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So, today Scott and I went to the 2004 Chicago Auto Show at McCormick Place. We were able to go free with tickets provided by the Illinois and Northwest Indiana Buick dealerships. Buick provided us with a courtesy suite, with a complimentary coat check (really just a coat rack for us to hang our coats on ourselves) and refreshments. It was a pretty nice little conference room, especially with the free tickets. Having read about in Car & Driver and seen on Car & Driver Television some of the vehicles appearing at the Detroit Auto Show, I knew what I wanted to see at the Chicago event. All of the major car manufacturers were there, including a few I was surprised to see, such as Avanti and Scion. I had seen a couple Avanti’s driving around Schaumburg in the past couple of years, but I had never known what the hell they were. They seemed like weird looking cars, kind of like the custom wheels used in the 1997 movie version of Romeo and Juliet. I didn’t expect to see Scion as a separate display from Toyota, as the Scion xA and xB were previously marketed as Toyota Scions. Also, I had not heard of the Scion tC before, and I was pleasantly surprised by it, as well. It seems like a rebranded Toyota Celica, with about 20hp and 20 lb-ft of torque more than the Celica. The tC is not slated for release in America until June 2004. Some of the concept cars that we saw that really caught our eyes were the Toyota FTX (a diesel V8 hybrid truck), the Lexus IS430 Project, the Lexus HPX, the Ford Shelby Cobra, the Chrysler ME Four-Twelve, the Acura TL A-spec, and the Audi Le Mans quattro. Among the production cars that we liked were the Pontiac Solstice, the Chrysler Crossfire, and the Chevrolet Corvette (you know I couldn’t leave her out). There were a slew of others, but I can’t recall them all (and the Chicago Auto Show website doesn’t have pages for everything). I’ve got to get to bed, so I will hopefully write more tomorrow.