By Beth Robinson

D

orn as a car show cum fishing and hunting show in Detroit's Beller's Beer
Garden in 1907, the North American International Auto Show — NAIAS —
has proliferated into a mammoth 750,000 square feet of display space in Cobo
Center, including 25,000 square feet of new space opened up in the ongoing
Cobo renovation process, expected to be complete by the 2014 auto show.
Considered one of the top five auto shows in the world (with Frankfurt,
Shanghai/China, Geneva and Paris) in terms of number of press, visiting
executives and new product introductions, the 2012 show will give auto en-
thusiasts a whopping 40 unveilings over which to ooh and aah.
With 40-plus vendors and more than 500 vehicles to view, even King David, Judah

Maccabee and Simon Bar Kochba might stand in the doorway scratching their celebrat-
ed heads, uncertain how to attack.
So we assembled a crack crew of veteran Jewish road warriors and up-and-coming
young guns (and one auto show insider) to share their battle plans.
Aaron Robinson is a technical editor at Car and Driver Magazine (and this writer's
brother), Brett Berk writes "Stick Shift: The Gay Car Blog" for VanityFair.com , David
Gluckman is an online editor at Car and Driver and David Zenlea is an associate editor
at Automobile magazine.
For the insider's view, we turned to Joe Rohatynski of the Howell firm Rohatynski and
Harlow, which does PR for the North American International Auto Show.

manufacturers are "lifting up
their skirts and showing you
what's on their minds. The con-
cept cars give you a glimpse into
the future."
The Insider: Joe Rohatynski
has worked with the auto show
for more than 15 years, visiting
with his own father when he
was a kid and later with his own
three sons. When Volkswagen
showed the Concept One in
1994, he said, there were no
plans to put a new Beetle into
production. "Everyone went
nuts," said Rohatynski, and four
years later, the reinvented love
bug rolled off the Volkswagen
line. Definitely check out the
concepts.

AARON ROBINSON

Native Detroiter and L.A. trans-
plant Aaron Robinson probably
isn't the only auto writer whose
boyhood bedroom housed a pas-
sionately curated collection of
Dinky and Budgie die cast models.
But before the Car and Driver
technical editor graduated to a
garage littered with the full-scale
innards of such auto exotica as the
Lamborghini Espada, he was surely
one of very few budding autophiles
to own a souvenir model Sabra —
the Israeli-made car which, myth
has it, camels liked to chew on.
As a young racing aficionado,
Robinson was an avid reader of
Road and Track's Formula 1 cover-
age.
"I figured out, probably around
the time of my bar mitzvah, that
I was probably not going to be a
racecar driver. At a very early age, I
was trying to figure out how to get
paid to do something I just wanted
to do anyway."
He did, inevitably, try auto rac-
ing, concluding that it "requires a
certain amount of Jockness' that I
never had. I don't like going fast,
and I don't care about winning."
According to Robinson, whose
earliest memory of the Detroit
show was "being really cold," the
auto show is a great place to shop
for cars.
"If you're shopping, you know,
everything is right there."
But don't just look from afar.
"You want to sit in [the cars], sit
in the back seat, pull all the levers,
try everything. Swing your legs in.
Adjust the seat if you can; close the
door. Don't just look at them."
For the non-shopper, he says, the
big thing to look at is the concept
cars because it takes an average
of four years and as much as $1.5
billion to bring a new car to the
market.
"Every production car to some
extent is a look at the past," said
Robinson. With the concept cars,

www.redthreadmagazine.com

BRETT BERK

Car and Driver writer Aaron Robinson as a kid at the auto show. Here

he is all grown up.

Brett Berk is known in
auto circles as the author of
VanityFair.com's pop culture car
column "Stick Shift: The Gay
Car Blog."
As early as his bar mitzvah,
Berk showed precocious flair,
adorning his bar mitzvah cake
with a Deusenberg, the elegant
jazz-era status symbol driven by
the fashionable likes of Tom Mix
and Rudolph Valentino.
Berk is the rare auto writer
who doesn't write about what he
calls "the engine-y stuff."
"I don't really understand
how an internal combustion
engine works," he joked.
"Cars are a fashion accessory,"
said Berk. "They express who we
are and how we see ourselves."
What best describes Berk?
The author of the article "City
Gay/Country Gay" drives a 1972
GMC Suburban at his upstate
New York home and a 2004
BMW 325i to go back and forth
to the city.
One of his favorite "Stick
Shift" pieces is last April's "A
Very Stick Shift Passover! Ten
Jewish Car Writers Share 10

Automotive Plagues." "The whole minyan
of car Jews — we got them all together,"
said Berk.
Unsurprisingly, Robinson, a serious se-
rial Lamborghini restorer (after 10 years
restoring the first one, he sold it, regretted
it, bought another) contributed the plague
of "Italian Irresistibility" — "for a beautiful
car is like a beautiful woman, and Adonai
blesses the world with both so that you
shall know the meaning of the term 'high
maintenance."
Among Berk's picks at the NAIAS are
the new BMW 3 series; the new Mer-
cedes SL; the Cadillac XTS sedan, with
its new entertainment interface; the 650
hp Mustang; and the elegant Cadillac Ciel
convertible concept car, which Berk loves.
An Oberlin graduate with a master's in
education, Berk taught both preschool and
university creative writing before coming
out of the closet
as an auto ma-
ven. In college,
he confessed,
he used to hide
in the library
secretly reading
Car and Driver.
Originally a
parenting writer,
Berk, 42, is the
author of The
Gay Uncle's
Guide to Parent-
Brett Berk
ing.
The Farmington Hills native remembers
going to the car show with his own father.
"I would insist on getting into every car
on the floor:'
Berk offers the following survival advice
for parents who hope to create great auto
show memories:
"No. 1: Be patient. Set a time limit.
Set up the expectations. Run through
the rules. The biggest mistake parents
make is not being proactive. Turn it into
something manageable as opposed to
something overwhelming. Talk about
what their expectations are. Also, take the
People Mover if it's not bankrupt by then."
The Insider: Rohatynski suggests
WXYZ-TV Channel 7 Family Day on

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Tmtra

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