Covered: Cars, big business
( Japanese food in a mid-’90s-style chill-out room) to Skoda (elevated cafe with unlimited beer and seafood). They – alright, we – take everything they can from the event: information, contacts, sweets and then head off before ghastly Joe Public arrives with his voracious appetite for pointless auto tat and Sebastian Vettel mouse mats.
‘THE TOP CARS ARE DECORATED BY TOP-OF-THERANGE MODELS’
photography: anthony teasdale
Finally, at the bottom are the anonymous folk – the bar staff, car polishers, delivery men – who actually make this thing tick. No-one takes pictures of them or listens to the information they’ve got on the vehicle they’re working on. Instead, we let them dust cars and fill up fridges, all the while waiting for someone more pleasing on the eye to come along. A sad and very familiar state of affairs. Like the best theme parks, then, there’s so much to see here that you have to be determined if you’re going to get the best out of it, which is why Umbrella bows out at 5pm with aching legs and swollen feet. We’ve been impressed by the scale of the event and the ingenuity of the manufacturers, but can’t help but think that with a global recession on, this mind-blowing display of wealth is all bit too try-hard.
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