Hello All,
I went to the Chicago Auto Show yesterday. If you watch the Car & Driver show about the Detroit show, you have seen the Chicago show. Also, I went to my Mazda dealer and asked for free tickets. They offered me 2 but I only took 1 as I was going alone.
The highlights of the show. The Mazda booth was kind of plain. A Mazda rep (from Michigan) spent about 20 minutes talking to me about my impressions about the RX8. There was a "Tuner" RX8 hidden in the back behind the Mitsubishi booth. Speaking of Mitsubishi, they had a couple of cars inwhich the paint really shined. I think the colors were Red and Bronze. I don't think there was any special lighing on those cars, nor were they special editions.
There were also a lot of booths offering the ability to play automotive theme Xbox/PS2 games. These included lines of teens waiting to play the games. They just couldn't get enought of this at home. The Subaru booth had what looked like a rally game hooked up to a simulator. With Chrysler, theirs wasn't a simulation. They have a test track where you can drive a actual Chrysler, Dodge or Jeep on a test track. Nothing over 25 mph from the looks of it.
There was also 2 examples of Micheal Shoemaker's F1 Ferrari.

 

I was there yesterday, ill post some pictures in a bit... I def. agree about the mitsu paint jobs. Did you happen to catch the "fake" exhaust on the mazdaspeed6? Oh and the Shinka looked nice also...

 

Shinka

 

One of the new eclipse
And The Elise

 

Ive got tons more, if people are interested id be happy to post some more.

 

Is it worth going? how was the Jeep offroad thingie?

 

The Jeep offroad thing was cool, they have people drive you around this little course.

 

i was there tonite...i wasnt really impressed mainly because the lack of concept cars that i saw i mean...if i want to go "normal cars" ill go to a dealer...they dont charge me to get in..but it wasnt bad..the tuner rx-8 was cool.

 

hmm.. i guess i'll pass on this year's auto show... oh well.. :p

 

I went today and thought it was decent. I'd say it's worth going.

There were a bunch of pre-production cars but few true concept cars. Wished they would have had the MX-Crossport there.

Nice to see the 8s still draw a big crowd even though they've been out for a while.

Jeep offroad track was nice.

The International SUVs are insane big.

 

Can you post pics of the tuner RX8 near the Mitsubishi booth?

I missed that one was I was down there on Saturday.

 

I made it there on Friday night. It was worth the trip. A few notes:

-The Shinka RX-8 was not all that impressive. The white leather looked terrible after having a few thousand people sit in it. It did have a leather padded arm rest on the center counsel. I would like to get a black one with red stiching.

-I was very impressed with the Hummer H3. It looks a lot better than the H2. Its about the size of a grand cherokee. 20mpg. Starts at 32,000 and available with a manual transmission. If I was in the market for an SUV I would definatley consider.

-The SCCA booth had a Miata with a claimed 460 hp.

-Many of the car companies had classic cars- ie Chevy had a 67 camaro, Dodge had a 70 Charger, lincoln had a zypher. These cars looked better than most of the production models.