With a roar, mounds of dirt and EVs, Motor Bella opens a new auto show future

Posted by Talbot Payne on September 23, 2021

Pontiac — Motor Bella is not your standard Detroit auto show, and it’s not supposed to be.

The first show since the pandemic is part auto show, part racetrack. Based at M1 Concourse car club in Pontiac, it’s a sign of things to come. Sprawling static displays sit next to test track tests, off-road courses, even off-site drives for customers who want to get behind the wheel of a Ford Mustang Mach-E or Audi e-tron for the first time as manufacturers try to get customers into vehicles — not just to ogle them.

For all of the creativity, however, Motor Bella offers familiar meat and potatoes for Detroit showgoers: trucks and lots of muscle. The Ford Expedition and Toyota Tundra introduced beefy new upgrades while show attendees can ford water in a Bronco or catch air in a roaring, 702-horsepower Ram TRX super truck.

“It feels like a carnival,” said Motor Bella chairman Doug North, who owns North Brothers Ford in Westland. “But we’re kicking it off with a Ford reveal just like an auto show.”

Media press conferences, comparatively light on news compared to the executive-heavy pressers of past, have been replaced by experiences — a Jeep SUV trundling over beds of logs here, a Mustang Mach-E racing down a short chute there.

At the show’s center is a 2.3-acre infield — normally M1’s asphalt test pad — which is dominated by General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Stellantis NV manufacturer brand displays.

Circling the Detroit Three infield like moons are more automaker displays — smaller, static dealers displays, not elaborate stages familiar to TCF Center showgoers. The exception is Toyota Motor Corp., which has constructed a pop-up dealership building that overlooks the infield and is fronted by the Tundra and America’s best-selling SUV, the RAV4.

Typical of Detroit auto shows past, manufacturers push environmental virtue with lots of talk of sustainability and alternative-fuel vehicles. But at Motor Bella, vehicle electrification is no longer a side hustle that may someday be realized — it’s a core business strategy with real products on display. Customers are wooed less by gauzy slogans and more by the reality of experience.

Electric vehicles used to be relegated to the TCF Center basement for test drives. At Motor Bella, they are front and center. Showgoers can get behind the wheel of a $50,000 Ford Mustang Mach-E or $70,000 Audi e-tron and take them out on adjacent Woodward Avenue for a spin. Mash the pedal and customers gasp at the acceleration.

But the internal combustion engine still powers 98% of U.S. auto sales, and the headline vehicles at Motor Bella are still powered by gas. A lot of gas. Two race tracks are at the periphery of Motor Bella, and the constant roar of Ram TRX pickup’s V-8 is Motor Bella’s soundtrack.

“Now you see it, now you don’t,” blares a big-screen video display as riders experience the super truck’s neck-snapping, 4.5-seconds 0-60 acceleration.

The Ford Bronco vs. Jeep Wrangler war is on in earnest here, with Jeep hauling in tons of dirt and rocks for its 120,000-square-foot off-road track where attendees can experience the extraordinary off-road capabilities of the Wrangler Rubicon.

Not to be outdone, Ford held a news conference and dropped a bomb that the Bronco will gain a tree-chewing, high-horsepower Raptor model. A Bronco ride is on offer in the infield that takes passengers through water, sand and over a 21-foot roller-coaster hill with the best view in Pontiac.

Ford Broncos travel through an obstacle course at the M1 Concourse in Pontiac on Tuesday, September 21, 2021.

The line for the Bronco ride was a half-hour long, while an adjacent Mach-E experience had no wait on Tuesday. Demand for the Bronco is so high that — at the customer drive experience on Woodward — showgoers must drive another Ford model (Bronco Sport, Explorer, Mach-E) before they can jump into a Bronco.

“I think it’s great — anytime you’re able to drive a product, that’s good,” said John McCandless, the retired national manager of public relations field offices for Toyota Motor Sales. “I love the Jeep outdoor display and the Ford outdoor display.”

Auto shows are an opportunity for startups to break through — Tesla in Detroit in 2015, Rivian in Los Angeles in 2018 — and Motor Bella marks the auto show debut of Bollinger Motors with its B1 SUV and B2 pickup. One of a number of automakers bringing electric trucks to market, the Bollinger pickup stands out for its open front-and-rear bumper — so you can slide longboards the length of the truck.

“Bollinger is excited to be here,” sales director Chet Parsons said. “We are a Detroit company, and doing our first big auto show in Detroit really cements our presence here.”

If Motor Bella was light on CEO-led news conferences (GM President Mark Reuss was at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference on Mackinac Island), it was still a stage for celebrities and politicians.

NASCAR star Austin Dillon wowed the GM display with an appearance with the next-gen Chevy Camaro NASCAR. The General is showcasing the intersection between racing and production vehicles — and the 1,000-horsepower GMC Hummer EV.

“The back wheels actually turn, so when you’re driving out of mud, you’re gliding out of it,” Oakland County Executive David Coulter observed. “It’s a very impressive vehicle.”

The $105,595 Hummer also caught the eye of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer who took a tour of the grounds Tuesday. Not to be an auto partisan, she also visited Jeeps’ luxurious Grand Wagoneer before checking out the Ford Bronco and electric F-150 Lightning pickup.

It can’t be an auto show, however, without some political controversy. A single-engine plane towed a banner that read: “General Motors fuels insurrectionists” — the latest move by the progressive political action committee MoveOn attacking GM for donating to lawmakers who voted not to certify the 2020 election results earlier this year.

Motor Bella promises thrills and eye-candy galore for this weekend’s expected 150,000 showgoers (it opens to the public on Thursday). And it promises a way forward in the nation’s pre-eminent auto town: the CEO of the Detroit Auto Dealers Association, Rod Alberts, repeatedly signals that a Motor Bella-like event is the future for a reimagined, post-pandemic Detroit auto show.

Reinvention is not an option. Traditional auto shows may still have staying power with folks accustomed to patronizing the familiar. But it’s beyond question that the automakers — the real paying customers who make auto shows possible — long ago decided that auto shows as they’ve been known since the 1990s are relics of a golden age.

Broncos run the gamut on the off-road course for the Ford Bronco ride-along at the M1 Concourse car club in Pontiac, Mich., on Sept. 21, 2021. People can ride in the Bronco through a water feature, sand ditch and up and down a 38 degree, 21.5 foot incline.

There are too many tools available to reach would-be customers, to wow them with the new metal, to spend millions on static auto show stands or press conferences that repeat news released two, three or four weeks earlier to a captive media crowd. Competition is the lifeblood of the auto industry, but competition for media (and public) attention is best avoided.

If Motor Bella is judged a success, it likely will ramp up Metro area competition. Will Motor Bella be folded into the 2022 Detroit auto show downtown? Or will it become a permanent fixture at M1 in Pontiac?

“I can’t think of a better place,” Oakland County Executive Coulter said. “Both Pontiac and, of course, M1 Concourse are very conducive to putting on an outdoor event that people can jump in the car and have a real experience.”

Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or Twitter @HenryEPayne.

Daniel Howes is senior editor / business & columnist.

Staff Writers Jordyn Grzelweski, Kalea Hall and Breana Noble contributed.

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