The 2025 Detroit Auto Show media days were quite dead.
That doesn’t mean the consumer days for the show are dead — I don’t have numbers and I am typing this 200+ miles from Cobo Hall Huntington Place in Detroit, so I can’t see for myself, but I suspect the show is doing just fine. I’ve said it too many times on this site — no matter what happens to media days, consumer days will always exist, and likely always be a big draw, as long we can buy our own cars and aren’t sentenced to a life of autonomously-driven commuter pods.
So I won’t belabor the point too much — though it was still shocking to see only one reveal event in Detroit. I remember when the show had two-and-a-half days for media and industry insiders.
On the other, what I said in the lede means I don’t share the doom and gloom of one journalist who caught my eye and said something along the lines of how the show was “shameful.”
Let’s also keep a key factor in mind here: Automakers align launches with product cycles, and while Detroit show organizers announced the move back to winter a year ago, even that much lead time might not have been enough for an OEM to move a debut slated for Chicago or New York forward. Product launches take a long time, as you know.
Anyway, I wouldn’t stress, if I am a fan of auto-show media days, too much about the lack of action in Detroit. Not unless this continues over the next few years.
I certainly don’t see it as an indicator of the shape of the industry. Just because the media day at what was once the most-influential American — if not global — auto show was very quiet, it doesn’t mean the industry is struggling. It says more about how the industry manages public relations and information distribution than it does about the actual health of said industry.
Media days are going to be quieter from now on, thanks to the ability of OEMs to schedule a launch via online stream at any time of year. It’s an ability the OEMs have had for quite some time — Chevy launched the Corvette C8 at a hangar in California during the summer of 2019 instead of at an auto show — but didn’t really take advantage of until COVID forced them to.
All that said, I am surprised that only Ford had anything worth a press conference. I know there’s plenty of new product in the pipeline, and I’d be shocked if, across the industry, no future models were ready for unveiling in Detroit.
I walked away from the quietest auto show media-day I’ve ever been to with several takeaways.
One — the lack of action in Detroit is not a good barometer of industry health. It is, however, indicative of a world in which communication is changing rapidly.
Two — a quiet media day doesn’t mean that consumers won’t pour through the doors and happily pay to see all those vehicles under one roof.
Three — media days may never return to the days of cattle in the streets and booze-fueled parties at the firehouse.
And maybe that’s OK.
[Images © 2025 Tim Healey/TTAC.com]
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