2026 Detroit Auto Show Recap: When International Becomes Regional

I wasn't assigned to cover the show, neither in person or from home, but it was made clear in the office where I worked that all of us needed to pay attention, because we'd soon be covering the cars being introduced. So I monitored events from my cubicle, marveling at the images of Chrysler releasing cattle in the streets.

That was in 2008.

A year or two later, I arrived in town as a freelancer, knowing almost nobody and operating on a shoestring budget. I'd already covered the Chicago Auto Show but had no idea what to expect in Detroit. What I found was a massive show with more press conferences than I could cover. There were events and parties galore. Cobo Hall was constantly surrounded by OEM fleet vehicles set to shuttle execs and media around. The press days started with off-site events on Sunday and out-of-towners didn't head home until Wednesday or Thursday.

This year, there was just one vehicle debut, the Ford Bronco RTR. The highlights of the show were an interview of Pete Buttigieg and a speech by Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. While the Detroit Three had a massive presence -- including the luxury brands -- the Asian and European automakers were mostly absent, save for some dealer-organized displays. The only Japanese automakers with an OEM-organized stand were Toyota (sans Lexus) and Subaru. Subaru brought their adorable and adoptable dogs, of course.

I won't go too deep into the slow decline of auto-show media days -- we've covered it a ton on the site and on the podcast. It's pretty simple -- automakers have discovered that they can own a news cycle longer and for less money by staging a Zoom at some random time, as opposed to dropping millions on a stand. Not only that, but we may be in a lull in the product cycle, as well.

Not only that, but OEMs can send embargoed press materials to journalists in advance -- and journalists can write their stories and schedule them from home. A journalist might not even need to attend the show to cover it well.

Consumer days will remain strong, I believe. The Detroit and Chicago shows give people something to do indoors in the dead of winter, for relatively low cost. Consumer days offer plenty of things for people, including kids, to do in addition to looking at cars. Consumer days give enthusiasts a way to see all the new cars under one roof, and consumer days give shoppers a chance to poke around without being harassed by pushy sales people.

And if an OEM wants to save cash on a stand, well, its regional dealers can step up.

A lot of the belly-aching about the decline of press days come from journosaurs who got a tad spoiled with free booze and celebrity sightings. Personally, I think it's dangerous to conflate media days with the health of the industry -- a slow show doesn't mean this year's sales will be bad. Indeed, I expect New York to be busy in a couple of months, because so many non-automotive outlets have offices within walking distance from Javits.

That said, Detroit's decline as a media hub -- Chicago's press days were the first to lose their luster -- still feels sad. For all the fun at the edges, the Detroit press days used to feel important. You'd see a whole bunch of cars that would be on the market soon, and even the non-automotive business press would train its spotlight on the industry in a deeper way than normal.

Detroit may be shifting to becoming a regional show. That might not necessarily mean anything bad, in terms of the health of the industry -- it may just be a sign of changing times. And I have no doubt the public days will draw strong attendance.

That said, there's still a sadness surrounding the current lack of media influence from the show.

It may be fixable -- maybe show organizers can reduce the costs of operating a stand, maybe OEMs will once again see value in surprise debuts and hold some things back from embargoed pre-writing, maybe at some point it will once again make sense to show new cars and trucks to gathered media, including photographers, instead of sending out a Zoom link. After all, a Web cam can't replicate certain aspects of being there -- for one thing, journalists can't touch a car's interior materials from their desk at home.

But for now, I suspect Detroit will be like Chicago -- a once-national show with a glorious past and uncertain present and future. New York's proximity to mainstream, non-automotive press and LA's timing will keep those shows as the two media-focused shows, and even their media days could be numbered.

To be clear, I am not complaining about covering Detroit. We still produced plenty of content for you guys -- and there are plenty of things to do and see at a press preview that don't involve vehicle debuts. I got to check out cars I haven't seen yet. I learned some things from Buttigieg's and Whitmer's chats, even though neither truly broke news. And there is always behind-the-scenes background work to be done, work that strengthens this site's overall coverage of the industry. So even if the show's media days are a shell of what they once were, even if there's no legendary firehouse party, even if the days of turning around to see Diane Krueger canoodling with Joshua Jackson are behind me, I'd rather be there than not.

We'll see you in Chicago.

[Images © 2026 Tim Healey/TTAC.com]

Become a TTAC insider. Get the latest news, features, TTAC takes, and everything else that gets to the truth about cars first by  subscribing to our newsletter.