly, but I inquired to him anyway about information on them. He once again knew nothing of them and I recalled him my story and his ‘promise’ to find out about them for the future. We shall see; 2010 Chicago Auto Show, Dodge venue, see you there buddy! At the Saturn display their catalogs were very sparse of information for the Saturn Sky which I wanted some more information of. Now I know the internet has loads of this information and I could find it out myself, but sometimes the paper catalog is nice to hold and read for this information. Anyway, the point is in order to get more information on the car what they do is they take down your name and address and they send you the information in the mail. I actually received a fairly nice catalog 2 days after my attendance with the information requested; nice but I rather have taken it home without divulging personal information. Along the same lines they had a Nissan 370Z give away contest that you can sign up for and win, also with giving them your information.