Even the first Press Day was presumably a little busier than this. The second was almost surreal. There were times when I thought I might be the only person in the entire Javits Center who didn't work there. I would quite literally be the only person--particularly on the lower level with the utility vehicles--in booth after booth after booth. It was so easy, pleasant, and quick to walk around and see everything that I actually sat in quite a few vehicles. I was able to really eat up everything I was seeing. There's no question I'll be doing this every year from now on.
I've decided to do something very silly to start the posts for the Auto Show. I'm going to begin with the Dezer Collection Museum & Pavilion in Miami. They actually have quite a few impressive things in their collection. Aside from a whole slew of bizarre, obscure vehicles like Messerschmitts and things, they also have some great cars from movies and TV shows.
This wasn't at the show, but they have the 1981 Cadillac hearse from Terminator 3:
Let me tell you something right now: I would TOTALLY drive this around and would get the greatest kick ever from telling people who asked what happened to the car that the Terminator shot it all up.
They also have General Lee 1969 Chargers from The Dukes of Hazard, which also weren't at the show as far as I can remember. The regular model:
And the stunt model:
The exterior of the stunt car, for obvious reasons, looks essentially the same. The main difference is how pared down and heavily padded its interior is.
At the show they had the Speed Racer car:
There was also the Monkeemobile 1966 Pontiac GTO:
I never liked The Monkees because I never found them funny or charming, and the show was such a sad rip-off of Hard Day's Night and Help! that I just could never get past it (Neil Diamond's songwriting notwithstanding). Anyway, it is sort of cool that it has this big old lounge in the back:
And then they had the KITT 1982 Trans Am from Knight Rider:
This one also had a surprisingly basic interior. It looked like the dashboard for a horseless carriage from 1893 or something.
I loved this show SOOO much when I was a kid. Looking back, it was really quite a stupid show, but seeing the car in person still took me back. The rep offered to take my photo with it, but I'd forgotten my camera.
It's actually kind of sad looking back on all those shows I had romanticized from my youth, CHiPs, Three's Company, Knight Rider, Dukes, I was never wild about The Facts of Life or Diff'rent Strokes, but I watched them [EDIT: Sort of spooky that I thought to mention that last show only one day before its star passed away]. They're all just so painfully one-dimensional and horribly morally self-righteous. Those final scenes where everybody learns a very important lesson just make me want to wretch. The only ones that seem to still hold up in comparison are All in the Family, which was just so brilliantly written, or the ones that were wonderfully campy: Buck Rogers, Wonder Woman, Brady Bunch. I need to check out The Six-Million Dollar Man again to see how that one fares in retrospect. I still remember my Steve Austin action figure. If any of you had one also, you'll remember just how freaking awesome it was.
Dezer also had in their booth a Batmobile from one of the movies, and the Munsters' Drag-u-La. I never really liked The Munsters much either. They were sort of the trailer trash version of the Addams, who were way cooler and had so much more class. But it was still sort of fun to see it.
©2010, Ryan Witte
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