There hasn’t been a true North American International Auto Show since January 2019. After that show concluded, organizers decided to move the event; the 2020 festivities were slated for June of that year. But of course, by the time summer 2020 came around, the world was a very different place.
The wait is due to end next week. After a limited outdoor event last September called Detroit Motor Bella, the North American International Auto Show will return in something resembling its original form on September 14. The event will be held both indoors and out at multiple locations — Huntington Place, Hart Plaza and in downtown Detroit — and will open to the public for a week starting Saturday, September 17. And the President will be in town for it, too!
Below we’ve compiled everything we expect to see at the show. As of September 7, that admittedly isn’t much. Expect further updates if we learn more.
2024 Ford Mustang
At the moment, there’s only one debut confirmed for the Detroit Auto Show: The 2024 “S650" Ford Mustang. This will mark the legendary pony car’s first comprehensive redesign in seven years.
For a long time, rumors suggested that Ford was prepping a hybrid, all-wheel-drive version of the forthcoming flagship, but the latest from Automotive News claims that Ford has ditched that plan, and that the S650 series will be rear-wheel drive and ICE-powered only. You may also see it on dealer lots for a very long time, as Ford has reportedly lengthened the planned product cycle from six years to eight.
This will assuredly be the final gas-powered Mustang — and thus, the last with a manual transmission — so suffice it to say there’s plenty of hype behind it, especially as the current Challenger and (probably) Camaro depart the market by 2025.
The seventh-generation ’Stang will be built at the Blue Oval’s Flat Rock Assembly Plant, which the company announced in June. The launch is scheduled for September 14 at 8 p.m. Eastern time, and you can expect it to be live-streamed, so you won’t have to be on the ground in the Motor City to get a peek.
... And That’s It!
No, seriously — have you seen the prospective Day 1 press conference schedule for the show? It’s not looking particularly exciting at the moment:
Amid a crowd of suppliers, Jeep, Chevrolet, Hyundai and Ford are the only major automakers with press conferences scheduled on the busiest media day of the show. That could change, of course, but with the start roughly 20 days away, this might be exactly what we get. After all, the pandemic forced the auto industry (and lots of other non-automotive industries) to figure out how to reveal new products via streaming online announcements, a trend that also impacted the tech and gaming sectors.
Now, Jeep, Chevrolet and Hyundai certainly have new models on the horizon. But we either already know about them, or they’re expected to debut elsewhere. The forthcoming (and so far nameless) Jeep Renegade replacement, seen above, will bow in Paris in October. The all-electric Blazer and Silverado may show up in the flesh at the Detroit show — perhaps joined by the Equinox, which was last teased at CES in January 2022 — but of course we already know what those look like. Ditto for the Hyundai Ioniq 6.
All this is to say, we don’t have much to go on yet. But we will update this article as soon as we catch wind of any Detroit unveilings we can really sink our teeth into. The best kind of unveilings!