Main Street in Motion

On Saturday Billie and I went to Main Street in Motion, which is a GM marketing event, down by the stadiums in Philadelphia. Although we actually have done a few things since the winter, I figured that we should post about something close to the time that it happened for a change. Maybe then we can post about the other spring/summer events in reverse chronological order.

Anyway, Main Street in Motion takes place in parking lots around the country, where people get to check out some of the current GM lineup without pesky salespeople around. There are also short courses where people can drive the GM cars in addition to a few competitors, though it was hard to get much of a feel for how the cars would work out on actual roads.

In total, Billie and I drove 26 cars (see the full list at the bottom of the post) over about six hours from Saturday morning until the afternoon. The website said that people would spend about an hour there but those people must have had a much narrower interest in the available vehicles. The only things we didn't drive were the trucks and large SUVs. Below are some pictures along with more detailed descriptions (click on the pictures to see larger versions).

All of Philadelphia's stadiums are clustered together at the Southern end of the city. In this picture you can see how far we were from downtown.

This sign was on the side of a truck near the sign-in tent. We waited much longer to sign in than we did to drive any of the cars.

A line of Chevy Cruzes (can you spot the Malibu?) in front of Citizens Bank Park, where the Philadelphia Phillies play.

Our first stop was the Chevy area, where we drove quite a few cars and SUVs (technically car-based C(crossover)UVs). At this point, we alternated driving from one vehicle to the next, though we later started taking each vehicle through the course twice, once for each of us, before relinquishing it to the next people in line. The course in the Chevy area was pretty bland. There was a short straightaway followed by a 90-degree turn and a bunch more fairly sharp turns. They seemed to want people to know what it would be like navigating these vehicles through a mall parking lot. The answer was: not very fun.

After leaving the Chevy area, we headed over to the Volt, which had its own space. They were really pushing the Cruze, which you were required to drive before you could get a stamp to drive the Volt. The Volt course actually went out onto the real roads, which were just as boring as the Chevy course because they were all 90-degree turns and straightaways. Also, there was a person riding with you in the Volt to tell you where to go. This wasn't the case with the Chevys or Buicks, which is where we went next.

After we both drove the Volt we headed to the Buick/GMC area where there were some faster cars and a better course. In the picture above you can see a Lexus ES, Acura TL, a bunch of Buick LaCrosses, some Buick Regals, and quite a few CUVs. The course in this area was designed for higher speeds and gave a better feel for the way each car handled when making quick turns. The winners in this area were the Acuras, which had tighter steering than the others, though I doubt this would have been as noticeable if we were driving them on a road like normal people.

After we left the Buicks we actually returned to the Chevys and drove some cars we hadn't wanted to wait in line for in the morning, since there were fewer people by the afternoon. Then we returned to the "Performance" section, where we had stopped briefly after driving the Volt. The first time we drove the V6 Camaro because there was no line for it. When we returned we were able to drive the Corvettes, which had long lines originally.

This is the black Corvette GS that Billie drove.

This is the yellow Corvette GS that Brent drove.

In the Performance area there was a person riding in the car with you. We had also only driven this part once before driving the Corvettes, so their power was mostly wasted on us. If we had been able to drive them on the Buick course that we were pretty familiar with we probably could have seemed slightly less pathetic.

Besides the driving areas, there were air conditioned tents set up to look at the insides of the GM cars and they had water and soft pretzels in another tent, so it was a pretty good (and free) way to spend a Saturday.

In all, we drove the following cars: Acura TL, Acura TSX, Buick LaCrosse, Buick Regal Turbo, Chevy Camaro RS, Chevy Corvette GS, Chevy Cruze, Chevy Volt, Ford Taurus, Honda Accord, Honda Civic, Hyundai Elantra, Nissan Maxima, and Toyota Camry.

We also drove the following CUVs: Acura MDX, Buick Enclave, Chevy Equinox, Chevy Traverse, Ford Explorer, GMC Acadia Denali, GMC Terrain, Honda CR-V, Honda Pilot, Hyundai Santa Fe, Nissan Murano, and Toyota Rav4.