Some people were hoping that England's most famous marque, Jaguar, would try to give the show some last-minute lustre by deciding to surprise the world with a look at its entry-level roadster, codenamed X400, instead of waiting for Geneva in March, but that was not to be.
Looking at the X400 in nearby Coventry was my reason for being here in time to take in the show, by the way, and we will be offering up a lot more about that car next week. It's a very exciting product, by the way.
The other no-show was the Aston-Martin Vanquish, which is built nearby in Newport Pagnell. This supercar's absence was being tolerated because the English media thought the Ford-owned company was holding off debuting it because there were interior faults they wanted to fix first and this showed a new and welcome fussiness on the company's part. I didn't have the heart to tell them that the Vanquish wasn't there because it had been sent to the Miami auto show instead. That would have been too cruel.
The Brits were also offended by the fact that the Mini was here but was not debuting here, since the now-hated BMW had chosen Paris instead as a place to unveil the legendary English brand.
As is their nature, the Brits did a fair bit of grousing about all this and then simply got on with things at the show.
For the average British consumer, the big news involved the latest waves of changes to the way cars and priced and marketed here. For decades and for various reasons, the car companies overcharged consumers in this country egregiously. Cars here have always been more expensive than they are in Canada or the U.S., but they were also more expensive than they were in the rest of Europe.