Looking at everything that came out of last week’s Paris Motor Show, I felt like a kid again.
I used to love motor shows. Earl’s Court, the NEC, the excitement of seeing new models and futuristic concepts for the first time, while dreaming of what company car my dad might be able to get next time.
I’d come home laden with glossy brochures, stickers and whatever else I could get my hands on, and spend the next year obsessing over 0-60 figures, horsepower and top speeds.
And an Instamatic camera full of badly lit, blurry photos of Vauxhall Senators and Ford XR4s, which I’d then get developed at great expense at the local Boots. (Gen Z, you have no idea what I’m talking about! 🤣)
More importantly, though, I’d come back with memories of brands that stayed with me.
But in more recent years, motor shows have rather fallen out of fashion.
In a world obsessed with metrics, I can understand why. They’re hugely expensive, and the return on investment is notoriously difficult to pin down. Someone inspired today might not buy a car for months, or even years.
That doesn’t mean the investment hasn’t worked.
Local Marketing
for Automotive.
I can still remember cars I first saw at motor shows decades ago. The brands that caught my imagination then have stayed with me, and some have influenced the cars I’ve bought since.
That’s a pretty powerful return, even if it’s almost impossible to attribute to a particular marketing budget.
Which is why seeing the buzz around last week’s motor show was manna from heaven for me. And what a fantastic showing from the European brands, particularly the French.
The Renaulution has been in full swing over the last few years with the Renault 5, Renault 4 and forthcoming Twingo. Its new E-Space Concept caught my eye too. A return to the MPV, a format that seems to have been forgotten in the rush towards SUVs, despite being such a brilliant solution for families.
Alpine’s A310 VISION was another highlight, referencing the original from 1971.
But perhaps my biggest delight was Stellantis. It has an incredible portfolio of brands, yet for a while I’ve felt some of their individual character and personality has been missing.
Paris suggested that’s really changing, with those brands once again leaning into their own unique stories.
The Opel STX Concept (Vauxhall to us), the striking DS Automobiles F3VER and the gorgeous Alfa Romeo Cuorerosso all looked amazing.
Fiat’s Multiplina and Multiplay brought back some of that wonderfully unconventional thinking that made the original Multipla so interesting.
Peugeot revisited the RCZ with its RCZ Vision, while the E-T16 referenced the legendary 205 T16 rally car. Another one from my era!
And then there was Citroën’s wonderful reinterpretation of the 2CV, complete with the fabulous Fourgonnette van concept. Probably my favourite of everything I saw from the show.
What excited me wasn’t simply rose-tinted nostalgia.
It was seeing these brands remembering what made them distinctive in the first place.
With the market becoming increasingly crowded with new manufacturers, established European brands have something incredibly valuable to draw upon.
Their heritage. Their character. Their stories.
But heritage alone isn’t enough. As I touched on in my recent Christian Dior Couture article, the stories brands tell need to create emotional connections, give meaning to design and help people understand what makes one brand different from another.
That’s something newer brands have to work hard to build.
And it’s why I think we’re often much too quick to judge marketing activity only by the immediate sales generated. A motor show might not sell someone a car today. But it might make them fall in love with a brand that they will remember for the rest of their life.
Surely there’s value in that?
Of course, there’s a big difference between creating a fabulous concept car and getting something equally exciting into production. Renault has shown with the 5 that it can be done.
So congratulations to everyone involved in Paris 2026. What a fantastic reminder of why motor shows still matter. Now let’s see what makes it into the dealerships over the next few years. Fingers crossed they stay true to the concepts!
And here’s to everyone who came away from Paris with the same excitement and memories that I did all those years ago.
I doubt anyone at Ford or Vauxhall could have measured the value of those blurry photographs back then. But here I am, nearly 40 years later, still talking about them.
Long live the motor show!
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