A Trip to the 2018 North American International Auto Show

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I was blessed with an experience of a life time. Thanks to A Girls Guide To Cars, I got to go to the 2018 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS). Being a car fan, you may be surprised to find out that I have never once attended. So being able to go during the media days was a true blessing.

This year one of the big themes that I saw was “Steel Matters”. You may think, “What’s the big deal about steel? It’s just heavy material that weights down cars” WRONG! Did you know that there are over 200 types of steel now made?

You will be surprised how the weight varies from each of the steel boards. They are still working on creating stronger and lighter weight steel combinations as we speak! You may have seen on television the different commercials between Ford and Chevy. In trying to make their trucks lighter, and still durable, they went to having an aluminum bed. This was from one of the test commercials, where bricks were tossed into a truck, and a portable tool box was bounced around. These are every day scenarios when it comes to trucks. I should know, we’ve used our Chevy truck for a few load of brick/rocks and to move a toolbox or two. Which one do you think held up better? The steel did – by far. I’d rather a dent or two, then having holes in the truck bed.

We were able to listen to the Steel Market Development Institute Press Conference. And afterwards, we had a demonstration of the new Honda Odyssey. They stripped back the body from the one side – to expose the steel frame. You can see that there are a few different colors visible. Each color represents a different strength of steel. The pink is there to be strong and help keep the passenger compartment safe in case you roll over. The red is strong but is also designed to give a little if you experience a head on collision. This also helps the engine compartment go down instead of right through the dash board.

We also got to see the Chassis of the New Dodge Ram! Same thing – each color is a different density. These automotive companies are defiantly stepping up their game when it comes to customer safety and satisfaction.