Reporter Notebook: Play It Again, Sam

Special Coverage

New York Int’l Auto Show

No Cake Before Its Time

General Motors enjoys a particularly sweet trip to New York this year, as Buddy Valastro, owner of Carlo’s Bakery in nearby Hoboken, NJ, and star of the popular television series “Cake Boss,” makes a just-in-time delivery to the auto maker’s Chevrolet stand today.

Valastro creates a dessert pastry that looks like the Chevy Camaro and “Bumblebee,” the Autobot from the movie “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.”

Valastro, who makes many deliveries of his confections on the show in a Lincoln Navigator, confesses to being a Chevy guy and big Camaro fan. The episode will air on TLC at 9 p.m. Eastern on June 20.

Mini KISS

Jim McDowell, vice president-Mini brand, takes the stage during the auto maker’s press conference at the auto show here with the rock band KISS.

McDowell, dressed in full KISS regale, complete with the group’s signature face makeup, is dwarfed by front-man Gene Simmons.

Says McDowell: “I feel a little short, maybe that’s why I’m not in a rock band and work for a company called Mini.”

Detente at the Gansevoort.

Play It Again, Sam

Of all the hotels in all the cities, global rivals General Motors and Volkswagen find themselves occupying the same operational base for the New York auto show.

Both camps set up at the Gansevoort in Midtown. VW Group has eyes on surpassing 10 million annual sales globally by 2018, which would displace both GM and Toyota atop the industry.

For many years, GM’s phalanx of executives and P.R. staffers in town for the show would occupy The Peninsula Hotel near the auto maker’s former New York headquarters on 59th Street.

But a new corporate frugality after its bankruptcy and a halt to non-essential spending during the Japan crisis leaves GM with a skeleton crew this year, and sacrificing its Fifth Avenue views.

No word yet whether an international accord with VW occurred.