NewsCut

A day at the Auto Show

When I was a kid, my parents hauled us off to the big auto show in Boston once a year, where my goal was to grab as much free stuff as possible, take the glitzy magazines home, cut out the cars, and play with them on the floor. Good times.

Toys are more expensive now. They're actual cars. They're things on four wheels designed to get us where we're going. Any car will pretty much fit that bill, but, of course, cars are an extension of ourselves. We buy them to tell the world about ourselves, even though every car looks pretty much like every other car and, with a few exceptions, the rest of the world doesn't really care about you and your car.

At Casa Collins, we survived the economic downtown, partly by stretching our cars beyond a decade. Alas, I drive an American car and so it's rusting out, just as god and General Motors intended. So it's been a long time since we've been car shopping and the Auto Show, now at the Minneapolis Convention Center, provided a good opportunity to see what's out there. Also, who's out there.