New York Auto Show Celebrates 125th Anniversary with Historic Car Display

For 2025, the New York International Auto Show (NYIAS) marks its 125th anniversary. It was North America’s first official new-car show when it opened on November 3, 1900, in the original Madison Square Gardens.

The week-long event was initially called the National Auto Show and featured 160 cars powered by gasoline, electricity, and steam. Some 48,000 people paid the 50-cent entry fee for the show (it’s now $22). To mark the anniversary, this year’s show displayed a number of historic vehicles, including the following, which were some of the highlights.

1924 Chrysler Six

In addition to being a mechanical engineer, Walter Chrysler was a brilliant businessman whose specialty was fixing failing auto companies. One was Maxwell, which he took over and then used to create the 1924 Chrysler Six, named for its innovative six-cylinder engine. It was the first passenger car with standard hydraulic brakes on all four wheels.

This car is the only known survivor of four or five original prototypes (no one’s quite sure how many there were). The likely-apocryphal story goes that Chrysler wasn’t allowed to display it in the New York show because the car wasn’t in full production, but even if that wasn’t the actual reason, it’s true that he rented the building’s lobby to ensure everyone saw his cars first. This particular car was one of them, and it’s also believed it’s the prototype Chrysler himself test drove to approve its production.

1970 Subaru 360

Subaru initially made motor scooters, and American entrepreneur Malcolm Bricklin imported and sold them in the U.S. When Subaru started making cars, he wanted those as well, but they didn’t meet American crash standards. It was the late 1960s and Japanese cars weren’t selling well in the U.S., and Subaru didn’t want the expense of designing a car specifically for that market.

Bricklin found a loophole: The 360 didn’t weigh enough to count as a car under the regulations, so it didn’t need to be crash-tested. It sold well thanks to its rock-bottom $1,297 price until Consumer Reports called it the country’s most unsafe car and sales plummeted. Still, the Subaru of America company Bricklin formed to sell it is still the one around today. He later built the Bricklin gull-winged sports car in New Brunswick in 1974, funded by the provincial government that wrapped it up a year later with $23 million down the drain.

1910 Ford Model T Depot Hack

Henry Ford’s Model T was the car that essentially switched North America from horses to gasoline. He was already making a variety of cars when he unveiled the inexpensive and simple Model T in 1908 and then scrapped everything else, making only the T car and TT truck until 1927. He perfected the existing auto assembly line system and when his new version fired up in 1914, it reduced the car’s build time from 12 hours to 90 minutes. The Model T’s record of 15 million built stood until the Volkswagen Beetle finally broke it in 1972. The Depot Hack, an early version of a station wagon, was designed to take passengers from train stations to their homes or hotels.

1999 Acura NSX

The NSX, for New Sportscar eXperimental, actually debuted at the 1989 Chicago Auto Show, and then went on sale in 1990. It was the first production car with its chassis and body made entirely of aluminum, and its 3.0-litre V6 was Acura’s first in the U.S. with VTEC, which stands for Variable Valve Timing and Lift Electronic Control. Famously, Formula One champion Ayrton Senna worked on the tuning and sent it back to the engineers to stiffen everything by 50 per cent before he was satisfied. Although it was widely praised as an incredible sports car, sales weren’t very strong, and it was discontinued by 2005. A second-generation hybrid version with twin-turbo V6 and electric motors launched in 2015 and lasted until 2022.

1956 Mercedes-Benz 300SL

Before Jaguar, Volkswagen, and Mercedes-Benz had American subsidiaries, they were imported and sold by Manhattan-based car dealer Maxmilian Hoffman. He convinced Mercedes to make a consumer version of its 300SL race car, which he debuted at the 1954 International Motor Sports Show in New York. Its 215 horsepower and top speed of 250 km/h made it the fastest production car of its day.

The gullwing lasted until 1957, while a roadster version was made from 1957 to 1963. Among his other auto clients, Hoffman convinced Porsche to build the 356 Speedster, Alfa Romeo to make the Giulietta Spider, and BMW its 507 Roadster.

1982 DeLorean

U.S.-based John DeLorean built his stainless-steel sports car in Ireland because, as Bricklin earlier did with his car, he lobbied for government money in return for creating jobs. That funding ended when the production car was lower-powered and higher-priced than expected, and sales were poor. DeLorean was then arrested (and later acquitted) in an FBI sting operation, charged with attempting to traffic 24 kilograms of cocaine, which, it was suspected, was to fund his company. Three years after the factory closed in 1982, a flux capacitor was added to one for the movie Back to the Future, sealing the DeLorean’s eternal fame.

1967 Volkswagen Samba Bus

Alongside its new all-electric I.D. Buzz, Volkswagen displayed this Type 2 Microbus. The eight skylights added to its other glass panels make it a “21-window” Samba model. The Microbus was introduced in 1949 and was based on the Beetle’s chassis and used its 53-horsepower air-cooled engine, so you definitely couldn’t be in a hurry to get anywhere. It eventually came in a variety of configurations, including camper, pickup truck, and panel van. Today, one of these multi-window vans in decent condition will easily cost six figures.

1963 Chevrolet Corvette

Since the Corvette was intended as a low-volume showpiece when it debuted in 1952, it had a fibreglass body that was cheaper than stamping a steel one. Sales eventually rose, but the lighter-weight “glass” stayed. All early models were convertibles, but the all-new 1963 Sting Ray added a two-door coupe with two-piece rear window. Looking good and looking behind were two different things, and the “split window” was single-year-only due to visibility issues. Some owners even replaced it with a single-pane window. Today, the split-window Vette is among those most prized by collectors, and reason enough to showcase it at the 2025 New York International Auto Show.