Europe 2019: International Motor Show

Europe 2019

International Motor Show

The old lady and I spent a few weeks in Europe recently with our daughter Samantha and Branelle's mom (Nana) and instead of posting a bunch of pictures in an album on Facebook for our family and friends that are interested I decided I would just cover our trip in a series of simple blog posts chronologically with some of the things we did.

The first thing we did when we got off the plane in Frankfurt was pick up our rental car and drive the 15 or so kilometers to the International Motor Show. I've been to motor shows in the US, and they're kind of lame if I'm being honest. This is the biggest one in the world and I didn't want to miss it since we were going to be in the area.

Nana, who has a Mini, checking out the new electric version.

We probably should have skipped it. It was HUGE! It was spread out in about 10 different halls each the size of a huge convention center, and it was crowded...even on a Monday morning. We were tired from traveling all day previously and that probably didn't help.

They did have a lot of fun little interactive things to play with. Porsche had this little set up where you could race their new Taycan electric car against things like other cars, a cheetah, or....a Saturn V rocket. If you listen to the video you can hear me mocking NASA after the predictable result ("NASA's lame! What do you guys do with all that money?") and you can see Nel's response (she works for NASA).

There were things for Sammy too. Volkswagen had a fun thing where kids could make a driver's license and then drive around a really neat little track they had set up for a while. 

Most of it was inside, but there was stuff set up outside as well. You really couldn't see everything in a day if you had to. I realized quickly that this wasn't going to be interesting for anyone but me and probably not fun for anyone, but it still took us hours just to get back to where you catch the bus to get to your car. 

Motor shows like this are really set up for manufacturers to show off new stuff, but my favorite section of the entire show was the Hall of Classics. I'd never actually seen a Bizzarrini in person before. 

I was really proud of Sam for spotting some cars we own back home. Anyway, we kind of cut our losses and headed out of Frankfurt after a few hours.