Welcome to a special edition of Five Things you need to know about Michigan presenting the 2008 Detroit Auto Show, held January 19 - 27, 2008 at the Cobo Center in Detroit, Michigan.

We say Detroit Auto Show, you say..?

We're going to continue to call the 2008 North American International Auto Show the "Detroit Auto Show" until we receive a convincing argument to stop. "North American International Auto Show" is just too long and NAIAS sounds like some kind of acronym thought up to make everyone happy that doesn't. The NAIAS history page doesn't explain why the Detroit Auto Show changed its name after 82 years in 1989. Concept Carz suggests that it was because Detroit Auto Show became an international event that year, but Edmunds says that BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Volvo first joined the show way back in 1957.

Blogging the Detroit Auto Show

If you like your coverage on the irreverant side, look no further than the 2008 Detroit Auto Show on Jalopnik. Gawker's car blog features coverage headlined by Detroit's own Ray Wert, photos, video, an active user community and a weakness for bad jokes. Over at Autoblog they pile up the photos as fast as the car companies can dish them out - check out this post on the Cadillac Provoq fuel cell concept for a taste. If you like your cars oil-free, you should keep an eye on Autoblog Green (be sure to watch the video of the Toyota A-BAT - it's got "cutest pickup" nailed down). Pretty much everyone with a blog is covering it of course, from Cars.com to Popular Mechanics to the My Little Pony blog. We were going to run down newspaper coverage as well, but it's enough to give you the links to the Detroit News Auto Show pages - their article on The Race to Be Green probably sets the tone for 2008 - and the Freep's NAIAS coverage.

Detroit Auto Show Photos

The photo at the top right is murcielago roadster by joojanta from the Absolute Michigan pool. He has a great set of photos called NAIAS 200x with more. You can see a whole lot more by checking Detroit Auto Show and/or NAIAS on Flickr. The blogs & papers above are another great source of photos of production cars and concepts and you can get daily pics from the official 2008 North American International Auto Show media site through MSN. If you'd like to step back in time, check out this Detroit News Rearview Mirror feature The Detroit Auto Show: from beer gardens to tabernacles to Cobo Center and the 1957 Detroit Auto Show from the Michigan Historical Museum.

Detroit Auto Show Video

Once again, the blogs and papers above have video. For more, we turn to a YouTube search on Detroit Auto Show (see the most recently added NAIAS videos). A few notable ones are the Weekend Drive tour of the booths at the 2007 NAIAS, the Auto Channel's 23 minute "Press Pass" tour (one of MANY they have), Wheels TV presenting to 2007 Concept Cars, Governor Granholm talking about the future of Michigan's car industry and the Auto Network givingyou a look at the Opening Ceremony. One of the coolest things about a major show is the level of technical sophistication of the displays. A great example of this is the Jeep Waterfall.

Attending the Detroit Auto Show

The NAIAS web site - ok, so I'll type it - has everything you need to know about attending the public show ($12 for adults this year) and the black tie charity preview. If you can't attend, you might squint your eyes and see if this detnews.com virtual tour does the job for you. If you do attend and take pictures or video, we'd love it if you'd share them with us on Flickr and YouTube!

Anything else to add or ask? Post it in the comments!

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