New York Auto Show picks

The New York International Auto Show has always been good at one thing: putting the industry’s contradictions under one roof. This year’s version at the Javits Center, running April 3 through April 12, leans especially hard into that split screen. On one side are the fantasy cars, built to stop people in their tracks. On the other are the clues about where the real market is going, and those clues point toward cheaper EVs, louder branding, and a very uneven transition. The show itself says more than 700 vehicles are on display, from compact electrics to 1,500-horsepower hypercars. That mix is the story. The loudest object in the room may be the Subaru Brataroo 9500 Turbo, even though it is not a production car at all. Subaru and Hoonigan first revealed it at SEMA in November 2025, but New York gave the public a fresh look at a machine that feels engineered for internet mythology. It starts as a 1978 Subaru BRAT, then turns into a 670-horsepower Gymkhana weapon with a 9,500-rpm turbo boxer engine, carbon-fiber bodywork, a sequential gearbox, all-wheel drive, and active aero that can even adjust the car’s balance while airborne. This is not the future of commuting. It is the future of spectacle. And that matters, because spectacle is now part of how automakers keep attention while the business itself gets more practical. That is why the Zenvo Aurora Agil makes sense here too. The Danish hypercar arrived in New York with numbers so excessive they almost read like parody: a quad-turbo 6.6-liter V12, hybrid assistance, up to 1,450 horsepower in Agil form, a claimed 0-to-62 mph time of 2.5 seconds, and a price that stretches to about $3 million. Only 100 Auroras are planned across the lineup, split between the track-focused Agil and the more touring-oriented Tur. Zenvo’s pitch is not just speed. It is usable speed. The company even talks up a “Quiet Mode” for city driving, which is a funny phrase to attach to a carbon-heavy missile built for people with climate-controlled garages. But it also reveals the current logic of the supercar business: even the most absurd machine now has to pretend it can do normal life. That same logic shows up in a much more important car. One of the show’s most talked-about affordable entries is Hyundai’s small EV, described in roundup coverage as a roughly $35,000 electric model that can mimic the sound of a gas engine or even a fighter jet. The detail sounds silly until you look at Hyundai’s broader strategy. The company’s INSTEROID concept, revealed through Hyundai’s own channels, is a design exercise built from the Inster EV and shaped by gaming culture, with a stripped-down cockpit, exaggerated aero, and a custom sound signature. It is not headed for production. The point is to make a cheap electric car feel emotionally loaded instead of merely sensible. Carmakers have figured out that EV adoption is not just about range and charging. It is also about theater. That brings the show back down to earth. While New York fills its floor with dream machines, the sales data says the market is still sorting itself out. GM remained the top-selling automaker in the United States in the first quarter even as its overall sales fell about 10 percent to 626,429 vehicles. That is less a sign of strength than of scale. The company is still big enough to lead through a down quarter. The more useful detail is inside the lineup. Chevrolet remains the center of gravity for GM’s EV push, even as some battery models posted weak results and the broader EV market cooled from its earlier rush. In other words, the mainstream electric transition is still happening, but not in a clean line. It is arriving the same way this auto show does: with one hall full of impossible machines, and another full of companies trying to make electricity feel exciting enough to buy.