Vancouver Auto Show: The Early Years
Credit to Author: Andrew McCredie| Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2020 14:00:17 +0000
With the Vancouver International Auto Show celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2020, we’re looking back on its history with a four-part series leading up to the March 25-29 show. In part one today, we cover the years 1920 to 1945, a time of great upheaval and dramatic world events, and also an era when the automobile made the leap from rich man’s plaything to everyman’s conveyance.
“For the first time in its history Vancouver’s Exhibition contains, as part of its many displays, an automobile show that is one of the most complete and representative displays of its kind ever made in this city, and one that will easily measure up with any ever held on the Pacific coast.’
It was with such bravado that the Vancouver Daily World reported in its Sept. 13, 1920 issue on the arrival of the inaugural Vancouver Auto Show. The page 15 story described how PNE management had devoted the entire space of one of the exhibition ground’s largest buildings to the auto show, an event presented by the Vancouver Motor Dealers’ Association. And to ensure that the space was a “pleasant picture for the eyes,” hanging ferns, evergreens and flower pots would be in abundance above and on the show floors.
As to the cars themselves, there was a promise that there would be ones to suit all tastes: “From the model of many years ago to the latest in builds, in engines and in colouring, there is a complete display, and one, it is stated, that the dealers guarantee will meet the requirements of any man, whatever his financial condition may be.”
The humble beginnings of the Vancouver auto show, circa 1920 at the Pacific National Exhibition. Note plants and flowers.
And so what is now a century old tradition began, one that judging from that Daily World story hasn’t changed much over the past 100 years — apart from the fact today’s dealers also guarantee the show vehicles will meet the requirements of women. As was with that first show, all subsequent shows have provided car enthusiasts the latest and greatest from the automobile world, along with the always popular classics and collectibles.
Likewise, like the 2020 Vancouver International Auto Show will do, those early shows introduced the public to cutting-edge features that would soon be standard place in all automobiles. Things like car heaters, wishbone suspension, vastly improved shock absorbers and the cigarette lighter wowed the crowds in the 1920s in much the same way 21st Century auto wizardry like autonomous driving, gesture controls and camera mirrors thrill today’s showgoers.
The 1921 show was equally hyped as that first show, with the Aug. 17th edition of the Vancouver Sun reporting that the floor space devoted to the auto show stretched beyond a mile, and would include car offerings from McLaughlin, Roamer, Lexington, Nash, Overland, Gray, Dort, Paige, Chalmers, Maxwell, Hupmobile, Ford, Willys-Knight, Packard, Dodge, Jackson, Studebaker, Oldsmobile and Chevrolet, and trucks from Oldsmobile, Packard, Ford, Ruggles, National, Maxwell, Dodge, Traffic and Day Elder.
“All are products of North American factories,” the story patriotically noted, “not a few of them having been built in Canada of Canadian materials and by Canadian workmen.”
A year later the 1922 show made it to the front page of the March 22ndVancouver Daily World edition, noting that a parade was held to mark the occasion and that the display had grown from the previous year’s 50 vehicles to 150, and that “(e)very standard machine ever offered to the motoring public on this continent will be there,” and, “(e)very tiny accessory designed to meet some subtle need of the motorist will be there too.”
The cover of the Vancouver Sun auto show section for the 1936 event.
The Vancouver auto show would have just over a decade run at the PNE before moving to the Seaforth Armoury at the south end of the Burrard Bridge in Kitsilano. And just as the show had matured and grown over the years, so had the advertising business around the automobile. For the 1936 show, the Vancouver Sun published a special auto show section that profiled many of the new vehicles on display and was packed full of dealer advertisements. Not unlike the special sections the Vancouver Sun and The Province continue to publish on the eve of every Vancouver International Auto Show.
As with many events during the war years, the Vancouver auto show dialed it way back from 1940 to 1945, but there was still an annual event to help keep the motoring public’s minds off the terrible goings-on overseas.
When the war ended the auto show celebrated its 25th anniversary, and with it looked ahead to what would become the most notable quarter century in the development of the automobile, and in many ways, Vancouver itself, with the explosion of a middle class with disposable income and a push to the newly established suburbs made possible by those automobiles.
— amccredie@postmedia.com