Executives at luxury car brands know that their primary buyers are more likely to frequent verdant putting greens and cocktail-saturated soirées rather than florescent-light drenched convention centers swarming with trade press. Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan, Ford, and others had already planned to skip Geneva altogether, even before the virus became front-page news. Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bugatti, and their upper-echelon ilk have been skipping the lesser auto shows for years. Audi, Bentley, and Daimler said they supported the decision to cancel in Geneva.
Last year, organizers pushed Detroit’s auto show from its customary January date to June, hoping the warmer weather would prove more alluring to the vendors, journalists, and brands that justify its existence. Last week, organizers canceled the Frankfurt Auto Show. The Beijing Auto show has been postponed indefinitely, due to the Covid-19 outbreak.
“It is a turning point,” says Mike Dean, the head of the European automotive equity research team at Bloomberg Intelligence. “Maybe it just pushes us along a bit, toward where we are already headed. We’ll wait and see.”
Bentley is reconsidering its entire commitment.
The cost of the quickly put together drive “was a fraction” of what the brand would typically have spent at an auto show, says one Bentley spokesman, and the debuts drew stellar reviews nonetheless. Brands can spend as much as $20 million on the cost of building a booth, hosting media, transporting cars, housing staff, and the usual marketing.
But it only costs a few million dollars to host VIPs, clients, and friends of the brand at exclusive events—and returns a higher sell-through rate. “It’s still very early to tell the overall [return on investment] and impact,” says the Bentley spokesperson. “But coverage of our newest debuts, including the Bentley Mulliner Bacalar and the Mulliner GT Convertible, have received great praise.”
The same goes for McLaren, which debuted its track-happy, bone-thin 765LT coupe via live video feed from company headquarters in Woking, England. The car was turned around halfway to Geneva and sent back to Woking to be unveiled outside, on the main boulevard in front of McLaren’s factory.
“We made the best of a difficult situation,” says Roger Ormisher, McLaren vice president of communications. “But no decisions about future participation in motor shows have been made at this stage.”
Onward and Upward
Elsewhere, the show goes on. Many automakers posted their Geneva debuts on social media and other digital platforms. The Aston Martin V12 Speedster, BMW i4 Concept, Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport, and Hispano-Suiza Carmen Boulogne all saw the light of day despite the cancellation. Koenigsegg gave Top Gear a YouTube tour of its Gemera debut inside the empty Geneva convention center while workers deconstructed half-built stands and lighting structures.
Both the prestigious Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance on March 7 in Florida and jewel-of-the-car-year Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in August in Carmel, Calif., will continue as planned, organizers say. So do those organizing the New York International Auto Show slated to start on April 7 in midtown Manhattan.