Reflections Of The 2001 Detroit Auto Show

Here I am back in the Motor City once again hustling for advertising from the carmakers. It’s been 6 months since the 2001 Detroit Auto Show, as I looked through the archives here on TACH, I came across this story that I wrote back in the cold of a Detroit winter evening and I thought you might like to read it again …enjoy I sure did.

Originally Published in January 2001

Dateline Detroit… See it For Your Self!!!!! TACH once again…( STILL) First’est With The Most’est

Its 6 PM here at the Detroit Auto Show’s Michelin Media center, located on the third level of Cobo Hall in beautiful downtown Detroit…the pace is frantic (at least for some of us)…the Newspaper journalists are hitting their laptop keys furiously in order to meet their deadline for submission of their Auto Show stories for tomorrows papers.

A large financial paper will have 10 inches of copy, a Southern California Daily will also have 10 inches, and the largest National paper, you know the one that is in front of your hotel room door in the morning, will feature at least 4 stories and some pictures…the monthly magazine journalists are in deep reflection as to what will be served for dinner at the Chrysler or Ford Events…the TV reporters are pushing their editors to help them choose the most important 20 seconds from the hour or so of video they shot today… to fill that 1 minute budgeted for tonight’s late news… Car Point and their 20 plus crew are working madly to live up to their “official Web Site of the Show” moniker …and are trying to add to the ONE video they have put up so far (although it doesn’t work)… And then there is The Auto Channel….

Because we respect your automotive enthusiasm and want you to be able to see exactly what is going on here in Detroit for yourself…TACH goes out of it’s way to make sure that you have an alternative way to get your auto news directly, not already chewed and filtered from always hungry reporters, who watch presentations from companies spending the big bucks to show their wares to just a few hundred members of the working press.

Now you can see these presentations in person for yourself.

You, our gentle (thank you Miss Manners) viewers can watch the complete presentations that take place here at Detroit…(and in LA Last week)…At 6:14 PM you could be watching TACH and viewing today’s presentations from, Michelin where they announced that the Bebeban Rally for alternative fuel cars will be held here in the States… and then you can watch the whole unabridged video from DaimlerCrysler showing off this years concept cars (but you can’t share in the lunch… that is only for the working press) and then see the new Ford concepts and then the GM concepts…. Whew… and its only the first day.

As an added bonus, because we don’t have to fight a foot of snow in Detroit like 1999, the T-1 and 2’s and 3’s blew up here in Cobo Hall, and no one else has figured out how to file their stories or down load their files or…yeah yeah that’s it, I guess that’s why Microsoft put up only one story and it doesn’t work).

I am sure proud of our crew of hearty brilliant souls who have allowed our little company to make the big guys look like crap…keep up the good work guys our day will come…. Now it’s off to Ford for drinks and some food…. We never had lunch today …I guess that may have something to do with TACH getting it done.

Talk to you tomorrow…if you have any questions for any of the Suits, just E me I will be happy to ask.

Yes Keith we are still around, you pompous goat!

bgordon@tach.com Bob Gordon Co-Publisher