The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in chaos throughout the car industry, causing production holdups that in some cases are only now being shaken off. But one of the parties hardest hit was the Geneva Auto Show, which was cancelled days before the 2020 event was due to open and with the halls already full of cars.
The show, which recently turned up in Qatar, hasn’t been held in its traditional Swiss home since 2019, and now the 2024 comeback event planned for Europe has been hit with the news that at least four major automakers won’t be attending. BMW and Mercedes have both decided to stay away, according to a report in Automobilwoche, and given that Stellantis has just bailed on CES in Vegas, it’s possible that its team of brands might also not want to invest millions to be there.
Audi and the VW brand will also be no-shows at the Palexpo convention center next February and March, but reps from Skoda, Cupra and Porsche told Automobilwoche’s reporters that they had yet to make a concrete decision regarding attendance, though it was unlikely that they’d be there.
Geneva was always the best of the traditional European shows for a number of reasons. One, it was right next to the airport, and two, it was really compact, consisting of just two main halls next to each other, meaning you could see everything without walking miles backwards and forwards and keeling over and dying (no joke, it happened to one journalist at Frankfurt).
Related: Get A Look Inside The Canceled Geneva Motor Show And Its Depressing State
Automakers had already been cooling on motor shows in general before the pandemic, but the forced absence has made it harder for them to recover to full strength. As one senior marketing suit at a supercar company put it to me a few years back when explaining why it wasn’t going to appear at the doomed 2020 Geneva expo, “Why would I spend a million dollars to build a motor show stand when I could spend that money making a really cool viral video and push it out on social media?”
The reality is that car companies no longer need to be at motor shows to connect with people, and people no longer need to visit shows to see a car that will only be a static exhibit anyway. The shows that will survive and thrive are living, breathing spectacles like Goodwood that mix everything that was good about a trad auto show with the thrill of seeing and hearing (though now only sometimes…) some great cars in action.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean Geneva is doomed. Organizers are busy trying to entice China’s car companies to attend and since those same companies are desperate to establish themselves in the European market, they might be happy to fill the void left by the likes of BMW, Audi, Mercedes and VW.
Source: Automobilwoche, via Auto News