Nissan Asks Dealers to Skip Detroit Auto Show
You can sort of understand why Nissan decided to pull out of the Detroit Auto Show, er North American International Auto Show. For carmakers, these are the worst of times and the worst of times. But The New York Times reports that Nissan went on to strong-arm their Detroit area dealers into staying home as well. The locals had come up with a plan to staff a Nissan show presence on their own dime. Corporate’s stated reason for weaseling-out back of NAIAS in November: they had “no major new products to show.” And furthermore “the current economic conditions will impact the shows’ marketing effectiveness.” Nissan used those same reasons to back out of the Chicago Auto Show. But wait, it gets stranger. Nissan spokesdude Brian Bockman said that Chicago is back on after corporate “worked with our Chicago-area dealers and came up with a good creative solution that we could maintain a presence while still having an eye toward the challenging market out there.” One function of these regional auto shows: get potential customers out looking at the goods and falling in love. In fact, Nissan’s Detroit area dealers are pretty chapped about missing the shot at their traditional post auto show sales up-tick. The question is: why it is great for the Chicago dealers to put on a presence, but not OK for Detroit’s already challenged Nissan dealers to do the same? Could it be that Nissan corporate a stick it to all things Detroit agenda? Does Chicago’s home town status for the new President-elect have something to do with this? Damn strange. Any Nissan insiders care to share the real story?
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There are a few things in play here. Chicago has always been focused on selling cars and I'm pretty sure that the dealer reps at the show during the public days can take orders for cars. So in Chicago, it really hurts not to display. In Detroit, at least for the time being, DADA, the show organizers doesn't allow anything to be sold retail on the show floor, not even t-shirts, certainly not cars. This may change because Cobo may get status as a sales tax free zone but meanwhile there's less downside to not displaying in Detroit. Another factor is that the car companies are going to show off how coarse their hair shirts are. They're terrified of news articles about wining and dining reporters or any perceived extravagance at the NAIAS. NAIAS is still the 800 lb gorilla of North American car shows. This year there are 5500 journalists in Detroit. Chicago might get 1/4 of that. So Detroit's under a microscope. I think Nissan alluded to all this with “the current economic conditions will impact the shows’ marketing effectiveness.” In other words, show attendees and media will see the display as a waste of money. Maybe we've reached the point where any advertising and promotion by car companies has some kind of backlash. A brave new world where traditional marketing is no longer effective.
I'm just glad Nissan decided to stay in the Chicago Auto Show. I would've been very disappointed not being able to see the new Z in person this year