LA Auto Show was my second home this week

Dang what a busy week its been.  The LA Auto Show keep me busy this week, that good kinda busy exhausted in a good way kind of week.  Monday it was the Mustang Reveal Party down in SaMo.  What a terrific freaking car that is.  Not one for the masses, but one for those who don't need the capacity of a small bus, like to DRIVE a car instead of just aim it down the road.  But that is another topic for another blog.

Wed/Thurs was "Press Days" at the LA Auto Show.  That is the day that the automakers get their 20 minutes or so to put their best dog and pony show on for the media and 'splain why their cars are the next big thing to ignite a soft market.  Some hit bullseyes, other leave me flat.

What I have learned is soak in the cars, talk to the engineers who built the damn thing and then learn how good it really is.  

An interesting development came to the LA Auto Show last year and that was the naming of the "Green Car of the Year".   The Press got to drive the cars, which was me too.  I'll save you all the blather and sent you directly to my Metblogs post for the deets.  Suffice it to say I walked away with the present and future of the "green" car.

The photo here is also the lead on the Metblogs post I did.  The Volkswagen Jetta TDI won the "Green Car of the Year" for 2008.  With it comes a lot of media attention followed closely by advertising hype.  VW should be proud as they did what no one expected in the US...made a very clean diesel, one that rivals a hybrid without all the complexity.  Very nice car to drive. 

For hours after the award was made journalists were lined up to interview the VW folks or just tell the VW Story.  In the image here a journalist from Germany was there yammering away about the wonders of the car (my guess as I don't speak German).  It struck me right then in there that the LA Auto Show is now a world class show.  A huge improvement over 3 years ago when it was still pretty much a dealers lot set up with strange customs to add to the dealer mark up and left over concept cars from the prior years Detroit Show.  This year the LA Show just rocked, 17 world premiere's were here, 22 North American premieres rounded out the show.

Anyway, the image of the Jetta TDI under the German limelight is a bracketed shot.  I used Photomatix to post process into an HDR file which in turn was tone mapped to make the car the "star".  The final image was washed with virtual photographer for some color correction and a return to some true black so the image popped.