An NADA Show for the history books

January 30, 2025

The NADA Show 2025 is one for the record books. It was disrupted by the most snow of any show in history. 

NADA 2016 in New Orleans was impacted by frigid temperatures and icy conditions that kept some attendees from returning home. This year was another level. Some parts of New Orleans received more than eight inches of snow, and airports, bridges and some roads were shut down. 

Some parts of New Orleans received more than eight inches of snow, and airports, bridges and some roads were shut down. Travellers resorted to flying to nearby cities and renting cars to make the annual pilgrimage. 

Canadian auto dealer columnist Ian Cruickshank shares his journey to NADA and what he observed at this year’s show. 

The stories of travel adventures pulled everyone together.

No matter where attendees were travelling in from, everyone arrived with a story of flight delays, cancellations, reroutings, unexpected hotel stays all over the United States, car rentals — or all of the above. For example, the 18-minute trip from the airport to the event took as many as 80 to 120 minutes on Wednesday and Thursday. The most impressive drive reported was a team member from NextUp who drove 26 hours from Montreal, Quebec, and picked up fellow teammates in Nashville on the way down.

As always, the draw of NADA was significant, and the weather was no match for many attendees who travelled from great distances, including Australia, Kazakhstan, and South Africa.

Attendance, while enthusiastic for those that made it, was significantly lower than expected.

Ultimately, the weather did take its toll. While the official word from conference organizers was that 75 per cent of event passes were picked up, the report from vendors was that dealer attendance was closer to 50 per cent of expectations. While there were not as many dealership operators in attendance, those who made it were there to learn, meet with vendors, and improve their businesses.

The weather also impacted the scheduled manufacturing meetings, with 10 of the 26 scheduled meetings cancelled or significantly changed due to the absence of senior leadership. 

While many of the OEMs had significant news to share, Stellantis and Nissan gained the most news coverage. Stellantis has made it clear that they are on the comeback trail, with substantial investments expected to deliver incremental gains all year. They vow to support their dealers with increased ad spending at the regional level. 

Following the Honda merger announcement, Nissan has an optimistic tone with more investment in the core brand and some reduction in models within their premium brand.

The organizers had to move fast to reschedule the Educational Sessions and Super Sessions for those delayed by the storm. 

While the attendance numbers in the sessions were significantly reduced, the topics covered the gamut of dealer operations, from sales and services to labour and leasing. 

Fortunately, the keynote sessions did not disappoint. Coach K (Mike Krzyzewski, Head Coach of the Men’s Basketball program at Duke University) shared his philosophy: “Your people are the single biggest resource.” While it’s not exactly new information, he did a fantastic job driving home the power of relationships, trust, accountability, and continuous improvement. Coach K knows teamwork, and there was a ton of it to keep this year’s show on track.

The show floor was almost complete.

This year, the exhibit got off to a slow start, opening at noon on Friday to allow many of the vendors and show staff to complete their setup. The massive booths were all there, including the Cox Automotive Campus, The Reynolds realm, Tekion and the recently acquired DriveCentric. 

What was the hottest topic on the floor? Unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence had the top volume of mentions as companies work feverishly to figure out more ways to use this new technology. The key so far is how well a model is trained, which is highly dependent on the size and quality of data used to train it. 

It was, however, sad to see many smaller booths that were simply a pile of boxes in the middle of a 10×10 or 20×20 space with signs that read “Still downloading… due to snow.”

For the exhibitors who were unable to make it, we wish them the very best and hope to see them at NADA 2026, February 3 to 6, in Las Vegas: where the last significant snowfall was 7.4 inches (18.8 centimetres) on January 31, 1979. Fingers crossed. 

Article by Ian Cruickshank, President and CEO, Leadbox and Canadian auto dealer columnist

Related Articles
Share via
Copy link