If you subscribe to the view that motor shows ain’t what they used to be, you’re spot on. Some – Geneva, for instance – have died. Others are on life support.
Then there’s the British Motor Show at the Farnborough International Exhibition and Conference Centre in Hampshire. It starts today (21 August) and ends on Sunday (23 August). Will it be like previous shows in venues such as Earl’s Court (RIP), the NEC (wounded but still limping on) and Excel (lousy local road and public transport systems’)? Er, no. Not a chance.
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For starters, you couldn’t/can’t park for free at any of them. But you can at Farnborough, which is in a more clean, green, indoor and outdoor setting. It has one of the largest, newest and most impressive, but almost windowless, exhibition halls in Britain and that’s where showgoers can get up close and personal with the display cars that are all-new or recently introduced. But Farnborough’s Hall 1 is less than half the story.
Much of the rest of the 97,247 square metre British Motor Show site includes cars on the move – being driven by world-record-holding race and stunt drivers, to mums and dads testing new models and supervised teenage kids. Think 15 event zones – including a supercar paddock and a live arena where you’ll see fast cars driven in anger by real pros who eat through more tyres than a comparatively gentle Formula One team.
True, some – not all – car brands have fallen out of love with motor shows or are too lazy, complacent, short-sighted or snobbish to attend such occasions. For these and related reasons, the names of several legacy makers will be missing from Hall 1 at the show this week. But some of the brighter, progressive firms with ‘we try harder’ attitudes will be attending – among them Ford, Honda, Vauxhall, Peugeot and Renault.
As will Chinese manufacturers, with cars from Aion and BYD making their UK public debuts on the New Car World Championships exhibit that I’ll be manning in Hall 1. Elsewhere at the show, China’s Linktour Automotive (a new and mysterious name to me – and, I suspect, you) will be introducing the company and its products to the UK.
The British Motor Show was reborn in the early 2020s and is still going. The giant Farnborough site and the largely underutilised acreage surrounding it need more doors, gates and car parks to be opened to more drivers. Last week, the National Motor Museum revealed it is to vacate its home in Beaulieu, Hants, by 2030. There’s no better place for it to relocate than the Farnborough International Exhibition and Conference Centre estate.
Imagine it – our national motor show and motor museum on one, easy-to-drive-to site where parking is free and admission reasonably priced. C’mon, Farnborough, this is your chance to be the car-cum-motoring capital of Britain.
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