Spoiler alert! The 2021 Essen Motor Show is on!

Today the EMS 2021 opened its gates and awaits visitors until 5 December. Europe’s answer to SEMA is a trusted program for petrolheads and is back in the game big time.

This month it’s official: we are back to the postapocalyptic normality with car shows reviving the lust for PS and speed. This is a significant turning point in an era marked by pandemic and environmental restrictions. In our time, petrolheads are an endangered species. Still, the EMS will undoubtedly quench your thirst for high octane, high adrenaline and style.

The EMS offers attractions in four very different pillars, ranging from classic cars through production cars and tuning to race cars (in some cases with an occasional blur between them). The vehicles around these four topics fill the vast halls of the Essen Expo area. To give an idea about its size, here is the map of the show.

It takes about 4 hours to march through the entire show without dropping the anchor, but I have to warn you, stages are densely filled with sights. As most of them contain a lot of content, you will adopt snail speed very soon. I counted at least a dozen stages with (multiple) simulators, each will set you back by 15-20 minutes. Then, it took me half an hour to get an overdose of stories on Melkus cars, and this was just a tiny stage of two vehicles.

At the end of the day, I discovered that a colourful 911 (I rushed by earlier) featured Porsche’s every racing livery, which made me stop for a series of photos. In total, expect a full day programme easily, if you care about cars.

Pillar 1: Classic and exotic cars

Hall 1 is dedicated to classic cars and is stuffed with exotic and rare automobiles in perfectly restored condition. The organiser SIHA is also responsible for the Techno Classica, one of Europe’s A-lister classic car shows (they are also in charge of the Belgian Antwerp Classic).

This means that the EMS is not uncharted territory for classic car dealers. Traders, specialists like Brabus, and automotive pilgrimage sites like the Classic Remise have brought together many exciting cars.

From classic Rolls Royce through exotic sports cars like Spyker and Koenigsegg to an endless field of Mercs, the large Hall 1 offers something for everybody.

This year, the Techno Classica was cancelled, but my hopes to see the magnificent factory stages in November was in vain. EMS 2021 is no substitute for that.

While the factory museums remained absent, several museums and classic car events built up stages. The brilliant PS Speicher brought a diverse selection, from a prewar motorcycle to a modern truck.

Technical Museum Sinsheim-Speyer  (the guys who keep an original Buran space shuttle) also brought an F1 car from their ongoing Red Bull exhibition.

The main attraction of hall 1 is the event organiser SIHA’s centre stage. The exhibited cars focus on automotive anniversaries like the 75th anniversary of Vespa, the 60^th anniversary of the iconic Jaguar E-Type and Ford’s racing victories.

Pillar 2: production cars

Not a strong side of Essen, but nevertheless, a few brands are always present, albeit with light touch stages.

This year, Korean premium brand Genesis showed up with a compact but elegant stage. They were flashing three models with lots of hosts and hostesses to ask nosy questions (they are in the process of building out their European network).

Generally, Hyundai’s presence was pretty intense, with an impressive line-up of sporty cars highlighted by a few race cars around the hall.

Toyota brought reinforcements from its motorsport division from Cologne, but even the road car line-up was pretty sporty.

Apart from a few exceptions, like the brand new Mercedes EQS, there were hardly any other brands that showed presence- At the same time, EMS is not a traditional new car trade show.

Pillar 3: Show cars and tuning

This an ambivalent topic, as is it features some of my absolute highlights and the creepiest automotive moments of the show.

I won’t lie to you; I am still partly blind after the torture chamber of tuning in Hall 5.  In that hall, every car was slammed like they could not get the barriers of the hall open. Why?????

The last time I liked this setup on cars, I was like 5… Some of the creepiest moments could be excused for making fun of tuning (like the pink bosuzoku Miata), others were just simply wrong.

At the same time, I saw some really spectacular tuning, usually in other halls, like the stage with 5 (five!) excessively tuned Nissan GTRs or the Howdeep stage.

Occasionally, we saw grid girls at a few locations, but those days are clearly over now.

While car manufacturers hardly participated, the tuning and component industry embarked with full might and built even more impressive stages than most factories.

The best part of the show was the theme dedicated to movie cars.

In addition to the usual stage provided by a specialist movie car rental company, Chromecars brought a beautiful set, and half of it hosted pretty cool movie cars (all the Fast and Furious cars were exhibited in their chambers).

Pillar 4: Racing

Race cars are a crucial feature of the show, as they fill several halls (and are particularly dense in Halls 3 and 8). From recent touring to classics, visitors will find their love interest.

Chromecars dedicated half of their stage to Lotus racing history.

Hall 8 is dedicated to racing series (from classics to tractor pulling), and Hall 3 hosts ADAC and Nürburgring.

But also Hall 2 has dozens of race cars.

One reason why visitors won’t leave the compound anytime soon is the abundance of high-end simulators.

There are at least a dozen stages with impressive tech, many accommodating several, sometimes over a dozen steering wheels.

The show is open until 5 December, so there is plenty of time to pay a visit. Egzostive will publish our impressions in more detail in the coming weeks, like all the movie cars, the horrors of tuning and the classics.

For an overview of this years car events, check Egzostive’s ultimate European automotive bucket list!