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Up until now my experience of car auctions has been fun and interesting but hardly high-rolling. You probably know the sort of thing: a freezing cold pit staring at a parade of Mondeos and Vectras, munching on a bacon sandwich while taking the scene in.

Which is why the Gooding auction I've just been to in Pebble Beach, California readjusted my set a bit.

Auctions like this are where the real high rollers come to buy and sell million dollar cars and are just as part of the annual Pebble Beach pageant as the Concours D'Elegance itself.

Would you know what a Hyundai Grandeur was if, for example, you fell over one on a stand at the London motor show? No; neither would I. Nonetheless it exists, and there's even one here at ExCel this week.

It happens to be the Korean brand's flagship saloon. It's just had a bit of a facelift, which is why Hyundai's making a fuss over it at the moment. And I've even taken a picture of one, just in case you think I'm making it up.

Hyundai has been selling this car for the last two years.

I’m not quite sure at what point I fell out of love with the motor show.

It could have been some time in the late ‘70s when my dad stopped building exhibition stands for the event and I no longer got in for free. Then maybe it was the middle ‘80s when I was pressed into service at the London International Show at Earls Court and made to hang around on the BMW stand and bother innocent show goers.

I spent more time chatting up the hired totty, especially one girl who looked like Sheena Easton. Strange that I can remember her in perfect detail but I couldn’t tell you anything about the cars.

Carmakers don't often display crashed vehicles on their motor show stands. But Ford went to town at the New York show with a mangled Taurus saloon that had been converted into an interactive display.

The Ford Taurus is a mainstream saloon of the type that's the backbone of the US car market. It's about the size of a current Passat and has the look of the last-generation Mondeo. Ford says it is the 'safest large car in America'.

The white car on display had been put through the US industry standard 35mph '40 percent' offset frontal crash. That mimics a typical head-on collision where at least one driver manages to steer away from the oncoming car. But that makes things worse, because the crash force is then mostly concentrated on one corner.

New York is grey, wet and under a cloud. After yesterday’s slashing of the base interest rate, Wall Street stocks jumped, but this morning, as the Auto Show opens in the city, the screens have gone red again. 

President Bush is making rallying cries for the economy, but the whole of the city has one eye on the markets. As I was driven though the gridlocked streets this morning, the radio station was quoting the price of a barrel of oil as if updating the baseball results.

No surprise, then, that the NY show is quieter and more subdued than I’ve seen for the last few years.

The new Delta is an eye-catching beast in the flesh. It's a curious hybrid of the old long-roofed Lancia Beta HPE sports hatch and an imaginary medium-size version of the Rover 75. But the Rover comparison is apt. 

Lancia has been on the rocks for over two decades. Last year it sold around 125,000 cars, relying on the home market and a continental taste for the ritzy Lancia Ypsilon supermini. Lancia's current design strategy, like that of Rover, could be looking for a
market for which little evidence exists. While the Rover 75 was a clever re-think of the hackneyed 'gentleman's club', the Lancia strategy is for the "relaxed, convivial atmosphere of an elegantly casual lounge."

So the idea of the traditional St James' gentleman's club interior has morphed into a vodka bar or a celebrity haunt such as Soho House, but it amounts to much the same thing.