8 rites of winter (and spring) lost to the pandemic

Every year, right around now, as snowflakes fly in Detroit and Chicago and Stuttgart and Beijing, the auto industry comes alive with bustling gatherings and gala celebrations of the business. Glittering auto shows, the high-energy yearly dealer convention, the great annual global meeting of engineers with their technical papers …

Obviously, that's not happening now. The industry is trudging through a different interpersonal reality in the winter of 2021. We are confined, instead, to meetings via Microsoft Teams. We embrace the spotty connections and camera views of speakers' dining rooms.

But that's fine. The pandemic will not keep the car business down. The industry will endure this lonely passage of not being able to shake hands and pat backs, of not serendipitously running into future employers, of not being able to exchange whispered business insights over a hotel bar.

The big events will surely return. The crowds will regather and the convention centers will light back up. The excitement and zest are still there, make no mistake.

But — lest anyone lose sight of them — here are some of the traditional winter gathering spots where automotive people normally would be mingling and exchanging ideas right now.

Nothing will keep the National Automobile Dealers Association down. The perennial draw of 20,000 or more retailers, factory executives, exhibitors and industry consultants will go online next month instead of meeting in New Orleans as planned. It will be back in Las Vegas in March 2022.

It is no longer a phenomenon welded to the coldest week of January in Detroit. Last year, in a stroke of unfortunate timing, the show's organizers planned to move to a June schedule. But then, the pandemic ruled otherwise. So as yet, there are no fond memories of balmier visits to a warm and green Detroit — only a desire to experience it again whenever it takes place.

It has become the de facto industry event of the year, despite the fact that the Las Vegas show is so enormous that automotive fits into one corner of it. The traditional January electronics Woodstock took place online for 2021. Which was all well and good, but rest assured, tens of thousands of CES-goers are ready to get back to Las Vegas in 2022.

An annual early March celebration of all things luxurious and European, it was the first show to fall victim to coronavirus cancellation in 2020. Then last June, it went ahead and canceled the 2021 show, too. There is more going on with big international auto shows these days than the pandemic, and many of them were already struggling. But the Geneva show is now aiming for 2022.

This has been a tradition in Detroit for decades, drawing engineers from around the world to present papers and exhibit product and process innovations. SAE congress was canceled last year. For 2021, it will go online in April with a virtual trade show platform.

It was feisty under normal circumstances, inviting audiences to brave the city's February weather to look at new vehicles. In recent months, despite live events being canceled across the industry, Chicago's optimistic organizers showed no sign of caving on its regular Feb. 13 opening. Then, just last month, the show was postponed — but only until a spring time frame.

It had been planned for late January, but it was then postponed until late March. Last week, organizers further postponed the show to a date later in the spring that has not yet been decided.

This big annual January show normally would be starting this week. But for 2021, COVID-19 forced its postponement until May. However, its chosen May date then conflicted with the similarly postponed Houston Livestock and Rodeo Show — and in Houston, nobody competes with the rodeo. So the auto show is off until January 2022.