Doha Brouhaha

With 2023 approaching, I recently Googled the Geneva International Motor Show, now thrice cancelled as a result of the COVID pandemic, wondering if the 2023 show would go on this coming March.  I learned that the Geneva International Motor Show would in fact be held this coming year, but in the fall, not in March as it had been before.  Sensible enough, I thought to myself; by October or November the pandemic should definitely be over, if not sooner.

Then I noticed it was going to be held in Doha, Qatar.

WHAT????????????????????????????

In fact, the plan was for the show's organizers to have the show in Geneva itself and then sponsor an event in Doha in the fall, but reality bit and it bit hard.  Maurice Turrettini, present of the permanent committee of the Geneva auto show, cited not just the risks of the ongoing pandemic as a reason for cancelling the Geneva event and focusing exclusively on Doha but also "the uncertainties in the global economy and geopolitics" (read Putin and Ukraine) as well.

There's just one thing wrong . . .

Who the f**k wants to go to  f**kin' Qatar?

I always wanted to go to the Geneva show, like the one pictured above, from 2019.  Late winter in Geneva always sounded pretty cool to me, actually, drinking hot chocolate in a nice, charming hotel in Switzerland's most cosmopolitan city and seeing the town after checking out Europe's finest automobiles, many of which will never see an American showroom.  But Doha?  A city in the desert?  I wouldn't be caught dead in a place like Phoenix, so why would I want to go to Doha?

And, as we learned from the recently concluded World Cup, Qatar is known for its hostile human rights record and its mistreatment of migrant workers, so the Swiss have a lot of damn gall to hold their prestigious auto salon in a place like that, especially when you remember that Switzerland is a multi-ethnic democratic federation with four official languages - French, German, ,Italian and the local Romansch dialect.  By contrast, Qatar is ruled directly by an emir, and Sharia law and corporal punishment are practiced.  Trade unions are not allowed.  Why hold an auto show in such a godawful place as this?  As unlikely as it is to happen, I would love to see as many automakers boycott Doha in protest as possible in protest of Qatar's atrocious human-rights record.      

I'd sooner see the 2023 Geneva show in Doha called off completely and the permanent committee focus more on 2024 instead.  (The Doha event is planned to be biennial, hence it will be held again in 2025.)   But maybe auto shows are becoming obsolete, anyway.  In the U.S. and Canada, several auto shows planned for the 2023 model year have been called off not directly for COVID but because supply chains have been so bad that no one show organization can get enough cars to display for one lousy week.  Those shows that do carry on, be it in North America, Europe, or China, will likely do so with several manufacturers bowing out because they don't see auto shows as being worth their while - as several had been doing before the pandemic even started.

Let, then, the automobile show pass.

But I'd still like to go to Geneva one day.

Auto Show Blues - 2022 Edition

I just realized that I went through March without hearing a word about the Geneva Motor Show, and, given all the news about annual events returning after cancellations or being held after postponements, I wondered if I had just missed the news about it.

I didn't miss a thing.  After being canceled due to COVID in 2020 and 2021, the Geneva Motor Show was canceled again this year.  Apparently, the third time an auto show in Geneva was attempted was not a charm.

It turns out that the cancellation of Geneva 2022 had only partly something to do with COVID and nothing to do with Omicron.  The decision to pull the plug on the auto show was made this past fall, when Delta was the COVID strain of concern and Omicron hadn't even been discovered yet, and another factor was the ongoing semiconductor chip shortage that has made producing cars so damn difficult.  Once again, our overdevelopment of the natural world, which let COVID happen, and our technological overkill, which led to cars that are really computers on wheels, did something only Hitler had previously accomplished - disrupt life as we know it beyond belief.

Meanwhile, here in America, where the feared Omicron BA.2 surge hasn't happened yet and may not materialize at all, the New York Auto Show is a go for this Easter Week.  I was thinking of sitting this one out, since I feared that a few of the German marques would not be present, as had happened before, and because too many brands have tilted to SUVs to the point where I had to rule out seeing the Buick, Ford, and Lincoln displays due to their SUV-only lineups (except for Ford's Mustang).

Then Volkswagen announced it would be showing its new ID. Buzz electric van in New York.

Oh, dear.  I love VW vans.  Even the ones that have never been sold in the United States.  I actually spotted a not-for-America Sharan minivan with New York plates parked on a Manhattan street and I left a note for the owner wishing him or her luck with this obviously gray-market vehicle.  And I'm particularly excited about this revival of the original Microbus concept.  Should I go to the show this year?  Should I risk traveling by bus to spend a few hours in a convention center with thousands of my follow Tri-Staters in a pandemic that has abated but not entirely ended just to have the opportunity to see the first Volkswagen EV to be offered in the States that I might actually want? 

Or would looking at a picture like the one above suffice?

I'm waiting to see how the COVID numbers look by the last possible day  I could go to the show, but don't be surprised if I stay home.  I can't think of much else that I feel I just have to see, and even the new Golf GTI is something I can wait to see until I visit my dealer for service on my own Golf later this year.  I may just give up on auto shows altogether.  Auto shows themselves were becoming less relevant even before the pandemic, and the auto market these days is something I no longer recognize as relevant to my automotive interests.  That, of course, would be in keeping with my penchant for giving up on so many other things, like a relationship, foreign travel, and a real career.  Heck, I've thrown in enough towels to stock a linen store.  Why should I stop now?

The folks in Geneva might be getting those towels out right about now.  Three cancellations in a row have cast doubt over the Geneva Motor Show's sustainability over the long run, and hopes for a more impactful show in March 2023 seem like pie in the sky . . . by next year, the shows organizers could end up feasting on humble pie.

With second helpings.  

Auto Show Blues, Part Two

I don't really want to stop the show, but I thought you might like to know . . . that the Geneva International Motor Show, cancelled due to coronavirus fears, was supposed to start today.  And even though German automakers introduced the eagerly awaited new generations of the Mercedes-Benz E-Class, the Audi A3 Sportback, and the Volkswagen Golf GTI (below) in online forums, I'm sure that it wasn't the same as introductions of the cars in Geneva would have been.  I can only say I'm sure, because I've never been to the Geneva auto show, though I would like to attend it eventually.  Maybe next year . . . or better yet, Frankfurt in September 2021.  I have been led to believe that European auto shows are much cooler than the ones here in the New World.

Yeah, about that . . ..  I, of course, live in the greater New York area, and the New York International Auto Show is the biggest car show in the American Northeast.  And until this week, New York State had no cases to report.  Since then, eleven cases have been reported there.  Suddenly, the New York show looks dicey.

Bloomberg News reports that show organizers are planning to disinfect commonly touched surfaces over and over and over and over throughout the show's duration, with paramedics on site to respond to any emergency cases.  Right now, I'm not that easily assured.  Whether or not I attend - the show takes place during Easter Week, opening to the public on Good Friday, April 10 - depends on how bad the coronavirus is in New York by then and how thorough the disinfectant task force is.  I usually go in the latter days of the show, so I'll get an idea of how effective they are in the first few days of the show.  Whether or not the Detroit show, being held in June for the first time this year, can ward off the coronavirus scare remains to be seen.  

Coronavirus or not, this era may be twilight time for auto shows.  They're expensive to set up, more people are checking out cars online, and even the most exciting shows in Europe seem to be resembling giant dealership showrooms more than a festive exhibition.  The auto industry itself is being diminished by a slowing global economy, expensive tech features as standard equipment, and fewer young people feeling the need to buy a car.  And foreign shows seem to be adopting bad American promotional tactics, such as sexily dressed women on the display platforms, even as American shows are getting away from all that.  Also, I find it increasingly hard to get excited by domestic brands as they push more SUVs (excuse me, monster wagons) even as the German brands, which I usually concentrate on at auto shows, seem to be pulling away from auto shows in the U.S. - BMW skipped the 2019 New York auto show for reasons having nothing to do with an infectious disease.  The firm simply didn't think it was worth it.   Audi will still be at New York in 2020.  Too bad the newly introduced A3 Sportback, below, won't be there (we're only getting the as-yet unintroduced A3 notchback sedan).

Despite all that, I still hope to make it to New York for this year.  There will be several new-car introductions there, not all of which will be monster wagons, and I love photographing the cars for my Flickr page and also video-recording presentations for my YouTube account.  And besides, it doesn't feel like Easter without the auto show to go to.  Its not Geneva or Paris, but it's still fun.  And I hope to attend the Frankfurt show in 2021 or 2023.  If it's the last thing I do.

I just hope that, given the coronavirus scare, attending the 2020 New York show isn't the last thing I do.      

Coronavirus

I haven't brought up the coronavirus on this blog up to now because I thought there was nothing I could possibly say about it, other than it's bad, like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.  But the coronavirus outbreak has gotten worse than "bad."

Over 86,000 people all over the world have contracted coronavirus, which originated in China, with over sixty countries affected, and nearly three thousand coronavirus patients, including two in the United States, have died - these numbers may be higher by the time you read this.  The coronavirus has already forced the cancellation of the Geneva Motor Show in Switzerland and, even as I'm wondering if I should even bother going to the auto show in New York this April (more of that later), the Japanese - who have cancelled school across the country for a whole month - are even wondering if they can hold the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.  (The 1940 Tokyo Olympics were cancelled by World War II, but Tokyo did host the Olympics in 1964.) So far, no sporting events in America have been canceled, and there haven't been that many cases here yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the 2020 World Series - which even Hitler or an earthquake couldn't stop, although a greed-motivated baseball strike in 1994 did - also get scrubbed.  Heck, Major League Baseball might want to sit out the whole season!

The Geneva Motor Show was cancelled due to a Swiss government edict banning large events until March 15, the day the show was supposed to end.  The Swiss and the Japanese seem to think the worst of the coronavirus crisis will be over before long, but those bans could be extended.  And even if large gatherings in Switzerland are allowed again as of March 16, the Geneva car show couldn't be postponed for a week or two - there's too much organization involved. Switzerland acted as it did because every nation surrounding it has a report of a coronavirus outbreak.  This past week, the Swiss reported a coronavirus case of their own.  Switzerland was able to stay neutral during World War II because it was protected by the Alps; now the world has gotten so interconnected, geography and topography can't save anyone.

The good news about the coronavirus outbreak is that governments over the world are on it, with South Korea testing thousands of people and disinfecting public spaces and Italy trying to keep coronavirus-infected areas from expanding. The bad news is that the United States has not been one of those countries.  Trump spent several days dismissing the coronavirus scare as a hoax and had put a gag order on health officials who know more about coronavirus than he does.  Without a scintilla of evidence to support his claims, he keeps telling Americans that the coronavirus outbreak will slow down and go away like a miracle.  Oh, it will slow down and go away eventually, but not as quickly as Trump would like it.  He said it would taper off by April; just bear in mind that he didn't say what year.

With the first two coronavirus deaths in America having occurred, Trump is suddenly taking it more seriously than he did before, but his approach is more happy talk and less preparation.  This virus has been around for awhile, as cases showing up only now began weeks earlier.  There are perhaps many more cases that haven't fully manifested themselves.   

Even if there were reason to believe that the coronavirus outbreak could taper off sooner rather than later, there's no indication that we're prepared to handle the coronavirus cases we do get, and the number is still rising.  We need more respirators, as this is a disease affecting breathing.  We need a more robust health-care delivery system, something we Americans have not been good at of late.  A lot of the health-care products we use come from China, where, as noted, the coronavirus started in the first place.  While it's beginning to level off there, the Chinese will still take a long time to recover before they're able to export such products to us.  Not too many other countries who make these health-care products - including this one - can make up the gap easily.   Meanwhile, the coronavirus has affected Chinese supply lines for other goods, which is bound to cause shortages elsewhere.  Hence the stock market falling 11 percent last week.

I can't let this go without mentioning one other thing: Even though the coronavirus started in China, the Chinese government tried to silence those who warned about it.  One of the doctors who was silenced has since died.  Now coronavirus is spreading all over the world.  China makes just about everything for everyone else; why did we surrender our economic power to the Chinese?? 

All of us have to be prepared for normal life bring replaced not by temporary circumstances but by a new norm. A lot of us will either have to give up going to special events or be very careful in attending them.  A lot of us may have to telecommute on our jobs.  And we're going to be more socially isolated than we've ever been, even in this social-media-fueled auto-suburb living pattern that already isolates us enough. Me, I am going to the best thing I can do to avoid getting coronavirus . . . wash my hands regularly. :-O