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| Mar.18.1999 1999 Autosport International Report | |||
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From 7th to the 10th of January I (Minoru Hayashi) and Tadashi Sasaki went to take a look at the Birmingham Racing Car Show which is held in Birmingham which is about 2 hours drive from London along the M6 which heads in a north western direction out of London. The reasons for this visit was that as Dome we plan to have a stand at the next show and we wanted to meet with the organizers to talk about our plans. But the show itself was more fun that we had anticipated so I'll use this space to write a brief report. A long time ago this show used to be called the London Racing Car Show. The size of the show was a lot smaller then and the atmosphere was of a rather minor show with lots of campaign girls in rather cheap looking costumes and poses. I had heard that the show had been expanding every year and there was no sign of the past in the show I went to this year, which had a dynamic, academic and very enthusiastic atmosphere. The scale of the the show in a few words would be about a third of the size of the Tokyo Motorshow or twice as large as the Tokyo Boat Show. Just inside the entrance to the main hall are the big booths of the Auto Manufacturers and the larger companies in the racing industry and there is virtually no difference from the major motor shows. But one of the 5 halls of the show was the Autosports Engineering Corner which was like a market in which the smaller companies show their wares side by side. All these booths are for a major show so the layouts and designs are refined but the general atmosphere itself is like one of the alleys in Tokyo Akihabara. One of the racing car constructors had a booth in the next hall but as the car itself was being shown in the teams and the sponsors stands all the booths were mainly for customers and business negotiations, so it looked rather terse compared to the other halls. In the next hall was the launching of the BAR team which will be entering the F1 Grand Prix next year which had shows everyday. The seats were full and the show itself used extravagant devices but the audience didn't seem to be responding that well. There was a stage in the main hall and the F1 Stewart Racing Team and the BTCC Renault Works Team were showing there new cars and holding ceremonies. Even the larger booths did something to catch your attention. There were chassis ranging from F1 down to sub Japanese FJ class chassis together with their parts. The main thing about this whole range was the large base. All the niches of the european motorsport pyramid were filled starting with cheap chassis using old technology, even from my eyes, at the bottom with all types of chassis to match the amount you were prepared to pay in between to F1 technology at the top. The lower you get the more variety you have so this may be the reason why there seemed to be so many low cost chassis in this show. I was told that from the over 585 companies had stands and over 79000 people attended the Autosport International Show which was held in the National Exhibition Center in Birmingham on 7th to the 10th of January his year. 1400 people attended from the press and news of this show was reported throughout the world. I have also heard from the english AUTOSPORT magazine in the that the show will be extended another day and so the scale should be larger next year. So, I hope to see you all next year at the show. |
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