How Germany’s Frankfurt Motor Show Came to Be Held in Munich

• What we once called the Frankfurt Auto Show has moved to Munich.

• The show, in fact, has been held all over Germany since its inception more than 100 years ago, before settling into the Frankfurt Messe in 1951.

• The show is now called IAA Mobility and is now more of a symposium for cars. It opens to the public on Tuesday.

It was never officially called the Frankfurt Auto Show, that’s just what everyone started calling it because it was held in Frankfurt these last several decades, but the Internationale Automobil-Austelling (try saying that three times real fast after a couple hefeweizens) has been held all over Germany for well over 100 years. It started in 1897 in Berlin with eight cars. From there it went to Hannover briefly before settling into its longtime home at the Frankfurt Messe (meeting place, or trade fair) in 1951. From there, it boomed. At its peak, a million visitors crammed into the Messe’s 12 huge halls. Manufacturers spent millions of dollars on show stands and presentations. Significant new models debuted, their development having been timed for a Frankfurt reveal. The world convened every two years on Frankfurt.

Then attendance waned, cars started getting a bad rap, there were even protests, and the show evolved. The contract for the Frankfurt Messe also expired, and the VDA (the Germand Association for the Automotive Industry), which had organized the show, started looking around. Which leads us to this year. As carmakers find more efficient ways to spend their marketing dollars, the IAA has been more or less transformed into a sort of green car symposium centered in Munich, home of BMW. As such, BMW is the largest exhibitor.