Yahoo Autos Here's How BMW Built a Concept-Car Display Inside a Boeing 777 and Flew It around the World
Automakers are looking at auto shows the way young adults see taxis: who needs 'em? While revealing a car to thousands of reporters in a convention hall is still good press, counterintuitively, the latest trend in public relations is displaying new product away from the public. Hence BMW chose to debut its Vision iNext concept aboard a cargo jet tucked in the furthest hangar of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.
In this instance, BMW struck a deal with Lufthansa to convert a Boeing 777F into a traveling show stand to visit four cities in five days. New York was the second stop (Munich being first, followed by San Francisco and Beijing). Three hundred journalists were invited to "board" the flight, and, unlike at an auto show, they were barred from taking photographs or carrying a phone.
You might imagine the space inside Boeing's longest-range commercial jet would be massive, but this isn't the company's larger 747-8F that takes the tallest cargo through the nose or its massive new 747-400 Dreamlifter with the swing-out tail. Those airplanes are the size of Rhode Island. BMW had to squeeze the Vision iNext, which is roughly the size of an X3, through one of the plane's side doors aft of the wing. Before that, engineers built a floor splitting the fuselage at its widest (20-foot, four-inch) section. That floor, split between a carpeted lounge space at the far end and the car on a traditional carousel in the middle, was mostly an expanse of square LED panels that had us wishing BMW would break out into Saturday Night Fever. Instead, electrobeats pumped through the speakers while projectors played movies on a half-circle screen blocking the entire cabin. Once finished, it powered down into the floor. After that, the car spun a few times (barely kissing the walls) and then remotely crawled forward under its own electric power. In case you're wondering why the monthly payment on your X5 is so high, elaborate events like this are one possible explanation.
International auto shows cost a couple million dollars for a week's worth of media buzz. For the same price, or perhaps less, an automaker can be in complete control of its own private stage without any competitors nearby. Mercedes is skipping the 2019 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Chevy airlifted the 2019 Silverado by helicopter onto Texas Motor Speedway during a small customer event. Instagram stories, PR executives are thinking these days, tell better stories than journalists.
BMW bragged about installing 78,000 LEDs, 10 projectors beaming 13,000 lumens, and 4.7 miles' worth of wiring in the 777F. They really did. Without air conditioning or fans of any kind, the plane was a balmy sauna. To that end, BMW's debut in a cargo plane didn't feel much different than its conventional debuts at the stuffy-hot Frankfurt auto show. Only we couldn't make a beeline to the company's sexy M cars.
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