It's February, and we all know what that means! Spring is just around the corner! That means we're getting close to Auto Show season! In fact, the Canadian International Autoshow is starting this week at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, which promises a week of drooling and jealousy. To set you up for a whole summer of various auto shows and events, we've compiled some tips that will help you safely navigate through whichever convention you decide to attend.
Be Comfortable
Ideally, you're going to be walking around a convention hall and getting in and out of as many unaffordable cars as you can. You want to make sure you're wearing proper footwear and comfortable clothing that isn't going to restrict your car-hopping.
Pack Lightly
Since you're going to be walking and moving around a lot, you don't want to be carrying a heavy pack or cooler. Also while bringing a fancy camera to take nice pictures of the cars and features you see sounds like a smart idea, understand that you're going to be carrying that camera the whole time you're there. Sometimes your phone camera might be good enough.
Be Prepared
In 2015, Detroit's North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) featured 750 different vehicles. If you go into a show like that without a plan, or not knowing what you want to see, you'll be wandering around a long time and might miss some pretty good stuff. A lot of auto shows offer maps and layouts on their website for people to print out before the show, so you might want to plan out a route using that.
Take Your Time
As an example, the Canadian International Autoshow lasts for ten days. You don't necessarily need to do the entire show in one day. If you know exactly what you want to look at, great! You can be in and out in a day. If you're just browsing and want to see as much as you can, there's no need to kill yourself by rushing around the entire convention in one day.
Don't Impulse Buy
We've all bought something completely out of the blue that we didn't really need, and was probably out of our budget. This is fine when it's a new video game system that costs a couple hundred bucks (Guilty). But when you impulse buy something at an auto show, it might be a little bit more than that (and by a little more, I mean about a couple hundred THOUSAND more).
Ask Questions
The staff that is working at auto shows are usually experts. They know exactly what they're talking about and they want to share their knowledge. So if you have something that you want to know, feel free to ask! I'm sure you would come away from the show knowing more than you went in with.
Have Fun
The whole point of an auto show is for potential customers and car enthusiasts to have a chance to see the newest and coolest cars in person and to learn about upcoming releases and technology advances. It's also meant to be a lot of fun. While sitting behind the wheel of the newest Aston Martin might not seem like the most realistic situation for most of us, attending an auto show is a great way to feel like James Bond walking through Q-Branch.
