My Adventure at the 2019 North American International Auto Show

Hey there everyone, I'm back with another adventure. This time, it's the North American International Auto Show. For legal reasons, I must say "I am not an official spokes person of the North American International Auto Show, the views and opinions are solely my own and do not reflect that of NAIAS or any of their partners, I went to the public show with a general admission ticket and all information I will present is open source and freely available to anyone who would want it." Some years ago I read I needed to include a disclaimer like that if I were to blog about it. I don't want to get sued, so here you go. With that out of the way, time for the fun.

First off, my video camera was dead. I didn't charge the battery enough and it wouldn't turn on. However, I was REALLY scared I broke my camera. I have a 12V DC to 120V AC power inverter for my car (allowing me to plug in normal wall outlet devices into my car) and I plugged my camera into it on the way to the show. Well, when I got to the show it wouldn't turn on, and then I remembered the manual said "do not use this for charging electronic devices." I was really afraid I fried my camera. I plugged it into an outlet outside the auto show, and it wouldn't charge. Thankfully I must have just been using an outlet they turned off, because when I got home it took a charge, and turned on, but that limited what I was able to record and capture (because all I had was my phone). I'm also not uploading all my photos here. You can see all I took here on my myspace (because yes, I still have myspace). With this explanation out of the way, here's my adventure.

So I got to the show about 15 minutes before they opened, and just waited around for the doors to open. I looked around at some of the outside promotions, but mainly just waited in line. When I walked in this was the first thing I saw.

A 1:1 scale Chevy Silverado, made entirely of Lego bricks. The sign said something like "25,000 Lego bricks, a team of 20, and 1000 man hours." That was super impressive. That's what I call a Lego set. I didn't go to GMC first, because I like to start on the perimeter and snake my way around the show floor and GMC was not on the perimeter. First was Ford, which was pretty neat. I sat in some cars, but the one I wanted to sit in was "locked for our protection." It was basically a commercial van that was a mini-RV.

I mean, I understand why, but man that looks like it would be fun to explore. I also saw a local news station set-up. That was really cool to have a little look behind the scenes.

What was really cool this time was they had vehicles actually running on the show floor. Granted you couldn't drive them, but Ford had this virtual reality thing where it took you over a course. Here are some things I managed to capture.

Then there was this. Ford unveiled some cars with this cool show thing. Cars came through the screen.

Unfortunately my phone died before the coolest reveal. They had a mustang drop down from the ceiling. I really wish I could have shown that to you good people, oh well.

Here's something that was fun. Last year they had a "build your own Lego figure" thing, and they did again. Here's me putting it together.

Then afterwards you could put the guy in some scenes. I had a little fun with it.

There was also a life size Lego racer. That was pretty awesome.

I saw some cool cars. I took a couple pictures, and enjoyed the cut-aways.

After Ford I went to Fiat-Chrysler. What was fun is all the awards they had out.

That last one was the truck of the year. Really cool. I also liked the engine displays.

I sat in pretty much all the cars, and one that caught my attention was how big the touch screen on this one was.

One cool things I did while I was there was I tried their driving simulator (sorry, no picture). It was a Forza race game, with shakes, and full cabin display with 3 monitors, that was a 2.5 minute ride. The annoying thing was the break wasn't working, so I couldn't make the turns without crashing. It was really fun though. That was basically Fiat-Chrysler for me. Before I move on, here are some pictures of cars.

After Fiat-Chrysler I went to Kia. The main thing I want to show off is this awesome off road demonstration.

It was really fun. I've never done off roading before, so it was really cool. I saw some other cars at Kia, but they didn't really impress me enough to take some pictures. I went to GMC after the Kia exhibit, and I sat at their one display because I needed to charge my phone. What they did was have a big truck display with someone talking about all the cool things it had, and they had chairs and such with phone charging cables. It was really ingenious marketing if you ask me; people need to charge their phones, so while you have a captive audience tell them all about the new truck. I gotta say, if I was a truck guy, I would be really impressed. I spent probably 20 minutes listening to the spiel while I waited for my phone to charge.

After I got my charge, I went to the "build your own Lego Silverado" thing. Here's the little adventure of getting it.

Apparently the sponsor was The Lego Movie 2. OK cool I guess. Now I have something for my Ford guys to sit in. I wasn't super interested in most of the cars they had on display, so I didn't sit in any. There was this virtual reality home run derby game. It was really cool; virtual pitcher throws you a ball, you swing the bat, and if you hit it so it doesn't become a grounder, you get a home run. I scored like 5-8. I would show you the video they took of me and sent me, but they screwed it up and sent me the kid that went before me. Oh well.

Now Toyoda, they had quite the display. They had some concepts for autonomous cars, which was awesome.

They also had their hydrogen filling station on display (or at least I think it was hydrogen).

I also saw this cool back-loading thing on display for people that have difficulty getting in an out of cars. I saw this the past couple of times I was there too.

I also did this thing where you're a news reporter out in the artic and the only car is the new Toyota Prius. I really got into it, and played it up really good. The lady that was running the display really liked how much I got into it. Unfortunately there was something wrong and they didn't send me the video. Oh well, at least you were able to see the Kia video. There were some other cars too.

I think this is about when I got the half pound of fudge; salted caramel. Oh, it's good. I think this is also about the time when I had lunch. I had pizza. It was pretty good; not sure if it was worth $8, but definitely the preferred thing they had there. I'll also take this time to mention the donut maker. It was this automatic donut conveyor thing, where it drops some batter in the boiling oil, then drags it along, and halfway through it flips it, and finally dumps them in a bowl. I remember I saw one of those years ago when I was like 10. The lady saw I was fascinated by it, so she dropped a couple of donuts in for me to watch. Really fun.

Now there were some other concept car companies. They didn't have much to show off, so here are the few displays they had.

There was also this company that I guess specialized in off road. I say "I guess" because all I knew nothing about them but they had a bunch of off road stuff.

It was pretty cool. Around this time is when I started running out of steam. I mean, I'd been there for about 4 hours now. Here are some of the other things I saw. There was this really cool thing from, I think it was Honda. It was this flipping screen, that tracked your movements and such.

There were also some displays of classic cars. That was pretty cool.

After leaving the show, I went down to see if there was anything in the basement (sometimes they have the "enthusiasts and specialty club cars" in the basement). Unfortunately, nothing this time. I did see a local news reporter signing autographs.

It was a really fun time. I'm glad I was able to go and experience it. Again, this isn't everything. To see all I took, you'll need to check out the myspace mix. Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.