2024 New York Auto Show Recap -- A West Side Bounce Back?

by Tim Healey

Published: March 29th, 2024

2024 new york auto show recap a west side bounce back

One of my favorite little nuggets of irony is that the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan is actually very well-to-do. It's not anything like any commonly imagined vision of hell, unless your vision of hell consists of yuppies, puppies, and way too many people.

The Jacob K. Javits convention center is in Hell's Kitchen, situated along the Hudson River between 34th and 38th streets. As an aside, if you're a New Yorker please don't @ me and say it's really in Hudson Yards or whatever. Wikipedia lists it as Hell's Kitchen and if Wiki says it, it must be true.

Ahem, I was going somewhere with this -- ah, right. Hell's Kitchen may have once been a nasty place, but it's nice now. And it's a good place to show a bunch of new cars to the residents of a city where many people don't drive.

That last sentence probably reads as more sarcastic than I intend it to. Just because much of New York is easier to navigate by foot or public transit, there's still a strong market for cars in and around the Big Apple. Mix in the fact that city is home to many members of the press who normally cover topics other than automotive, and the New York Auto Show tends to have a strong media day, regardless of what happens at shows in other cities.

This year, that was sort of the case -- there were enough debuts to keep us busy. But in a nod to how the world works these days, several automakers decided to do unveils in Manhattan but not at Javits or during the media day.

Nissan, Infiniti, and Genesis all had events before I even touched down at LaGuardia. Infiniti took the wraps off the QX80 on top of a 100-story Hudson Yards high-rise and Genesis apparently ferried media across the city via helicopter. Me? I kvetched about cab fare jumping $20 since the last time I hailed one, thanks to city surcharges.

Again, I digress. As I've said before, it makes sense from an OEM perspective to debut new models away from the madness of media day. You simply get more attention that way.

Regardless of whether an unveiling happened at Javits or not, the fact that five or six new vehicles were shown in New York sort of makes up for Chicago being so quiet that I didn't even write a recap.

Yes, most of the unveilings were refreshes -- the Nissan Kicks probably has the biggest redesign -- or concepts. But if you use auto shows as a barometer of the health of the industry, which you probably shouldn't, this one feels good.

I won't go so far to say that the automotive industry is stabilizing after a wild four years -- one auto show does not a sample size make. But the vibes in NYC were, from what I can see, generally positive. I didn't hear a lot of journalists grumbling about a lack of action, anyway.

Did I find heaven in Hell's Kitchen? I don't think I'd go that far, but it was definitely not purgatory.

Random and assorted musings, automotive-related and not:

Whenever one of us, usually former New Yorker Matt Posky, writes about city surcharges in New York, the topic seems academic to me. Seeing my cab receipt, though, made it real. I don't have enough knowledge to really do a deep dive on the politics of it all -- though I am generally in favor of reducing congestion and pollution -- but I do wonder how the working class deals with the cost.
Manhattan remains a great place for car spotting. Whether it's a Maybach GLS or the really clean drop-top Fox-body Mustang I saw street parked somewhere in the 30s, or the older Caprice I saw on my previous trip to Manhattan in January, there's always a cool car to see.
I took the subway for one round trip and noted the greater law enforcement presence, but the subway has never felt that dangerous to me. Perhaps there has been an overreaction to a few high-profile incidents?
I will wrap with this: If you're going to the auto show, or any big-city auto show, carve time for the side exhibits. Whether they are showing exotics, modified classics, or whatever, they are just as interesting as the main OEM booths.

With that, auto-show season downshifts from major events until SEMA and LA in the fall.

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#NYIAS #NYAS #NewYorkAutoShow #2024NewYorkAutoShow

Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

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3 of 21 comments

Oberkanone on Mar 30, 2024

NY auto show debuts are just a change of clothes. Santa Cruz proves this.

Like Reply
Carsofchaos on Apr 01, 2024

41% approval doesn't sound like "widely supported" to me, though I am sure it's widely supported by people who live in the zone. For the rest of us schmucks who have to commute in with no logical form of public transportation available (I'm in an area of New Jersey where to use public transportation would take me 2+ hours to get into the city) already paying $16 for toll and $20+ for parking, another $15 for trip is "abhorrent", especially when you and I both know the MTA will never, ever balance it's budget.
Lots of folks I've met at the Auto Show over the years drive in, they are from PA, mid-state NYC, etc.

Like Reply
- Ras815 on Apr 01, 2024
  
  NYC is not a city designed for commuting in by car. Millions of other people figure out ways to utilize public transit daily. You can, too, and you'd probably add 10 years to your life simply from the lack of stress of dealing with traffic. If you still want to subject yourself to it...no one will stop you. But you need to start paying for the privilege, especially considering you don't even live in NYC.
  London figured out congestion pricing, Singapore figured it out. NYC will, too. And if it leads to better public transportation options (like East Side Access, or the new tunnels across the Hudson to NJ, or the extension of the Second Avenue Subway to Harlem, or light rail in Queens-Brooklyn), that's a win all-around. Even if it somehow doesn't, the policy is a huge and important improvement for emergency services, delivery vehicles, and other necessary services that currently are hampered by extra vehicular traffic.
  Can't wait for June! Looking forward to it. And I have a car. One of the best decisions the city has made in decades.
  
  2
- Ajla on Apr 02, 2024
  
  People driving in for an Auto Show aren't really "commuters" though. I'm not sure what the auto show's attendence is made up of but looking at the show website I don't think people driving in was zero.
  As your second paragraph points out the goal of the congestion charge is fewer vehicles on the road, so it isn't a big jump to say the show will have less driving-in attendence in the future. Whether that will be enough to matter to the show I can't say.
  
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