Choose the hour before you choose the hall
The single decision that shapes the whole day is what time you walk through the door. The first ninety minutes after opening are the calmest, the stands are freshly cleaned, and the people working on them have not yet answered the same question two hundred times. If you can arrive at opening on a weekday, do it. The difference between that and a Saturday afternoon is the difference between a gallery and a railway station.
The second useful window is the last two hours before closing, when the crowds thin out and the staff relax. It is less good for detailed questions, because everyone is tired, but it is excellent for standing quietly in front of a car and simply looking at it. Avoid the middle of the day entirely if you can. That is when the halls are hottest, the queues for coffee are longest, and every bench is occupied.
Dress for a building, not for a car
Visitors often dress for the occasion and regret it by the second hall. The floors are hard, polished and unforgiving, and a full day can mean several kilometres of walking on concrete. Soft-soled shoes that you already trust are worth more than anything smarter. A light jacket or a shawl matters too: the halls are cooled aggressively, and after an hour of standing still many people find them genuinely cold.
Carry as little as possible. A small shoulder bag with water, reading glasses, a notebook and a phone charger covers everything you will need. Large bags become heavy exactly when you least want them to, and the cloakroom queue at the end of the day is usually longer than the one at the start. If you wear varifocals, remember that stand lighting is often low and warm, and that reading a specification card in that light is harder than you expect.
Plan for four stands, not forty
Before you arrive, decide on four cars you genuinely want to stand next to. Write them down. Everything else on the day is a bonus. This sounds unambitious and it is the most useful advice on this page, because attention is the scarce resource at an exhibition, not opportunity. Four cars examined properly will stay with you for months. Forty glanced at will blur into a single impression of polished paint by the time you reach the car park.
Once you have your four, look at the hall plan and work out the shortest route between them. Walk that route first, before the halls fill. Then wander freely with whatever energy remains. Visitors who wander first almost always run out of patience before they reach the thing they came for, and then spend the drive home mildly annoyed with themselves.
Sit down before you need to
Fatigue at an exhibition arrives suddenly rather than gradually. The trick, which experienced visitors all learn eventually, is to sit for ten minutes every hour whether or not you feel tired. Seating is usually tucked behind catering areas, along the outer walls, and in the quieter corners near service doors. Note where it is when you first pass it, because you will want it later and searching while tired is miserable.
Use those ten minutes to write. Two lines per car, while the impression is fresh: what the seat felt like, whether you could see out of it, how high the boot lip sat, whether the switches felt solid. Notes written in the car park are already half invention. Notes written on a bench forty metres from the stand are reliable, and they are what turn a day out into a decision you can act on later.
Leave earlier than you want to
There is a moment, usually after about four hours, when every car begins to look the same. That is the point to stop. Nothing you look at after that will be remembered accurately, and pushing on rarely produces insight. Buy a coffee, sit down, read through your notes, and mark the two cars you would like to see again. Then leave while you are still in a good mood.
Parking at the larger venues empties slowly, so allow a full hour between deciding to go and actually reaching the main road. If you have hired a car for the weekend, this is a good moment to drive somewhere calm along the coast rather than straight home. A quiet half hour with the air conditioning on and the notes on the passenger seat is when most of the useful thinking actually happens.
