The 5 A.M. Auto Show

This is the feature piece. Where it all started, told with a couple guys I wish were still here to tell it with me.

The Show

For years growing up, we would anticipate the call from our grandfather. Every January, we'd watch for the billboards to go up. Auto Show. Detroit. The Mecca, at the time.

The annual day trip was as gritty as it was exciting. Detroit in January. Not for the weak.

The formula never changed: 5 a.m. wake-up call. Roll out of bed, grab some clothes. In this particular year, that meant a black Beatles Revolver shirt for me and a Brazil soccer jersey for my brother. Be at Cobo by six. Press breakfast included. Say hi to my grandfather's friends. Get a picture with the Michelin Man walking around. And then the best part: a press-only tour of the whole floor before it opened to the public.

What sticks out to a ten-year-old kid is exactly what you'd guess. The neon green Lamborghinis. The classic red Ferraris. A red and black Dodge Viper.

But what my grandfather always wanted to do was teach. He'd interrupt us mid-daydream, somewhere out on the open road in that R8 in our heads, and there was probably some eye rolling about it. The pistons. The engines. The brakes. The underneath. That's a lot of expert insight to consume when it's 6 a.m. and you're ten.

But hey. I'm still talking about it.

Then came the victory lap: going to school that Monday and bragging to everyone about all the cool cars I saw. What I should have been bragging about was my grandfather. I didn't get to learn that lesson until years later.

The Culture

Growing up, I thought everyone was as exposed to the auto industry as I was. As kids, we'd wait for the latest Motor Trend and Car and Driver issues. In computer class, we'd look up concept sports cars and see who could find the craziest one. When the Scholastic book fair came around, you just needed enough money for the Ferrari poster.

It was massive. There was always discussion around cars. I remember it being a huge deal whether your parents drove American, and if they didn't, it was taken personally. And often it was personal. Many of our parents and grandparents worked in automotive. Many still do.

But we have all seen and felt the shift. There is no longer pride in driving American. It no longer affects the jobs of loved ones. We hear about EVs, autonomous updates, and how China is surely beating us at the game we invented.

As a younger brother, I know the feeling well.

The Shift

I've answered a lot of questions over the years about what people actually drive around Michigan and the Midwest. Growing up here, unsurprisingly, American cars outweighed foreign. Then I left for college about ten years ago and spent four years in Wisconsin, and I was shocked by how few American cars were on the road. More and more Toyota, Hyundai, Honda. And the thing is, Wisconsin is close. One lake over. But with so few American cars around, it felt a lot further from Michigan than it is.

We had family all over California growing up. Predominantly non-American cars out there, always has been, and I don't see that changing. So is Detroit the last place with pride in driving American? I'll include Toledo and northern Ohio in that, out of respect for the history.

Will we ever see a resurgence? To me, the discussion has changed more than the cars have. Yes, we still talk about cars. But it's tech now. It's EV. It's all new and exciting, and I get it. I just miss the pride of ownership.

Meanwhile, the biggest auto show in the world isn't in Detroit anymore, or Michigan, or the United States. The Detroit show even left January for a few Septembers, though it's found its way back home now, right where it belongs. The building made it too, under a different name. Cobo is Huntington Place these days. Everything gets a redesign eventually.

What's Next

This is the Motor City. Will that ever change? I hope not. But this is what I grew up in: the auto show may as well have been the Super Bowl, and we got to host it every single year.

"Remember when" is the lowest form of conversation. Shoutout Sopranos. I don't want the Motor City to be a thing of the past, and I don't want this website to be a scrapbook.

I want to shift the conversation to what's coming next. That's why Bauer Drive exists.

But it started here, with the two guys who taught me to love all of this. They're all over these photos, and now they're all over this website, too.

Thanks, Dad, for filming everything. Thanks for the call, Grandfather. Thanks for the seat, Joe.

Windows down.