What to measure at a motor show
A show hall is the only place you can sit in eleven cars in two hours without anybody asking for your identity number. Go with a tape measure and a short list of numbers, and leave the brochures on the stand.
Updated 15 October 2026BloemfonteinThe whole file
An indoor motor show hall with cars on low platforms under bright overhead light, visitors sitting in open-doored vehicles.
Why we take a tape to a show hall
Shows are poor places to judge a car and excellent places to measure one. Nobody is driving, the doors are open, and the stand is happy for you to sit there for five minutes. In two hours we have come away with seat base length, door aperture height, boot lip height and rear knee room for a dozen cars, which is a month of dealership appointments compressed into one morning.
Take a 3 m tape with a lock, a small spirit level and a notebook with a page per car. Photographs are nearly useless for this because a wide lens flatters an interior and a phone cannot tell you that the cushion is 455 mm long. Write the numbers down by hand and you will still trust them in three weeks.
The three measurements that settle an argument
First, boot lip height off the floor with the boot open, and boot aperture width at its narrowest. A folded wheelchair needs about 700 mm of clear width and a lip you can slide across rather than lift over. Second, door aperture height at the B-pillar. Third, the distance from the backrest to the top of the steering wheel rim, because a long reach with short arms means you will drive with the seat too far forward for your legs.
Those three numbers eliminate more cars than any road test. We have watched a buyer fall out of love with a car they had wanted for two years in about four minutes, purely because the boot lip stood 790 mm up and they lift a sewing machine into it every week.
Price boards and what they leave out
The number on the stand is almost never the number you pay. Ask what the board price excludes and you will usually find on-the-road costs, a licence and registration fee, and a delivery charge, which together run an indicative R14 000 to R22 000. Ask separately whether the car on the stand carries the specification in the price, because show cars are routinely the top trim with the options fitted.
Ask the one question that gets a straight answer: which items on this car are a service plan and which are a maintenance plan, and for how many kilometres. The difference between the two is the difference between paying for your own brake pads and not paying for them, and it is worth an indicative R30 000 over six years.
Hall light flatters an interior
Show lighting is bright, even and from above, which is the one condition under which a dark grey plastic looks like a soft-touch material. Take a photograph with the flash off and look at it outside the hall; the grain goes flat and the hard panels declare themselves. The same light hides panel-gap variation almost completely.
The floor lies too. It is dead level and smooth, so entry height feels lower and sill reach feels shorter than it will in your own driveway with a camber on it. Never decide on entry comfort at a show. Measure at the show, then sit in the car at a dealership on a sloped surface before you commit.
Taking the show home
At the end of a show morning we sit in the car park and rank the pages. The ranking is almost always different from the one we walked in with, because the cars that photograph well are not the cars that measure well. Then the top three go on the test loop, and roughly one of those three survives.
One practical note for anyone travelling from here to a hall in Gauteng: book the test drives before you go rather than at the show. The drives offered at a show are two kilometres on closed tarmac with a marshal in the passenger seat, which tells you nothing you could not learn standing still.
Three things to take away
- 01Boot lip height, door aperture height and backrest-to-wheel reach eliminate more cars than any road test.
- 02Hall lighting makes hard plastics look soft and hides panel-gap variation; photograph with the flash off.
- 03Ask which items are a service plan and which are a maintenance plan, and over how many kilometres.