Tokyo Show Retro

Let me set the scene. Your press pass has gained you early entrance to the first day of the Tokyo Motor Show. The sheer amount of machinery on display is mind-fritzing. Cars and bikes as far as you can see, all polished to a faretheewell and positively aglow under an array of spotlights that would do Broadway proud. A squadron of vacuum cleaners provides the background music, scarfing up the last of the effluvia left over from show setup.

Over at the Suzuki motorcycle booth, the staff is getting ready for the hordes of show-goers soon to stampede through the doors. The main man has his girls lined up in two arrow-straight rows. They are all dressed alike, perfection times 20. Blue miniskirts, tailored jackets and pillbox hats, looking like impeccable throwbacks to a time when airline passengers were tended to by young, pretty, smiling stewardesses (or “stews” to be horribly incorrect, politically), not surly grandmas in it for the flight benefits.

For a minute, you think they might break into group calisthenics despite their high heels but, no, this is a pep talk (well...okay, pep lecture), a last chance to get the details right before the show opens.

Motorcycle shows in America, not even the (shameless plug alert) Cycle World International Motorcycle Shows, prepare you for the likes of Paris or Cologne or Milan or Tokyo. Crowds are immense, jostling elbow-to-elbow to get a closer view of some new concept model or another. And come time for the unveiling of the next great whiz-banger, complete with smoke, lights and leggy models, the crush of the crowd will carry you off in that direction like flotsam on the tide, whether you like it or not.

Mostly you like it.