Auto No-Show

Here's one more thing you can blame the vaccine-resistant for - or thank them for, if you happen to be a Luddite when it comes to automobiles. The rapid spread of the delta corona has forced the cancellation of the 2021 New York International Auto Show, which was scheduled for later this month.

Declining COVID cases had raised hopes that the show's organizers - who had planned to feature indoor tracks for test drives of electric vehicles - that the pandemic would enter a lull this summer if not be completely over altogether, but the failure of vaccination rates to reach a substantial percentage of the U.S., coupled with the rapid spread of this new variant, led the folks responsible for this auto shindig to conclude that they could not guarantee the safety of showgoers even with the strictest COVID protocols.  This is the second attempt at delaying the annual New York auto show until summer - it's been held during Easter Week since it moved from the old New York Coliseum to the Javits Center in 1987 - that ran smack dab into a wall of reality.

The show's organizers have announced that the 2022 New York International Auto Show (a misnomer, since there are many brands not represented, either because they're not sold in the U.S. or they're owned by Elon Musk) will resume its Easter Week schedule, hence it will open on Good Friday, April 15.  That's exactly eight months from today.  Eight months . . . so will Delta have come and gone by then after there's no one in America left for it to infect?  Will there be an even more dangerous variant? Will enough people in These States be vaccinated by then?  Or will optimism for a post-COVID, post-pandemic America by April 2022 be, as so many previous rosy scenarios for the future of COVID have been, grossly unwarranted? 

Who cares?  The 2021 show was only going to have a bunch of ugly SUVs anyway, and even the Mark 8 Volkswagen Golf GTI and R (I'm still fighting for the base Golf 8 to be sold in the New World) don't come out until November, so they likely wouldn't have been on display at the show.  I had already decided not to go because I didn't think it was worth it.  I doubt that the 2022 show will be that much different from what the 2021 show would have been like.  Then again, if it's relatively safe by April, I might still go, if only to take videos of the presentations for my YouTube channel.  (It's all about content, baby!) And to get out of the house.  I haven't been in New York since May 2019.       

Once again, though, it's depressing how a virus stopped this auto show and several others around the world.  The oil crises of the 1970s couldn't stop auto shows.  Saddam Hussein couldn't stop auto shows when he invaded oil-rich Kuwait.  Osama bin Laden couldn't stop auto shows when he gave the go-ahead for 9/11 (but he did stop the 2001 Latin Grammys).  Only one person was able to do what this virus has done.

And, ironically, not only did he love to go to auto shows, he helped get Volkswagen up and running.