It’s the event I wait for each year. I am a good boy all year, I do all my chores, I play nice at school, and by school, I mean “Work”. I then make out my long list of everything I want, and then I’m ready….. for the South Florida International Auto Show.
It’s my candyland, my Santa Claus of both the great toys and then the Isle of Misfit Toys, it’s lots of things. I get to see beautiful cars that I want, and I want them all. I also get to see the misfits and do my usual chuckle at them.
This will be quite lengthy, so I am breaking this up into a bunch of sections. One should not do their blog like a novel. My mother writes IM text messages that would make Tolstoy appreciative. However, with my first trip to the show being 5 hours long, and then my second trip coming up probably being the same, one might call me obsessive… “might”. I resemble that comment!
Now this year, the show pulled a Jeremy Clarkson with Bentley in Albania…… “NO SHOWS”. No BMW, no Volvo, no MB’s in the bunch. How rude. Plus, I need both Volvo and MB for an upcoming article, so now I may have to go down to the dealerships to get a taste, and that means being a salesman’s beeatch for an hour. Not fun.
So, I print out my ticket and my passport and head down to Miami(driving to Miami is like a different country, it takes forever to get there, forever to drive around, and they speak about 20 different languages). I get there nice and early to hopefully reduce the amount of time I have to waste while waiting for some 3 year old to get out of the driver seat of each car that they are in and jumping up and down on and wiping their ice cream laden hands all over. It is no wonder that car companies have to trash each of their show cars after the shows, they literally get destroyed by everyone sitting in them and crawling all over.
Since it is early, the 250% humidity is not oppressive yet, so it’s a good time to go for the test drives. A few car companies have set up shop out front, and you get to drive the car for about 100 yards in bumper-to-bumper traffic, perfect way to test drive how well the brakes work at 2mph and of course how loud is the car horn. So, VW is first on my list. Just gotta try the V-Dub, and of course the venerable GTI. The Mark 7.5 is 220 horses of zig zag fun, and with a fun performance screen that I can see PSI in the turbo and G-Force meter for my turns, what’s not to like. It can measure my rancor, I like that.
Next, I moved over from zig zag to zoom zoom…. Mazda. The fun “East Asian” automaker. We have to say East Asian now, as just saying “Japanese” doesn’t fit anymore. With Hyundai in Korea, Volvo is owned by China, Lotus by Malaysia, and Jaguar/Range Rover by India, it’s a whole new territorial game. Will Ford move to Brazil? Who knows. But, back to cars, the infamous MX-5. Granted, I had to starve myself for a few days just to fit in it, it is a true roadster, one of the last still on the market. Driving it, it feels like you are sitting in the trunk and all of the car is in front of you. With Stingray-inspired fearings, tight handling, and sexy looks, it’s absolute fun…… but not if you have the automatic transmission. For a car with 180hp, it should match the Mini with acceleration, BUT, alas, nope. For a normal aspiration engine, it had a huge lag and it certainly didn’t push me into my seat. I will be exploring this in a separate article.
While still at Mazda, I tried out the big CX-9, Mazda’s biggest vehicle, with more seats than it has cylinders. Yup, they put in a tiny 4 banger in a 7 seat vehicle. Surprisingly, it did have more pickup than I would expect from having the engine from a baby stroller. Note: make sure you get the Reverse Camera, because you can’t see anything out the windows when backing up.
Disclosure: Mazda gives out a free $5 Amazon Gift Card for test driving. So…. WOW, MAZDA IS AWESOME, WHAT A GREAT CAR COMPANY!!
Ok, now the heat is rising, time to go indoors to the glorious air conditioning.