With few premieres or journalists to record them, does the 2007 Barcelona Motor Show simply highlight the need for a rethink on motor shows? Conor Twomeyreports
Four premieres. That was all the Barcelona International Motor Show had to offer: four cars that we'd never seen in the metal before.
Only one, the Citroën C4 saloon, was new to me but the rest had already been previewed in press releases prior to show.
In each case, these new models amounted to little more than sheet-metal changes to existing models. The Peugeot 207 SW and Seat Altea Freetrack are lifestyle versions of run-of-the-mill hatchbacks, while the "new" Kia Picanto is just a heavily facelifted version of their popular city car.
Despite this, eight large halls and several huge open-air squares are packed to the gills with cars from just about every car maker, with Fiat, Nissan and Toyota even offering off-road courses.
In terms of scale and expense, the Barcelona show is on a par with most of the big international shows but in terms of impact, it barely registers on the radar.
That's not to say that car makers don't have some new cars they could premiere at the show. Just last week, Renault unveiled the all-new Laguna, and Peugeot revealed the first pictures of its new 308 hatchback, but both car companies have opted instead to wait until Frankfurt in September.
They're not alone. The Fiat 500, Ford Ka, BMW M3, 1-Series Coupé and Convertible, VW Tiguan, Audi A3 cabriolet, Citroën C5, Lexus SC460, Mercedes S-Class cabrio and Mini Clubman are just some of the cars due to be launched before the year's end.
There are probably several reasons for Barcelona's lack of premieres. Firstly, the show is hosted at the wrong time of the year, when most people are thinking about holidays and aren't that concerned with cars.
Flights and accommodation are another factor to consider - June isn't the cheapest or most convenient time to be in Barcelona and its location also involves a considerable amount of travelling for the car makers (most of whom are based in Germany, France or Italy) and the press.
It's also very hot in Barcelona at this time of the year and the air conditioning systems, assuming they have some installed, aren't up to the task of cooling the vast, sun-baked halls.
The staff, too, seem ill-prepared to deal with hoards of prima donna journalists descending on them. The press co-ordinator admitted that she didn't have a computer to double check our accreditation and resorted to writing some of our name tags by hand.
It seems that the more successful shows occur at off-peak times of the year, and in locations that are easily accessed.
The Geneva Motor Show is probably Europe's most prestigious and takes place every March in the most central location imaginable. Paris and Frankfurt, which take turns hosting the September slot each year, are almost as easy to access as Geneva for all concerned and play host to dozens of premieres from global players as well as the manufacturers based in the host country.
Apart from the fact that it's easier to bring a €1 million one-off concept a few hundred km than a few thousand, the media coverage makes it well worth it for the carmakers to go all out for their local show. The press contingent at the Barcelona show was all but non-existant.
In the US, the Detroit show in January has always kicked off the year in spectacular style but as the power of the Big Three has waned in recent years, so has the impact of the show.
Detroit in early January is about the most miserable place on earth to be - it's incredibly cold, inhospitable and covered in dirty brown snow.
Downtown Detroit is rather run-down and depressing, while accommodation is all but impossible to get unless you're willing to pay €300 a night for a bad hotel room or drive an hour to and from the show.
As most car magazines in the US are based in perpetually sunny California, it's also quite a trek to get there. So when the Los Angeles Motor Show organisers decided to move their event from the post-Christmas date to November, they also poached quite a few world premieres.
In 2005 (when the show was held just days before the Detroit show) they had a handful of new cars, mostly derivatives of existing models. But in 2006, when the show moved to mid-November, that number jumped to 23. Not only were new concepts on display, there were also all-new models like the BMW X5.
Unsurprisingly, most of the new stuff came from Japanese carmakers, the majority of which are based in California. But after such a promising start, the reformatted LA show is expected to steal more of the Detroit show's thunder as time goes on.
Of course, all of the big shows are under increasing threat from the internet. All you have to do is set up a rinky-dink website to gain press accreditation. Thus, very often, the halls are packed with people simply taking up space and snapping up press packs to flog on eBay.
Carmakers also release all their information ahead of time or simultaneously via webcast so there's no real need for the press to go to the shows any more anyway, which means the days of the big unveiling are all but gone.
From the public's perspective, motor shows are a nice day out and a way to get a look at some of the new cars currently on sale. But for the carmakers, it seems like a lot of expense and effort to go for a few days of static display with no salesman to capitalise on the interest.
Which is why they tend to congregate on the five or six big shows every year to, at least, gain some of that investment back through column inches. Until shows like Barcelona, London, Turin and New York find some way of consistently luring press and premieres to their halls, then their long-term prospects do not look so good.