It is one of those strange quirks that, despite everything in the US, and their automobiles in particular, being bigger than everywhere else, their motor shows are always rather small.

Even Detroit’s season curtain raiser in usually frozen Michigan is positively petite compared to the leviathan shows held in Beijing and Frankfurt. Even so, when you go to the Big Apple, you expect the city to really go to town. But in reality, and despite the portentous name, this year’s New York International Auto Show was not like that.

For a start, it was tiny, with almost all brands compressed into one bite-sized hall. Second, it was astonishingly quiet. Right in the thick of the morning rush, those journalists that were there ambled calmly from place to place, secure in the knowledge that the object of their attention would be easily viewed with, for once, no need to sharpen the elbows to penetrate a media scrum that simply wasn’t there.

So you might conclude there was nothing much to see. But you’d be wrong. The Japanese made a sizeable effort in their biggest export market with Mazda winning the prize for bringing the best eye candy to the city. Even those not entirely swayed by the styling of the targa-topped MX-5 RF (a small minority) could see the car was a winner; one more string to the brand’s increasingly impressive bow.

But both Nissan and Toyota also took the opportunity to twiddle with current sportscar, the evergreen Nissan GT-R getting what must surely be the final nip and tuck of its career.

Power is up by a paltry 4 percent, but the new cabin looked a far more worthwhile enhancement, endowing the car at last with an interior ambience more commensurate with its price tag.

Perhaps surprisingly, given the enduring criticism levelled at the car for its lack of straight line speed, Toyota has provided not a single additional horsepower for the GT86. Instead its focus has been on a mild exterior tweak and chassis development intended to make it feel yet more agile.

Honda chose New York to unveil its maddest offering yet to be based on a road car, a GT3 race version of the NSX notably shorn of its entire hybrid drive system and front drive shafts.

Subaru unveiled an all new Impreza based on a brand new global platform. Safer, stiffer and stronger, perhaps the Impreza and the WRX that it will spawn will once more give Subaru the truly competitive family hatch it has so sorely lacked of late.

By contrast, the Germans had a quiet show. Easily the biggest push was made by Mercedes-Benz which showed the surprisingly inoffensive GLC Coupe, the smart C63 Cabriolet and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it facelifted CLA. But the biggest surprise came from Audi which whipped the covers off the R8 Spyder, complete with a claim that it is 50 percent stiffer than the car it replaces.

BMW showed up with a John Cooper Works Mini Cabriolet.

Other highlights included Hyundai launching Genesis as a standalone brand with a smart 3-series-sized sedan concept and Kia revealing the 2017 Cadenza.
 

Andrew Frankel (Autocar UK)