2015 Calgary Auto Show: Part 1

As I’ve mentioned before, I have built up a collection of photos from the past season which I have been saving for later dates. Obviously a lot less goes on during winter so it takes planning and saving of content in order to allow the posts on the blog to continue at a somewhat normal pace until things start up again in the spring. Today is a perfect time to get started sharing those saved photos, so today’s post is the first in a new category on the site – “Throwback”.

As the title states, today’s photos are from the 2015 edition of the Calgary Auto Show, which took place back in March. I admit that auto show photos from eight months ago may not sound that interesting on paper, but I enjoyed going back through them all so hopefully those of you reading this enjoy them too.

I arranged to meet up with Mario, Brenda, and Derrick at the grounds. I wasn’t able to stay for as long as I sometimes have as I had a work function that evening, but I was still able to cover the whole show and see everything on display. Spoiler alert – the car I wanted to see most of all was the Focus RS, but there wasn’t one on hand.  Maybe there will be this time around?

Focus March 2015

As always, the first task was finding a decent parking spot – AKA one away from the crazy crowds and potential door-ding givers. I put the Focus way at the back of the lot and started the long walk to the front doors…

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Naturally, a bit of car spotting in the parking lot took place. I didn’t notice much that really stood out, but there was this F12…

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..and 911 on TEs.

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Upon entering I began making my way across to the back of the show, as that’s where the others were. I did stop to grab a shot of the Elmiraj before continuing, though.

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With the others now, back at the Honda booth we were greeted by a modified Fit. It’s great to see more cars like this on display at these shows, showing what can be done with the platforms, instead of having just stock cars.

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Mazda’s booth was quite memorable. They had some cool cars of course, such as the new Miata and this good-looking 3, but they had a small army of what can be best described as iPads on Segways rolling around. You can see the wheel of one on the left here – I’ll have to see if I grabbed a full photo during the event.

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Scion typically has cool displays and modified cars, and this year was no exception; first up was a Rocket Bunny tC.

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Also on display was this FR-S which I thought looked pretty good and featured some nice parts. I took some photos and checked it out, and then moved on.

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Just recently though, I was browsing YouTube when I stumbled across Speed.Academy’s channel and started watching a few episodes. Upon going through these photos again when I started editing them, I came back to this one and realized that this was THE FR-S I had seen on their channel. Now I have been able to learn a bit more about what it has done and the people behind it.

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Carrying on from Scion, next up was Ovlov and a couple of their offerings which I had to go see. First up was the Polestar V60 wagon in my favourite colour offered by the company.

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The real attention-getter for me though was the new XC90.

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It may be an SUV, and therefore pretty far removed from the cars I usually stop and stare at, but I think it looks really, really good. In fact, I don’t think there’s an angle from which this doesn’t look good.

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Of course I waited for a chance to hop in and check out the interior.

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While I was unable to see the RS, there was still a Ford that I just had to see in person while at the show. Of course, that was the newly-facelifted Focus sedan.

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I mainly was curious to see it in person at last, but it also gave me a chance to see if there were any parts I liked, to consider retrofitting to Tiggy.

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One feature I was really happy to see Ford add were the available ‘flappy paddles’ on DCT cars. Much better than the rocker switch on the shift knob. And of course I can’t forget to mention the new cubby below the climate controls. That’s not sarcasm, that’s a really nice new feature that I wish the earlier models had.

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New gauge cluster faces too.

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After the Focus, we then decided to all hop into a nearby Fiesta. I somehow drew the short straw and wound up having to sit behind Derrick…

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…and this is why that was a problem. You’re too tall Derrick!

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The new C-Class looked rather good sitting under the lights…

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…and I even liked the woodgrain trim inside, which is saying something. Normally, I am not a fan.

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The Audi RS7 – the whole segment still seems silly to me but can you really argue with a car that looks and performs like this one?

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Infiniti had this concept on display – the Q80 Inspiration.

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Who knows how long it’ll be before we see something similar as a production Infiniti – if ever – but this was really nice.

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Lexus now; As I recall there was only one RC F present but visitors couldn’t sit in it. This RC 350 was accessible, however.

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The interior was pretty nice, though I can’t help but feel like certain areas already look a little dated. Agree? Disagree?

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Next to the RCs, the Lexus I was most interested in seeing was the new NX. I remember when the new IS was first unveiled, the styling took me a while to get used to. Now though I quite like it, especially when applied to an SUV.

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To wrap up today, a jump back to Mercedes’ booth and the C63 AMG. It definitely looks powerful but personally I think it moves more towards the sleeper end of the spectrum as compared to the old model. Good or bad, you decide.

While this post is called Part 1, I don’t intend for all of the parts to be posted back-to-back. I’ll mix these in with more current content and hopefully that’ll help keep things more interesting as winter carries on. Remember, there’s more than just the auto show saved for these Throwback posts. Hopefully you all enjoy them!

-Bill

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