The Autoxperience trade fair is scheduled to take place in the Swiss metropolis from 7 to 9 March 2025
It was 31 May 2024 when – to no one’s surprise – the news arrived that the Geneva Motor Show was finally coming to an end. A crisis that began with the pandemic and from which the Swiss motor show was unable to recover, as the last edition in 2024 had very few visitors. A farewell to an event that had been held for 119 years.
Now, surprisingly, the website of AutoXperience, a car show that will take place from 7 to 9 March 2025, has surfaced. Where? At the Palexpo in Geneva, where the Salon was already held.
AutoXperience 2025 is being organised by the Geneva section of the UPSA (Union Professionnelle Suisse de l’Automobile) and Palexpo SA, which manages the exhibition grounds on the outskirts of the city. The GIMS – the Geneva International Motor Show, which now focuses on a trade fair held every two years in Qatar – therefore has nothing to do with it. But the differences do not end there.
AutoXperience partly adopts the format of the Brussels Motor Show: the cars are presented by the Swiss branches of the manufacturers present, in cooperation with the dealers and with the opportunity for visitors to test drive and perhaps buy the cars. A kind of multi-brand showroom with the latest innovations, some of which are celebrating their European or world premiere. Although there are unlikely to be any premieres worth mentioning, at least at this first edition.
The Alfa Romeo stand at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show
In other words, a more sustainable format that enables manufacturers to generate – in technical jargon – leads: Collecting data from potential customers who can then be contacted again or even conclude preliminary contracts.
If you read the list of brands exhibiting their new products at AutoXperience 2025 and compare it with that of the last Geneva Motor Show, the difference (in a positive sense) is immediately apparent. In fact, 30 brands will be represented this year with around 200 new products:
Tickets go on sale on 27 January on the event’s official website.
What happened to the Geneva Motor Show?