North American International Auto Show Returns

After two years of cancellations due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) will return on Sep. 14-25, 2022, announced organizers.

Rod Alberts, Executive Director, NAIAS and Detroit Auto Dealers Association, confirmed the event’s continuation during the 2022 North American Car, Truck and Utility Vehicle of the Year (NACTOY) awards. The event will be hosted in Detroit’s Huntington Place, Michigan, and start with two days of press and tech, followed by the one-day annual Charity Preview in which millions of funds will be raised for the area’s nonprofit companies.

The last edition of the event occurred in Jan. 2019. The 2020 show was canceled as the pandemic began to spread worldwide and the 2021 installment was once again cancelled due to rising COVID-19 cases and replaced with Motor Bella, an outdoor event in the 87-acre M1 Concourse in Pontiac, Michigan. The 2022 installment of NAIAS will feature indoor and outdoor interactive displays, said Alberts.

The move to September had been discussed for over a year but the timing could not have been better as the Omicron variant is driving surges of COVID-19 across the world. Should the original January date have been kept, the event would have been likely cancelled for the third year in a row.

During NACTOY, held in partnership with the Automotive Press Association (APA) on Jan. 11, Alberts awarded the Honda Civic as the North American Car of the Year. Finalists included the Audi A3, the Mercedes-Benz EQs and the Volkswagen Golf Mk VIII (Golf R/Golf GTI). The North American Truck of the Year award went to the Ford Maverick, which beat the Hyundai Santa Cruz, the Nissan Frontier and the Toyota Tundra. Ford also took home the North American Utility Vehicle of the Year award for the Bronco, which beat the Genesis GV70, the Hyundai IONIQ 5 and the Nissan Pathfinder in a pool of nine nominees.

Winners were selected based on innovation, design, safety, handling, driver satisfaction and value for the dollar by a pool of 50 professional automotive journalists from a variety of US publications after three rounds of independently verified voting.

The September event will come at an interesting time as it will bring together automotive representatives from the USMCA’s member countries, which are currently feuding due to the disagreement regarding auto parts origin and the interpretation of agreed requirements.