It’s cold outside, and the roads are covered in salt and snow. Let’s get to an auto show!

It’s always summer at an auto show. The convertibles have their tops down, and every car is immaculately clean. There’s no Seasonal Affective Disorder. The lights are strong and deliberately filtered to make the vehicles look their best. In fact, the lighting is often the most expensive part of any display, and can easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to install and run.

“The cars are extremely well and meticulously lit so they pop and so you can see the design lines perfectly—no shadows and dead dark zones,” says JoAnne Caza of Mercedes-Benz Canada.

“Lighting […] creates a distinctive mood-atmosphere within our booth. You will often see the scissor lift in our booth adjusting lights as late as press day. We and our lighting partner always want to ensure that it's perfect.”

Perfect—that’s what the carmakers strive for. One year at the Detroit auto show, Mercedes even turned its display stage into an ice rink so skaters could dance and twirl around the vehicles on press day.

Of course, that’s the day when automakers pull out all the stops to impress the media and encourage prospective buyers to visit. Celebrities, acrobats and more pounding music and dry ice than any rock concert all help the drama, but in the end, the cars are the stars.

Organizers estimate 850,000 people will attend one of the six Canadian auto shows this year: the Montreal show already attracted more than 200,000 visitors in January, and March and April will see smaller shows in Quebec City, Calgary, Vancouver and Edmonton.

The biggest of them all is the Canadian International AutoShow in Toronto, which will host a media day and VIP night on Thursday, February 12, and opens to the public the next day, running until Sunday, February 22.

The last four years set attendance records for Toronto, with more than 300,000 visitors to each show. Since last year was also a record year for auto sales in Canada and this year is expected to continue the trend, there are no signs the event will be any less popular.

Auto shows are a big deal for Canadian makers: in Toronto, organizers estimate 80,000 new-car purchases each year are influenced by the show.

This year, for the first time, you can actually buy a car at the Toronto show, from agents licensed by the Ontario Motor Vehicle Industry Council (OMVIC). They wear gold badges, while manufacturers’ reps wear red badges and are there just to offer information. There’s no pressure to buy if you don’t want it.

There are plenty of good reasons to go to an auto show, including just getting the chance to see all kinds of cool show cars and demonstrations of clever stuff. If you’re thinking of actually buying in the next year or two, here are five reasons to attend, plus, for all you car-mudgeons, one reason to think twice:

The manufacturer’s representatives know more about the cars than almost anyone else.

Most makers have at least six cars, and some booths have two or three times that. To make sure their representatives know the vehicles inside-out, those reps will specialize in three or four cars and will know as much as possible about them.

They’re usually people brought in for the show who have a keen knowledge of cars and are trained beforehand on the most obscure details. They don’t know enough to compare their cars to those of another maker, as a dealer’s salesperson might, but that’s okay—the other maker’s there to talk up their own car, too.

There’s no pressure to buy.

This is one of the greatest advantages – there are no pushy salespeople asking what they need to do to get you into the car today. You can now buy a car at the Toronto show, but that’s not the focus and the agents licensed to sell know most people are just curious.

Manufacturers’ reps are there to introduce you to the vehicle, answer all your questions and impress you with its attributes. Then you get to go home and think about it. What’s wrong with that?

Every car is there.

If you’re thinking of buying a car, this is the place to narrow down your choice. There are at least a dozen compact sedans available, for example, but you’re not going to like the looks of all of them, or you may never have thought about some of them. Here’s where you choose three or four to consider further.

Pretty much every car available is on display at an auto show—Toronto has around a thousand vehicles on its stands, though many are not stock production models. At the show, you can decide which are serious contenders for your purchase and then go talk with those dealerships at your leisure.

There are new cars you’ve never seen before.

Manufacturers introduce new cars throughout the year. In Canada, it gets especially busy in the spring, but many brand new cars destined for North America are first seen at either the Los Angeles auto show in November, or the biggest of them all, the Detroit show in January.

The Toronto auto show claims that at its show this year at least 40 new cars will be seen for the first time anywhere in Canada, including the new Acura NSX, Nissan Titan, Chevy Volt and Bolt, and Mazda MX-5.

There are exotic cars you’ll never see anywhere else.

If you like Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Bentleys and Aston Martins, but you’re not rich and don’t have the cajones to walk into a dealership for a close look, they’ll all be at the auto show.

You can get up close to plenty of exotic cars, but not that close – velvet ropes still keep the Great Unwashed separated from the Chosen Few. It is possible to get behind their wheels, though. Some smooth talking and courtesy, plus a whole lot of persistence, can sometimes do the trick.

The cost…

A day at the auto show can get expensive. A one-day adult admission to the Toronto show costs as much as $23, and food and refreshments aren’t cheap. There are many ways to save money on this, including bringing your own food and using vouchers or online discounts—a family pass for two adults and two kids is $45.

If you live near a large town, you can see many of the same cars for free at an automall. The debuting models may not arrive for a few months, but some malls have a dozen different brands in showrooms alongside each other, where you can take a test drive and talk price directly with a salesperson.

But it’s not the endless summer of the auto show. Deep in the exhibition hall, with clean and welcoming cars everywhere you look, you’re in a whole different world. Don’t you deserve a break?