Introduction
For the first time in a long time, I decided to check out the Canadian International AutoShow! And I can confidently say, I wasn’t disappointed! I was worried that the entire show would be full of econoboxes and basic cars, and while they definitely accounted for the majority of the cars, there were quite a few enthusiast grade cars present.
I have quite a few highlights, and I’ll break them down from big to small. Meaning I’ll first start with entire exhibits that I think should be counted as highlights and then move towards individual cars that were impressive.
Whether you’re here because you didn’t get to catch the auto show and want to see what you missed, or just here because you’re interested – Welcome! And without further ado, let’s dive in.
Though a quick note, I recorded all of the content featured in this article on a DJI Action 4, so the images present are screenshots of the videos I recorded. Now unfortunately, while the videos look great, the screenshots of the videos don’t look so great, so I must apologize for that. However, if you do want to see the footage in all of it’s glory, the full video will be uploaded to my YouTube channel: @SharkzAuto.
BMW
I think BMW had the best exhibit of all the brands at the show, which is surprising because they had a large exhibit but probably nearly the fewest number of cars. It speaks volumes to the effective use of white space, they had plenty of empty space and they used it well.
Furthermore, they didn’t fill up their exhibit with econoboxes, the soul focus was on the M cars and sports bikes. Which is great because the vast majority of people there are going to be enthusiasts who are interested in enthusiast cars. Now yes, they did have a section for their electric cars, but it was tiny compared to the M cars and was well separated – so much so that it felt like an entirely different exhibit.
I think the perfect spread of M cars was shown. There was the M5 Wagon, the M4, the M2 and M340i. The M5 Wagon has got to be one of the most loved cars of all time, everyone loves the M5 and everyone loves a wagon. The M4 is probably one of the best-looking coupes in the modern era as well and I, like many others, have fallen in love with them.
The M2 is your performance monster with an amazing power to weight ratio. Finally, the M340i really rounds out the bunch, it lives in a lower tax bracket (albeit still far from cheap) and is one of the best daily drivers that money can buy.
Of course the M SUVs were present, and they looked incredible. I truly think we are in the golden era of Sports SUVs right now, and BMW is sitting at the forefront for all aspects except straight line speed. When it comes to straight line speed there are others that can compete, but when it comes to going around a track, I’ll take an M SUV everyday of the week (check out my article about sports SUVs here).
Audi
The Germans really showed out at the AutoShow this year, because Audi was my second favourite exhibit. Like BMW, they showcased an exquisite use of whitespace and design, perhaps better than BMW actually. Audi really created an experience, as you entered they had many interesting things being shown on TVs, and they made it feel like you were walking through different stages, whereas BMW was a giant hall.
But where BMW came out on top was the car selection, while BMW had nearly the entire M lineup present, Audi didn’t have very many RS cars present.
The RS3 however was present, and I consider this car to be amongst the best daily drivers on the market, perhaps better than the M340i. In fact, I hope that the second car I own can be an RS3, because once again, it’s a great daily.
Some of their sports SUVs were present, and I don’t want to sell Audi short here. While I personally think the M SUVs are a bit better on the performance side, the Audi’s are incredible as well. When it comes to looks Audi might have BMW beat here on the SUV side, and they also just have a way of delivering brutal power that no other brand can mimic quite right.
The RSQ8 was a show-stopper here, it has a lot of presence when you see it in person. I’d choose the RSQ8 over the Urus everyday of the week, you get the same powertrain, drivetrain and interior (almost at least) for much less money. It’s a no brainer.
Ford
I was unsure as to whether or not I’d put the Ford exhibit down as a highlight, when I compare it to BMW and Audi it really wasn’t as great – but I still enjoyed it. Ford didn’t have a ton of exciting cars present, while they did have a few Mustang trims present their exhibit was largely dominated by trucks and the Bronco. They also didn’t use whitespace as well as BMW or Audi and I found their exhibit to feel quite cramped and lacking focus.
But again, given all of that, I still enjoyed myself. I actually thought seeing all the various trims of the F150 and their differences was fun, every where you turn you could find a different variant of it. Furthermore, I need to give credit where credit is due, the Mustang is a good-looking car and they had a bunch of them. Seeing the Dark Horse and GTD in person was pretty cool.
Ford did do a really good job of keeping people engaged at their booth. While BMW and Audi had very little human interaction going on, Ford had presenters and mascots constantly engaging with patrons.
So despite Ford not doing the things I praised BMW and Audi for, it still turned out to be a fun and memorable exhibit.
Super/Hyper Cars
In previous years, people had complained that the AutoShow didn’t have enough super/hypercars present, and that they were mainly appealing to people buying boring cars. I personally can’t speak to those previous years, but I can confirm that this year had a healthy dose of higher end enthusiast vehicles. Now of course, as an enthusiast, I’d always want to see more but who wouldn’t!
We’re starting this section off strong with an exhibit that contained both the Aston Martin Valhalla and the 1 of 1 Bugatti Mistral La Perle Rare. These two cars have a combined price tag of about $8,000,000 CAD which could very well make this the most expensive exhibit of the entire show.
The Valhalla is quite a cool car; it’s essentially the younger brother of the Valkyrie and puts up some impressive stats. It moves from 0 – 100km/h (60mph) in 2.5 seconds and makes over 1000 horsepower. But unfortunately, it was very much overshadowed by the Bugatti.
To be fair, as great as the Valhalla is, a 1 of 1 Bugatti Mistral is just better. I really can’t quite find the words to describe how great that Bugatti looked in person. It looked like a work of art in the same way a Pagani does, but somehow better and more elegant.
Moving on, I found another exhihbit that had quite a few older exotics lined up. These are cars from the early 2000s, so not old enough to be classics but they hold a special place in my heart because I grew up with them. Sandwiched between two Ferrari’s was this gorgeous 2008 Ford GT. To this day, I don’t think Ford has created a better looking car.
After walking another 10 meters down that aisle, I arrived at a lineup of supercars that made my jaw drop. It honestly looked like the lineup of the most expensive cars in an early Need For Speed game. In a single line we had a Bugatti Chiron, SLR McLaren, Porsche GT3R, Lamborghini Murcielago SV, Lamborghini Diablo SVR, Ferrari SF90 and Koenigsegg CCR.
That was just an insane lineup to walk through and most of those cars there let me relive a bit of my childhood. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to fit pictures of all of these cars in this article, but I’ll try!
To end this section off, we arrive at yet another stunning exhibit, this one was split between McLaren and Pagani – and they didn’t disappoint. We had the Pagani Utopia, McLaren F1, McLaren W1, McLaren P1 and SLR McLaren (check out my article about the holy trinity of cars here).
As always, the Pagani looks like a work of art that should be in an art gallery, their craftmanship is on another level. And I personally don’t think there could be any better choice of McLarens to display.
We have the F1 which had a huge impact on the automotive industry. It was one of the first cars to bring F1 technology and performance into production cars. We have the new W1 which will be the successor of the legendary P1 and makes over 1200 horsepower. We have the P1 which is the godfather of McLaren and is a member of the holy trinity. And to round it all out we have the SLR McLaren which is a monstrosity that no one saw coming but everyone loves.
Racecars
If I’m being honest, I don’t really know that much about F1, Nascar or professional motorsports on the whole. But while I don’t fully understand professional motorsport, I still can appreciate the awesome cars that come with it.
I had the chance to see two F1 cars at the AutoShow, one from Cadillac and the other from Audi. Now I don’t know if these were real F1 cars that would see track time or not, because as I said I don’t follow F1, but these things were sick. I’d have to give the edge to Audi one, while I am a fan of the all black Cadillac, the Audi on the rotating display just had a crazy presence in their exhibit.
Following this up I saw what I think is a Dodge Nascar model, and this car actually appears twice at the show in two separate exhibits. When I found it the second time I thought I was going crazy and had been walking in circles. This thing had a full roll cage, gutted interior and what I assume is a bottle or 2 of Nitrous – which is awesome.
I saw a bunch more crazy cars that I think might be GT3 cars – full carbon bodies, crazy aero kits and crazy liveries. The Pfaff team had a Huracan Evo and C8 Corvette on display which were wild to see in person. But then I found the real star of the show – the Honda Fit. This appeared to be a heavily modified 2nd gen Fit, and I think I almost fell in love with this car.
To round out this section I also found a GT3 Mustang and a McLaren M8C. The M8C really isn’t something I was expecting and it caught me off guard because I had walked right past it when I entered and only noticed it on my way out.
Classics
There were a lot of classics at the AutoShow that I liked, but if I listed them all here then this would be a very long article/video. So instead, I’ll talk about my favourite classic exhibit – Oblivion Classics.
Oblivion was tucked away in a corner of the show, but I had seen it on the website and knew it was something I had to checkout. And boy am I happy I did, the assortment of classic cars they had there spanned quite a range.
Like BMW, they also created an experience with their exhibit, alongside the cars they had old CRT televisions showing off videos of the cars along with radios too. I’m not sure if they also chose the carpet design or if that was a happy accident, but it really added to the retro theme.
To start off you are greeted by a classic Mitsubishi Pajero, Audi Quattro, Lamborghini Diablo and a Honda CRX. This is what I meant when I said they had quite a range of cars there. I can’t think of any other exhibit that had that combination of brands together.
Continuing forward we are greeted by a near pristine Nissan Pulsar NX, which I think is known as the Nissan EXA outside of North America. As well as a Ford RS200S, which is a car that I’ve never heard of but from the looks of it, seems to be a rally car of sorts.
I was greeted by even more cars I had never heard of as I continued through towards the end of the exhibit. There was a 1991 Geo Tracker towing a jet-ski with a matching livery that is a clearly someone’s baby. Followed by a Ferrari 308 GTS and then a car I was able to identify, an older Ford Taurus SHO. Fun fact that I didn’t know, SHO stands for Super High Output, a very American and simple acronym.
Wild Cards
I’ve reserved this section to list a few other highlights I saw that just don’t quite fit into the other categories.
There was ghost-buster replica wagon, at least I assumed it was a replica but it could also be an actual movie prop – who knows?
Overall, I wasn’t really a fan of GMCs exhibit, but they did do something cool with their trucks that caught my attention. They wanted to show off the payload capacity of their GMC Sierra Duramax’s, and they definitely did that. They parked a GMC Sierra, on top of 2 other GMC Seirra’s.
Shifting gears completely (no pun intended), I then noticed a fully built HKS RX-7 at the HKS booth (go figure), and this thing was crazy to see upclose. I really expected that they wouldn’t have let people get too close to the thing, but I’m glad they did.
Sung Kang’s new movie drifter had a small booth with a nice IS350 and Toyota Sprinter. And not far away was also a RWB Porsche.
Next up we had the monster racing booth, which was kind of its own mini exhibit. This was pretty cool, they had some race sims set up as well as a huger Ford Super Duty which was almost taller than me.
Finally, we’ll end this article off with one of the most unique things I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing in person, which was a full size 1950s Cadillac made entirely out of Lego.
Conclusion
So there you have it, those were all my highlights from the 2026 Canadian International AutoShow. Whether you missed the show this year or you’re trying to decide if you’ll go next year, I hope you enjoyed it.
Sources: Bugatti, Aston Martin
