Being a student at Kettering, I am basically surrounded by a bunch of mechanical engineers, all with the same thing on their minds: cars. Being in Flint, I am also a convenient hour’s drive from Detroit, the "Motor City". Being the month of January, the North American International Auto Show is in full swing. Add all of these together and you end up with me, the computer nerd, at the NAIAS.
I decided to go with John, who is a lover of cars, and some of his friends from Aquinas, a college in Grand Rapids. We drove down to Detroit in two cars: his Ford Focus and my Pontiac Grand Am. (Remember this for later.) Getting to the Cobo Center, the home of the 2006 NAIAS, was a piece of cake, and we even were able to park in a parking garage right across from Cobo. Liz, one of John’s friends, decided that we should all leave our coats in the cars so that we don’t have to lug them around with us all day. It turns out that 30°F temperatures can feel pretty cold when there is a breeze.
Once we got there, we had to wait for Justin and his girlfriend to show up since he had bought us all e-tickets and had driven down separately from us. We also had to wait for Jake because he left his e-ticket in my car. Before you enter the show floor, we noticed a display set up by Saleen that was out in the lobby. They had a souped up Ford GT, a Ford Mustang GT, and their very own S7, which looks kind of like a Ferrari. Once Justin finally got there and Jake redeemed his e-ticket we were onto the show floor with hardly any wait. We started out in the Ford display, which included some of the Ford-manufactured brands, like Lincoln and Mercury. One thing that I found out pretty quickly is that the concept cars are much more fun to look at than the normal, production cars.
Before we knew it, the group fell apart due to everyone’s different interests. I ended up following John to be his photographer since he had forgotten to bring a camera. It didn’t take us long to stumble across the Ford Reflex, a pretty neat looking concept car that runs off of a hybrid diesel engine. Then, I found the Ford Super Chief that John had told me about. It has to be the longest vehicle that I have ever seen made for consumers. It makes a Chevy Suburban look short. The room in the cab is the largest that I have ever seen. The back row of seats has so much leg room that they even included leather elevated footrests. To top it off, they even had two fold-down 20+" LCD screens for the people in the back seat to watch movies. It even had an eight foot bed on the back for good measure.
After that we wondered around for a little bit until we reached the Dodge booth, where we made a beeline for the Dodge Challenger concept car. It was beautiful. It was hard to get pictures of it due to the crowd that it was attracting. Also, people just fail to realize that they make it very hard for pictures to be taken when they are standing between photographers and their subject.
After that, we meandered for a while longer until we reached the Chevrolet booth. (This aimless meandering was due to the fact that we got there before people started handing out maps of the show floor.) The first thing that John saw was the new Corvette Z-06. Right beside it was the new Corvette C6. You would have thought that he was in heaven. At this point, I lost track of John. While I was trying to find him, I noticed another concept car (made obvious be the crowd that forms around these rare species). I walked over to it and realized that it was none other than the new Chevy Camaro concept car, the star of this year’s show. I took some pictures of it and almost got squashed when the crowd suddenly moved closer to it when a Chevy rep opened the hood. While I was waiting for the car to rotate to a good angle for me, I managed to pick John out of the crowd. I went over to where he was and he decided that it was time for the whole group to unite so that we could go to lunch. It took a while for everyone to get to where we were.
We went out the exit for the food court, but John decided that we should go check out what was in the basement. We went down there, but it was basically just a bunch of after-market companies that had set up booths. Again, the group fragmented, but this time we managed to reunite without burning any cell minutes. We headed back upstairs and then back to the show floor. When we got there, we noticed that we had lost Justin and Sidney, his girlfriend, again. They called us and said that they had gone to the food court, so we went there to meet up with them. When we got there, we quickly noticed how high their prices were (auto show admission = $12; cheese steak = $7). We decided that we would go the the Renaissance Center and eat at their food court. We left Justin and Sidney behind since they had already purchased their food. To get there, we took the aptly named People Mover, which is an elevated train that travels in a loop between some of the important downtown buildings, including the Joe Louis Arena, home of the Detroit Red Wings.
By the time that we got to the Ren Cen, the girls (Liz and AJ) were complaining that they were hungry. Unfortunately for them, John still had cars on his mind. You see, the Ren Cen is also the General Motors headquarters. This meant that there were more cars to look at. First, we looked at the Cadillac Sixteen, which was out in the atrium. Then, we went to the basement to go visit GM World. At this point, we started the game "Find A Car That Josh (another of John’s friends) Can Fit Comfortably In So That John Can Buy It". Josh is about two inches taller than me, which makes it very hard to fit into most backseats without having to bend his neck in odd ways. Josh would be in the back instead of riding shotgun because Liz, his girlfriend, always gets it. We ended up coming to the conclusion that John would have to get an SUV or a Hummer for Josh to fit.
By now, John couldn’t take the girl’s complaining any more, so we finally hit the food court. The prices were normal, which came as a bit of a surprise to me. After we ate, Josh decided that he had to sit in one of the convertibles in GM World. We went back and took turns sitting in it and a C6 that was there. After finding out that Justin and Sidney had decided to leave, we hopped on the People Mover and went back to Cobo. One thing that I forgot to mention was the Cobo station. It looks like any other People Mover station until the train pulls out. It ends up that the track actually goes through the building. We could see right down onto the show floor! In the four hours that we had been on the show floor, I never once noticed that a train was traveling right above my head.
When we got back to Cobo, we noticed immediately that the crowds had picked up considerably. We also finally got a floor map. Liz took it upon herself to make sure that we all saw all of the booths. Finally, about two hours later, we decided to call it a day and head back to Flint. I was following John since he knows where he is going (sort of). Unfortunately, the first street that we pulled on put us driving directly into the setting sun. Then we got separated by traffic lights. Then a few large vehicles got between us, so Jake and I started playing "Is That John’s Focus That Is Making A Turn?". We finally caught back up with John and resumed following him … right into the parking garage for the MGM Grand. I don’t blame him; the signs, combined with a really weird intersection, would have fooled me too. We eventually got out and back onto SR-10. As soon as we got on, there was an exit for I-75, the way home. John drove right past it without noticing. I took the exit since I can get back to the apartments on my own once I am on I-75. I figured that we would probably get back five to ten minutes ahead of John. About five minutes later, I looked in my mirror and noticed a small gray car flying up behind me. I guess that John didn’t like not being the leader.
Remember when I said that I drove up in my car? Now is when it comes into play. When I was pulling through the gate into the apartment parking lot, I noticed my car make a weird noise. A few seconds later, Jake mentioned that he smelled something burning. I quickly pulled into a parking spot and killed the engine, not knowing what was happening. I popped my hood and noticed a lot of fluid sprayed all around under my hood. It smelled bad because some of it had sprayed onto the hot engine block. Since it was cold and starting to get dark, I called John over for a quick looksee. We agreed that it was the power steering. We couldn’t figure out where it all came from.
This morning, we went out and looked at it again. After some poking and prodding, we found the hose that had burst. It was hard to find because the hose had an extra corrugated plastic jacket around it that was blocking our view of the hole. We went to Advanced Auto Parts and got a quart of steering fluid and ordered the new hose, which we can pick up tomorrow morning. We put some of the steering fluid into the reservoir and started the car. At first, there were no leaks. When John turned the wheel, the hose moved over and pushed up against the master cylinder and suddenly fluid started gushing out. We’ll get back to it tomorrow when we get the part, but I am just glad that I know what it is and that it won’t be hard to fix.
