North American International Auto Show

The North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) is an annual auto show held in Detroit, Michigan at Cobo Center, usually in January. It is among the largest auto shows in North America.

History

In 1899, William E. Metzger helped organize the Detroit Auto Show, only the second of its kind. The next year, he helped stage the New York Auto Show in New York's Madison Square Garden.

An auto show was held in Detroit in 1907 at Beller's Beer Garden at Riverside Park and since then annually except 1941-1953. During the shows first decades of existence it portrayed only a regional focus. In 1957 international carmakers exhibited for the first time.

In 1987 the Detroit Auto Dealers Association (DADA) proposed it become international. The members of the DADA went to places such as Europe and Japan in the attempt to convince those unveiling their new brands/vehicles in those countries to bring those unveilings to the North American Auto show. That attempt proved to be successful, the North American Auto show was then renamed the North American International Auto Show in 1989. The North American International Auto Show has been hosted in Detroit, Michigan for over a Century. Since 1965 the show has been held at Cobo Center where it occupies nearly 1 million square feet (93,000 m²) of floor space. The show is particularly important because the Metro Detroit area is the location of the headquarters of the Big Three American automakers, Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors. Prior to being held at the Cobo Center, the show was held at other well known places in the Metro Detroit area. Some of those places include the Light Guard Armory, Wayne Gardens pavilion, and Michigan State Fairgrounds.

Detroit

Detroit (/dᵻˈtrɔɪt/) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan, the fourth-largest city in the Midwest and the largest city on the United States–Canada border. It is the seat of Wayne County, the most populous county in the state. Detroit's metropolitan area, known as Metro Detroit, is home to 5.3 million people, making it the fourteenth-most populous metropolitan area in the United States and the second-largest in the Midwestern United States (behind Chicago). It is a major port on the Detroit River, a strait that connects the Great Lakes system to the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The City of Detroit anchors the second-largest economic region in the Midwest, behind Chicago, and the thirteenth-largest in the United States.

Detroit is the center of a three-county urban area (population 3,734,090, area of 1,337 square miles (3,460 km²), a 2010 United States Census) six-county metropolitan statistical area (2010 Census population of 4,296,250, area of 3,913 square miles [10,130 km²]), and a nine-county Combined Statistical Area (2010 Census population of 5,218,852, area of 5,814 square miles [15,060 km²]). The Detroit–Windsor area, a commercial link straddling the Canada–U.S. border, has a total population of about 5,700,000. The Detroit metropolitan region holds roughly one-half of Michigan's population.