The end of the car shows in Europe
Dal Turin Salon to that of Shanghai it is as if a geological era had passed. Instead, just a few decades ago, it was under the Mole that car manufacturers exhibited their new top models. The world then passed through Italy for what was one of the most important exhibitions in the world. Then mistakes, bad decisions, deindustrialization have played into the competition: to arrive at what, to put it contrary to Celentano’s famous refrain “where there was a city now there is only grass” or rather brushwood. But why a virtuous example like the Car Showwhose first edition was held in 1900 is it fake a century later between quarrels and stamped papers?
The reasons are many: and they concern the Fiat but also there industrial policy of a country. Meanwhile, Fiat, basking for decades behind the state shield of “not importing foreign ones”, was able not to invest too much in innovation when the other houses were running. It also contributed to this the mirage of easy finance which for a time promised higher income than the assembly line.
When it was decided to refocus on the car on the upper floors of the Lingotto, part of the omelette was done. Having said that, the cross cannot be thrown only on a company that, for better or for worse, has created hundreds of thousands of jobs. As far as the Turin trade fair system is concerned, the political world also has a great responsibility. While in other European countries, the USA and Japan, the exhibition system was financed by promoting innovation and investments were made in infrastructure serving the exhibitions (hotels, airports and railways next to the exhibition spaces), in Italy the Fair continued to be a gray shed with stands in obsolete spaces.
Europe is no longer the center of the world
If Turin shut down, here’s to grow Geneva, Paris, Frankfurt. Europe continued to be the center of the automotive world. And the American and Japanese manufacturers, despite the reviews at home, when it came to presenting a particularly beautiful and innovative model, very often chose the catwalk of the Old Continent.
However, the grand illusion of a Western-driven “car culture” suddenly collapsed. The Chinese wind has broken a situation that seemed consolidated. The result? Geneva, after several cancellations prepares to move to Dubai. Frankfurt she passed, bag and baggage a Munich, Paris and Detroit they are only a tenth of what they were a decade earlier. It resists. But it is a rearguard battle, which like all Maginot Lines, does not bode well.
China, the car and then?
Huge spaces, stands with amazing technological contents, brands from all over the world that are presenting an infinite number of novelties. From the small electric car at bargain prices up to the Rolls Royce which he launched in Shanghai the first “electric” in its historyChina is the crossroads through which car manufacturers are forced to transit today.
The battle of globalization also passes through a trade fair system, which becomes a showcase for the whole country and drives, in this case, all the “made in China”. The Beijing regime knows this well. Perhaps less the bureaucrats in Brussels who seem intent on putting our industries in difficulty. And let’s not just think about the car and the insane transition too quickly to the “green”. Fashion, agri-food, mechanics, furniture: these are our excellences that we can still defend today.