The St. Louis Auto Show 2012

My friend from the apartment Jimbo kindly shared a ticket with me to the 2012 St. Louis Auto Show. It was held at the Edward Jones Dome where the Rams play as well as the connected America's Center.

The show really was about the cars. When I initially heard "auto show" I was thinking car babes and free swag keychains and the like. Thank god there was none of that. Just cars. Some with their doors open.

One of the highlights of the show for me was checking out the electric and hybrid cars. At this point I haven't seen or been in many of these cars, so it was new to me.

Things got more interesting the farther we walked from the front door and much of the pretty standard fare. The Edward Jones Dome proper had all kinds of good stuff. There were concept-looking cars and a couple of things that were put together by university students.

This tricked out Ford something was pretty cool.

This little guy first brought to mind a Star Wars droid.  Is this the smallest car I've ever seen? Nope. In Japan this would be classified as an SUV. This one is way smaller.

Lifting up the seat revealed the multiple car batteries that it ran on.

There were several companies selling things like mini metered electricity dispensers for future electric cars to drink at.

Something that was new to me was this Jeep obstacle course. After waiting in a decent sized line people were treated to a ride through simulated rough terrain with a staff person behind the wheel.

My absolute favorite of the night was either the Million Dollar Mile where the expensive stuff was, or the historical society with the cars from the 20's. Both were hidden behind velvet ropes, which was unfortunate. There was this silly thing at the expensive area where you could pay to have your picture taken standing next to an expensive car. Kinda lame in my opinion.

Several of these were brands like Lotus and Maserati that I've not seen in person.

This Rolls Royce was pretty killer. The couple standing next to us remarked that it looked like a big refrigerator.

This one was Moon brand, which I am very sad isn't still sold. The Moon Motor Car company was based in St. Louis and went out of business in 1930.