A Short Break: KC Auto Show

Every year auto dealers and manufacturers present their shiny new wares to the public at the Kansas City Auto Show. We headed down again this year to see what was new! I still cringe to think of the number of people, kids, etc that climb through these cars, many with no respect for the car, lol. Feel bad for the people buying these examples! Most of the cars there were…well….appliances IMHO. There are a lot of cool technology packages and neat options on the cars, but the body styles really didn’t jump out at me too much. I’ve been a chevy truck fan for awhile now, but honestly, really liked the interior and body styling of the Ford trucks, and not so much the Chevys (interiors seem really dull). The Ford eco drive twin turbo motor was really interesting for the trucks. Tiny motor, tiny turbos, 380hp (IIRC). They had a pretty cool cutaway of the motor.

Of course, we plowed through Ford’s section fairly quickly (probably the biggest exhibitor this year) and headed towards the good stuff 🙂

We soon found Aristocrat’s section to check out what they had brought.
The six cars were:
Cayenne S
2008 Cayenne GTS
997 Targa 4S
Panamera
Boxster
Cayman

Val quickly found the GTS 🙂 This would be fun!

Compared to the new Cayenne though, I really like the new interior….especially with paddle shifters, lol.

Targa 4S

Boxster and the Panamera

Across the aisle was Mini’s exhibit. I have really been intrigued by the 4 door AWD countryman as a replacement for Squeeks. Unfortunately, the rear bench seat is only available in Europe, and rumor has it that option will not be available in the US until 2013. The shop supervisor would not be happy in bucket seats. I believe the color of this countryman is called Vomit Brown.

LOVED the plaid VW GTI interior 🙂

As we were wandering around, we came across a new exhibit…..Fiat! LOL

And of course, being Jeep fans, we had to check out the all new 2011 Grand Cherokee. I have been waiting for this redesign to come out for awhile now, and I think they did a great job. The JGC has looked so blah for the last couple of years, and the interiors have been extremely uncomfortable. The interior of the WJ was quite comfortable, then the WK came along and it really went downhill. Likely this is what Squeeks will get replaced with, but we will let someone else take the first owner depreciation. List on the Overland package is 45k, which means in 2 years we should be able to pick it up for 20k. I was a little shocked they can’t get the gas mileage better with the V8 (15/19), and the V6 (16/21 IIRC) wasn’t much better to justify NOT getting a V8. We get a little better with our 2000 JGC V8 than the new cars are rated for (and our year/model was listed in the cash for clunkers program). I wasn’t impressed with the 20″ rubber on the Overland though, when the Limited runs 18’s which is what I would want. I can’t imagine buying 20″ tires for an SUV can be cheap. They also had the Laredo (V6) and the Limited (V8) on display as well.

I love the brown/black interior of the overland. The shop supervisor would have the interior white in no time though, lol.

Kansas City Auto ShowKC Auto Show