Tarrant County Auto Show - FT. Worth - Jan 29 to Feb 1

**Steve** · 01-22-2009, 10:18 AM

Who's going to the Tarrant County Auto Show this year?

It's the first one in North Texas, running Jan 29th to Feb 1. in Fort Worth.

Website: http://www.ncdagreatertarrant.com/

Exhibitors: http://www.ncdagreatertarrant.com/documents/2009floorplan.pdf

Date I'll be there: Either Friday Jan 30th (afternoon) or Saturday Jan 31st.

Looks like GM's got the biggest booth space by far. There will be a space for
- Chevrolet
- Saturn
- Cadillac
- Hummer
- Saab
- Buick
- Pontiac
- GMC

You can also meet up with me and other club members if you get a Club T-Shirt. I'll be wearing one when I'm out there. Need to figure out a way to live-blog from the venue too.

**tbplus10** · 01-22-2009, 06:11 PM

I'll be going, not sure which day yet cause I have my grandaughter that weekend and I'm gonna have to talk her into going.

**Steve** · 01-23-2009, 01:27 PM

I contacted them to get a Press Pass, but no word back yet. I'd like to find a way to blog from the event, but that remains to be seen if I can do that or not. Will keep everyone updated.

**Steve** · 01-30-2009, 07:19 PM

Anyone else going? My kid's got Little Gym tomorrow at 11:30 - right in the middle of the day, so I guess I'll go after that. ???

**tbplus10** · 01-30-2009, 07:33 PM

I'll be going late Saturday afternoon, the wife has to work and is trying to get off early so she can come along.

**Steve** · 02-01-2009, 12:58 AM

I went out to the show tonight. Got some good photos! I'll post them all over to the photo gallery probably tomorrow sometime.

Here I am standing near the Hummer booth. Lower traffic to the Hummer area than in years past.

**dwill3015** · 02-01-2009, 03:12 AM

I have been thinking about taking in THIS SHOW next weekend.

**tbplus10** · 02-01-2009, 11:36 AM

I found the Fort Worth Humane Society booth to be about the most exciting thing there, the hairless cat was pretty cool and the granddaughter loved the puppies.

Sorry to all the GM fanatics but even face to face with the Camero I still wasnt impressed, maybe if they had let me actually look at the interior and engine or stand closer than 10' to the car I'd probably feel different.

The Chrysler concept car (dont remember the name) looked like a rip off of a Rolls Royce.
The Smart cars look like ready made death traps.
Everything had way to many gadgets to play with on the dash to ensure safe driving.
And plastic interior and exterior seemed to be the theme.

One curious thing was the absence of good fuel mileage, I saw a handfull of decent mileage vehicles, there were Hybrids in every booth, but the recorded mileage wasnt very impressive and the MSRP even less impressive. The Smart car at 41 hwy was the best mileage car there, but $18k and change for what little your getting I wont be buying one soon.
The average MPG was around 15. Some of the so called economy SUV's had MPG ratings right next to the big trucks.
Even with the recession auto manufacturers havent lowered prices to draw in sales at all. The average vehicle was around $25k on the MSRP.
And I couldnt find one rep that had a clue about what they were selling, I actually had some try to outright bullxxit me on the vehicle specs and then walk away and ignore me when I called them on it.

I gotta say I was really disappointed by this years auto show.
The only surprise I got at the whole show was when I found out the new Hummer trucks would be coming out with a manual trans.