A car-lover's take on a subdued Chicago Auto Show

The walk from the parking lot on the south side of McCormick Place to its grand concourse feels like a 35-mile trudge. Behind you, the grand grayness that is Chicago in February looms distant and cold. You schlep through dark corridors in the bowels of the place before surfacing at a covered walkway that opens up on the 101st edition of the ever-popular Chicago Auto Show.

New York City is in the midst of the hopelessly irrelevant vanity project known as "Fashion Week" and Chicago trots out an annual auto show. Man, I'll take a celebration of piston-powered cylinders over X-ray-thin models any time. The auto show is exactly my kind of event, big without being intimidating, splashy without being tacky, and -- here's the best part -- chock-full of internal combustion attitude.

. . .

Even if you're not that into automobiles, the Chicago Auto Show is a singular event, though this year's show feels much more subdued. Small, independent automakers did not participate this year and the large manufacturers were less of a presence. The economy won't kill a show of this nature but it certainly can, and has, cast a pall over it.

What's new at the auto show? This pickup-driving writer says, "Not much." The sparkle is lost this year. Sedans are all looking alike and concept cars don't offer much excitement, unless you think plugging your car into an electrical outlet is sexy. If good folks want to drive around feeling smug about their "green" autos, I say go for it. Trade in your Subaru Outback for a Prius; just make sure the radio pulls in public radio and your superiority is intact.

Me, I'm part of the problem. Give me the 1961 Corvette displayed at the Volo Auto Museum exhibit and I'm in Heaven. I want a car that chews up the pavement and chugs gasoline like a Saturday night frat boy.

. . .

A couple of hours after attending the auto show, I stood in the Art Institute before an oil painting by Norwegian Edvard Munch. I'd seen the painting years ago, at the National Gallery in Oslo, Norway, but it didn't hold any meaning for me then. It was just a sad painting. This time, I saw it in the context of the global auto industry.

Entitled "Death in the Sickroom," the painting depicts a grief-stricken family hovering over a sick child. The child, sitting in a high-backed chair, is invisible to the viewer. We all know the outcome, the next scene. Sad, lugubrious men will carry her little body away.

The auto show this year feels a little like that, as if all those of us who love cars are hovering around the patient, waiting, wondering when the child with the odd name of Chrysler, or Toyota, will breathe her last.

http://www.thonline.com/article.cfm?id=233634

"I want a car that chews up the pavement and chugs gasoline like a Saturday night frat boy."

Maybe he means "...like a Saturday night frat boy chugs beer."

I've been in the weeds before, but I've never chugged gasoline.

:rofl:

Electric cars have been waiting for the magic battery for 50 years - you know, the one that's coming in 5 years.

was sitting at the inside entrance to the institute and watching the people come in..what a wonderful place to be.

i have walked from the north side of the McCormick place on gray days and its not any better than the south side walk. this year i`m going to make it downtown and the to lake front..

Druther mope around Volo and pine for a 60's muscle car any day than swoon over a plugin. Of course, we all need to be driving plugins - I'm hip to that, but nobody goes gaga over a golf cart.