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Pics: Visited the Vancouver Auto Show 2024 edition

9th April 2024, 17:38 by Ananth Iyer

Cadillac showcased their Escalade EV. It was a massive sized EV and looked absolutely gorgeous.

BHPIan mobike008 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

March 23rd, 2024

I got to know a few weeks prior that Vancouver’s Auto Show is coming back after several years. I think the previous one was prior to Covid times. While the auto show itself didn’t make me too excited as it’s never on the world map for auto-shows even though Vancouver is a rich city with lot of high-end cars driven by Chinese or Indian which is the primary high income population of Vancouver, Canada.

Our agenda was simple, I like to drive to Vancouver which is 2-hours away purely for the reason that Indian food scene out there is simply phenomenal and being a North Indian, I got bored with the South Indian and red chilly infused food that is sold in entire USA.

Agenda was simple for our day-trip :

Drive to Vancouver, Canada for the Auto show and spend a few hours browsing the latest car offerings.
Make pit stops for lunch and dinner at our favorite Canadian Punjabi/Indian Chinese Joints including a lot of take-aways of sweets as well (mandatory as Holi was next day)

Initial plan was to stay overnight at the Hyatt Vancouver in Downtown and make a trip to Whistler but, just a few days before cancelled the reservation as the weather was pretty bad- Heavy Rains, Overcast throughout. You know, the quintessential PNW weather.

Bought the tickets a couple of weeks in advance and it costed $25 CAD (US$18) per head.

Venue : Vancouver Convention Center in Downtown Vancouver which is by the Ocean. A beautiful location for sure and Vancouver reminds me so much of Seattle as they are almost like two peas in a pod with Seattle being a much larger city.

On the D-Day we left home around 9:30am and drove through some crazy rains lashing heavily till we crossed the border about 1.5 hours later. Post the border crossing the rains stopped but, weather was still cold, damp, grey and cloudy.

Post our brunch and shopping stops in Surrey, we drove towards Vancouver around 2:00pm and by god, everyone seemed to be going there and traffic reminded me of India. It took us nearly 1.5 hours to cover 20kms to Vancouver. Finally, reached our parking garage which was walking distance to Convention center. We spent an enjoyable 3-4 hours at the Auto Show walking around and met BHPian Rahul who was also visiting with his family and friends from Seattle.

Post the auto show, we headed back towards Surrey and after a pit stop for dinner at our favorite Punjabi restaurant, we were back home around midnight

Breakfast enroute while Tesla is on Auto-pilot.

Pouring rain most of the day.

Border crossing into Canada.

Brunch pit-stop.

Enroute Vancouver.

Vancouver Convention Center in Downtown Vancouver. Location for Auto-show.

We reached the Auto Show around 3:00pm and like most auto-shows the cars are displayed in a large convention center hall. It was the same case here.

Honestly speaking, Vancouver auto-show was not impressive as I felt it was just an opportunity for regular folks (Cadillac, Ford, General Motors etc) to showcase their newest gas car or EV offerings. There was nothing too exciting that made me feel this show was anything special.

I'm highlighting some of the things that we saw that comes to mind.

Cadillac showcased their Escalade EV. It was a massive sized EV and looked absolutely gorgeous. I think this will be priced from $120K ++
Corvette Z06 (Yellow) stole the gas car show as it was drawing too many visitors. Kids wanted to sit in it and take pictures.
GMC Truck and Overlander offerings was superb. Some of those giant trucks need to be seen to understand their size. Some of them you may need a ladder to climb in.
Vinfast (Vietnames) had their stall as they are launching in North America in next few months. They seem to have only SUV's and based on size are aptly named V6, V7 and V8. I sat in one of their premium offerings. In short, horribly quality and doesn't feel premium at all. And, they have the gall to ask $80K for it. I don't think they will do well with that pricing.
Maserati, Porsche, Ford Vancouver dealerships had their stalls.
This was interesting. Vancouver Police Department had their fleet on display (Charger, Explorer and BMW motorcycle). They were letting everyone sit in their fleet and get an experience of how you would feel if you are arrested and taken to jail in those vehicles. lol!
BMW and Mercedes were conspicuous by their absence.
Toyota had some nice new offerings in display- E. g : The all new landcrusier
Grenadier is such a lovely 4x4 vehicle. Solid from outside and luxurious from inside. Btw, I'm told this has a B58 engine from BMW doing the duty.
They had some exotics (Lambos, Ferraris, McLaren's ) in display just to up the oomph of the auto show.
Absolutely loved the Nissan GTR stall. A few generations on display.
Finally, last but, not the least. Tesla Cybertruck was the absolute show stealer as there was a 30 mins queue to experience the Cybertruck as everyone wanted to sit inside the truck and get a selfie. I saw this truck in person for the first time. Even by US standards, this is ridiculously massive. I mean, the first reaction when you see it is "SHOCK" as it's super-long and super-wide with that unique shape. It will take a long time for people to get used to the body material and shape.

M340i souped up to make it look like an M3/M4 just outside the convention center.