Lean times may be causing automakers to cut costs, reduce staff, and reconsider plans for new products, but the checkbook is open for displays at the auto shows.

The season's first show, in Los Angeles, is under way. Philadelphia's show begins today, and media preview days begin tomorrow for the biggest, the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. As the displays indicate, austerity still takes a backseat when the priority is catching public attention.

General Motors Corp.'s exhibit in Detroit, for example, is a kind of show within a show: It covers 180,000 square feet, and has offices, two elevators, and a sound stage.

Chuck Fortinberry, president of the Detroit Auto Dealers Association, which sponsors the Detroit show, put the cost of displays at about $300 million - "not including cars and carpets."

Although U.S. and foreign vehicle sales figures reported Thursday showed that 2001 was the second-best year in history, earnings are likely to have been depressed because of the high costs of incentives such as zero-percent financing. So some people involved in the show had expected more cost-consciousness.

"I was surprised to see so many new displays with the economy the way it is," said Dominic Silvio, president and chief executive officer of Exhibit Works, a leading supplier of exhibit displays.

Still, if image is important - and it really is - then spending on displays makes sense, Silvio said. "Detroit is the show because it gets the international press in, and you want to impress them," he said.

It's Detroit's 14th year of offering an international show, which has evolved way beyond the concept of sliding a few cars onto patches of carpet, slapping up a logo, and laying out stacks of brochures.

Each automaker is spending upward of $15 million, installing features that include theaters, hospitality areas, executive offices and elevators, Silvio said.

The latest trends include large video screens and video games to provide something to do for the youngsters whose parents dragged them along, he said.

Exhibit Works, with headquarters in Livonia, Mich., built the multilevel Ford Motor Co. exhibit that debuted four years ago to oohs and ahs because of its size and its escalator. It has been refurbished each year since. Silvio said the average life of a display is four years, although no decision has been made on whether the Ford layout will be replaced.

Japanese automakers traditionally erected much more modest displays, but the competitive pressure has caused them to get in the game.

Including costs associated with the show's construction and dismantling, Comerica Bank's chief economist, David Littmann, predicts a record $509.1 million economic boost to the Detroit area, which would surpass last year's show by almost $10 million