DETROIT (WWJ) – It’s official. The North American International Auto Show is making its return to downtown Detroit this fall.
And event organizers say it will be “unlike anything we have ever hosted before.”
The event – which will open with previews on Sept. 14, including the Charity Preview on Sept. 16, will be open to the public on Sept. 17 and run through the 25th – is set to be held both indoors and outdoors.
The main event will take place at Huntington Place, formerly known as the TCF Center and prior to that, Cobo Hall, while other outdoor displays will bring a new flair to the show.
“We will also be capitalizing on the city’s other incredible assets, like our downtown parks and our riverfront,” show director Rod Alberts said during Tuesday’s announcement. “It will be an indoor and outdoor citywide celebration of mobility.”
While show organizers held an event called MotorBella at M1 Concourse in Pontiac last fall, the NAIAS hasn’t been held in three years.
It last happened in January 2019. There were plans to move the show outdoors in the summer of 2020, which were put on-hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now that plans are in place to bring the event back to downtown in a new way, Alberts says it will be “a landmark destination event for our city and state, showing the world what Detroit, our region, and our great state of Michigan are all about.”
“This all-new Detroit show will be different in every sense of the word,” he said.
Doug North, Chairman Emeritus of the Detroit Auto Dealers Association Special Events, said back in December that state lawmakers were considering a spending bill that would provide a $9 million, one-time grant for the auto show. North said the funding would give them a welcomed boost, but it was not clear whether such plans had moved forward.
“After canceling our show these last couple of years, it’s created a real business hardship – not only on our association that puts on the shows, but certainly many of our partners, as well as a number of our stakeholders downtown,” North said at the time. “So it would really help fund that whole effort in many different ways and provide a really sound footing to move forward.”
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