San Francisco Auto Show Post-view

What better way to spend Thanksgiving Day than the way the Pilgrims and their Indian friends did -- strolling through the San Francisco International Auto Show looking at cars you can't afford to buy?

Well, since our Thanksgiving dinner guests all bailed on us, we had the day to ourselves, so we headed over to our annual guilty pleasure, the SF auto show at San Francisco's Moscone Center. Pretty much any car company you can imagine was there (and is there -- the show runs into December). We spent most of our time looking at Saabs, BMWs, Volkswagens, Porsches, and Aston Martins.

The car drawing the biggest crowds at the Porsche section was the new Panamera sedan. From the front it's a pretty smart-looking car; the rear is not as pretty. Too chunky and inelegant. But the crowds loved it, and it was the only car where people were waiting patiently to get in and sit in the front seats and the back seats.

And, though you can tell from most of these photos that my sympathies lie with German-made cars, I was intrigued by the small display by SV Motor Company, which is apparently of Italian and American lineage (I think that means long lunch breaks and bad health care for the workers). I had never heard of them before. Here are a few photos of the SV cars. Pretty nice looking, eh?

 

As the happy owner of a 2003 VW Jetta, I naturally had to spend some time at the Volkswagen section, and they had a number of interesting cars. Though I'd like to think my next car will be a BMW 1-series, the only thing that could tempt me away from that (whenever it might be) would be the VW Eos hard-top convertible.

But my first visit at the auto show (this blog post is clearly not written chronologically) was Bavarian Motor Works, where I made short videos of the 128i, 328i, and Z4. Their 3-series cars seem to have become elongated, which is a bit much for me (I don't like big cars). But the 3-series cars they had on display certainly were nice enough. They also seemed to be quite popular with the attendees, though I was treated to (that's sarcasm) three middle-aged men examining the 128i and repeatedly wondering if simply owning such a car made you automatically gay. Well, as a gay wannabe-128i-owner, let's hope so!