The New York International Automobile Show was held in New York (USA) for a period of 10 days from Friday April 14 to Sunday, April 23, 2006. The venue, the Jacob Javits Convention Center, is a striking glass building overlooking the Hudson River. Access is extremely convenient. The hall is about 10 minutes by car from downtown Manhattan and only a few hundred meters from a subway station.
The walls and lobby were covered with large ad boards from exhibitors and sponsors to enhance the atmosphere.
Pablic show days ran from 11:00 in the morning to 10:30 at night (10:00 to 7:00 on Sundays) and the late-night hours, together with the excellent location, seemed likely to attract a large number of visitors stopping in on their way home from work.

The hall had four levels numbered 1-4. The main floor was Level 3 and focused on passenger cars; Level 1 had SUVs and pickup trucks. Exhibitors therefore divided up their booths. Exhibition floor space was 73,000 m², which is not very different from Makuhari Messe (75,000 m²), the site for Tokyo Motor Show but the overall impression was more compact.
Ceilings in the exhibition space were not all that high. The lighting was also very simple and few exhibitors had their own decorations. The booths themselves were likewise subdued. This was particularly true of Level 1, where the SUVs and pickup trucks were located, and the impression was far simpler than that of the passenger car-oriented main floor on Level 3. As would be expected in the United States, no-smoking rules were enforced throughout the venue and there were absolutely no ashtrays or smoking areas to be found.

Some 43 exhibitors had approximately 1000 vehicles on hand for the show. Exhibiting from Japan were Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Subaru as well as the Lexus, Scion, Infiniti and Acura brands. Among them, there were 28 world premieres and 18 North American premieres (already announced elsewhere but making their first appearance in North America), indicating exhibitors' high regard of the New york show.

We visited on Press Days and were able to attend some of the press briefings. Briefings were packed for Lexus, Infiniti and Acura and the momentum of Japanese automakers in this market was palpable.
Few exhibitors went for flamboyant performances or productions. Most made heavy use of video to give a "smart" appeal, although Chrysler's presentation was enjoyably flashy. The company's outdoor press briefing featured a jeep that had been buried in the ground, with a fire truck suddenly appearing, spraying it down and blowing away the dirt to reveal the new model. That piece of theater set the stage for the briefing. Some of the cameramen in the press seats had rain slickers on to protect themselves from flying mud.

As a special event, a figure-eight off-road course was set up inside a temporary hall and test rides were offered on all Chrysler Jeep models. The course had five main points: water hazard, bumpy road, incline, log and steep slope. The skilled drivers made it through with no problems, but it was still extraordinarily interesting and done on the same scale as a theme park attraction.

New York Show is a very sedate one with few flashy exhibitions and performances, but it is nonetheless the motor show held in what for all purposes is the world's economic and entertainment capital, and this location, combined with its April timing, indicates a great future ahead.
Detroit is the only OICA (Organisation Internationale des Constructeurs d'Automobiles)-sanctioned motor show in North America, but this year it will be joined by the LA show, Chicago show and New York show, which will rotate the OICA approval among them (LA in 2006, Chicago in 2007 and New York in 2008).