St Louis Auto Show 2009

Despite the bad weather, I made it to the St Louis Auto Show, this time on opening day. Unfortunately, the Toyota Off Road On Site Adventure was not complete (they were still bulldozing the 1000 tons of dirt & 20 tons of gravel) so I didn't get to drive a new Toyota. The most noticeable thing about the Auto Show this year was the space (& lots of it) between the various displays. No doubt this was due to the pretty dire economic situation (especially for vehicle manufacturers), but there were still some notable cars & trucks on display. There were three production Dodge Challengers, the new Dodge Ram pickup, Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 (complete with clear bonnet panel), the new Ford F150 pickup (including the F150 based SVT Raptor) & two new Camaros (one of which had been featured in Hot Rod Magazine the week before the show. The car I was most looking forward to seeing was the 2010 Ford Mustang which had been formally launched in December '08 (even though it was promoted as a 2010 model). Unfortunately, Ford was doing the same thing as all the other manufacturers & promoting their more fuel efficient cars (including the new Fusion Hybrid which is more fuel efficient than Toyota's Prius), so musclecars were somewhat thin on the ground. There was one 2010 Mustang on display which looked pretty cool, although the colour that this car was painted in (Grabber Blue) probably wasn't the most flattering!