Motor shows

All show, no go

James Ruppert — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:25:11 GMT

I’m not quite sure at what point I fell out of love with the motor show.

It could have been some time in the late ‘70s when my dad stopped building exhibition stands for the event and I no longer got in for free. Then maybe it was the middle ‘80s when I was pressed into service at the London International Show at Earls Court and made to hang around on the BMW stand and bother innocent show goers.

I spent more time chatting up the hired totty, especially one girl who looked like Sheena Easton. Strange that I can remember her in perfect detail but I couldn’t tell you anything about the cars.

The ‘proper’ event in the rather less pokey NEC was a move in the right direction, it really did seem like sheds with cars in them. I can remember writing that show goers were being seriously short changed and that they’d be better off wandering around a car supermarket for a few hours.

Anyway, I’m sure the event at the Excel Centre has far more going for it, not least a chance to combine your show visit with a chance to see some really terrible ‘80s musicians. But in these difficult times, I can’t help thinking it should still be possible to get a similar motor show experience for considerably less outlay. So what’s a car enthusiast to do if he (or she) can’t make it to Docklands?

Well, just at the moment there will be a tremendous welcome in your local showroom, where they haven’t seen any serious buyers since October 2007. Not only do you get the peruse the full range in detail, but you’ll probably be given a free cuppa and quite possibly a complementary biscuit to dip in it – if the staff haven’t eaten all the supplies while waiting for rescue. If nothing else, they’ll be glad of the company - although you may have to chip in for the petrol if you want to take a test drive.

Then again you could go in search of show stars of the past. The Rover 75 and Jaguar S-Type both made quite a stir when they had the sheets twitched off them ten years ago at the NEC – and it should be possible to arrange something very similar on a local street using an old curtain.

Or how about the challenge of finding a Chrysler Alpine that hasn’t been landfilled? Or a Talbot Horizon that isn’t in the protective custody of the militant wing of its owner’s club? Alternatively, for the full 1970s effect, why not buy an old Capri for a couple of hundred quid and then persuade a couple of bikini-clad girls to drape themselves over it alluringly? You’d probably sell it at a profit to some randy old nostalgic.

My final suggestion is that you simply ignore the fact the show has moved and travel up to the NEC. I notice that while the Docklands bash is on Brum’s village hall is hosting an antiques fair, which might be a good place to unearth some of the last remnants of the British motor industry.

Ford crashes in at New York

Hilton Holloway — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:09:26 GMT

Carmakers don't often display crashed vehicles on their motor show stands. But Ford went to town at the New York show with a mangled Taurus saloon that had been converted into an interactive display.

The Ford Taurus is a mainstream saloon of the type that's the backbone of the US car market. It's about the size of a current Passat and has the look of the last-generation Mondeo. Ford says it is the 'safest large car in America'.

The white car on display had been put through the US industry standard 35mph '40 percent' offset frontal crash. That mimics a typical head-on collision where at least one driver manages to steer away from the oncoming car. But that makes things worse, because the crash force is then mostly concentrated on one corner.

Ford's Taurus was whacked on 28 February at its Dearborn crash test facility and had been converted into an exhibit by hollowing out the passenger compartment.

Walk into the open side, press the button and a crash test simulation is played through a TV screen positioned against the windscreen. The most disturbing part was not the fancy film editing of hurtling towards a barrier, but the stereo sound of crumpling metal and glass.

The front of the car is impressively mangled, though the front wheel has not been pushed back very far. Initially, the damage looks to have been confined to the front end, but look very closely and you can the driver's door is very slightly misaligned.

But it was inside that was most impressive. Despite the impact, the interior is virtually untouched. There were just a few plastic dash mouldings pushed out of line around the right hand side of the instrument binnacle.

Impressive. But then again, the Taurus is one of a number of Ford US models based on an upgraded version of the old Volvo S80 platform. Another reason, perhaps, that the Blue Oval decided not to sell Volvo after all.

Economy woes for New York show

Hilton Holloway — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 10:22:30 GMT

New York is grey, wet and under a cloud. After yesterday’s slashing of the base interest rate, Wall Street stocks jumped, but this morning, as the Auto Show opens in the city, the screens have gone red again.

President Bush is making rallying cries for the economy, but the whole of the city has one eye on the markets. As I was driven though the gridlocked streets this morning, the radio station was quoting the price of a barrel of oil as if updating the baseball results.

No surprise, then, that the NY show is quieter and more subdued than I’ve seen for the last few years.

The US economy seems to be teetering on the edge of a full-blown recession, so all the talk here of advances in lowering CO2 emissions and promises of future ‘clean diesel’ and hybrids is provisional.

If the US economy tips over, buying newer, more fuel-efficient vehicles will become a luxury. And shifting the metal will become the main concern of a beleaguered US car industry.

Lancia: who's convinced?

Hilton Holloway — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:24:03 GMT

The new Delta is an eye-catching beast in the flesh. It's a curious hybrid of the old long-roofed Lancia Beta HPE sports hatch and an imaginary medium-size version of the Rover 75. But the Rover comparison is apt.

Lancia has been on the rocks for over two decades. Last year it sold around 125,000 cars, relying on the home market and a continental taste for the ritzy Lancia Ypsilon supermini. Lancia's current design strategy, like that of Rover, could be looking for a
market for which little evidence exists. While the Rover 75 was a clever re-think of the hackneyed 'gentleman's club', the Lancia strategy is for the "relaxed, convivial atmosphere of an elegantly casual lounge."

So the idea of the traditional St James' gentleman's club interior has morphed into a vodka bar or a celebrity haunt such as Soho House, but it amounts to much the same thing.

Attempts, however, to sell space and interior ambience under a non-premium brand has never been more than moderately successful, if not a complete dead end. Think of the Rover 75 itself, the Renault Modus, Renault Vel Satis and Lancia's own Thesis executive car.

Worse still, Lancia is probably better known around the world as the maker of the Delta Integrale, a car that has lived on for the younger generations in the virtual world. Sure, the new Delta is very eye catching and stands out in the metal. And the interior space is impressive. But is it a Lancia as most of us would understand the brand? And who's really convinced by sophistication as measured by chrome, leg room and subtle interior tones?

Looking over Britain's £6k supermini

Matt Saunders — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:51:08 GMT

Walking past the Dacia stand, my gaze fell on the just-unveiled Sandero hatchback – the £6k supermini made by Renault, and headed for a showroom near you in early 2009. Now, this probably isn’t the type of car you’d put on your list of must-sees at any motor show; it’s the type of car you wander past on route to somewhere else. And then curiosity takes hold.

That’s exactly what happened with me. The chance to check out what kind of car this is proved too much to resist: can Renault really make a properly-screwed together B-segment entrant, made from materials other than second-hand UHU glue and sandpaper, for less than the price of a Citroen C1?

Seems it can. Doesn’t matter which way you look at it, this is proper car. From without the Sandero looks modern, sophisticated, and no less attractive than a Hyundai Getz or Peugeot 207. Alright, so it’s not going to win any design awards, but it’s a Fiesta-sized car for £1000 less than a Ford Ka. Last time I checked, original Monets weren’t available in the best buys bucket.

On the inside, I was expecting ancient-looking switchgear, a paucity of equipment, and trim gaps you could lose your keys in. The Sandero has nothing of the sort. It had plenty of kit (show cars always do), and was as pleasant a place to spend time in as many a much more expensive supermini I could mention. All that let it down were some harder-than-average dash plastics – but even those were no harder than you’d find on a Mitsubishi Colt.

Perhaps the places where Renault saved money on the Dacia Sandero will become evident when we drive it. Maybe it’ll rattle and reverberate louder than a tin shack in a lightning storm. Maybe it’ll be slower and less pleasant to drive than the average supermini, or maybe it won’t last as well. But having seen Renault’s vision of cheap everyday motoring for the British masses with my own eyes, I doubt it.

If you’re in the market for a new supermini, I suggest you take a long look at this car as soon as you possibly can. I’ll make you wonder why you should bother paying another £3k for a car – almost any new supermini – that simply isn’t 50 per cent better.

This 500's no 'mini

Matt Saunders — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:04:50 GMT

The thickness and heft of the options catalogue for the new Fiat 500 has (excuse the awful pun) been well documented. As anyone who’s seriously considered ordering one of these fashionable little cars will know, you can have one in any colour combination you like, with one of several interior colour and trim themes, and that’s before you’ve started with the accessories. But at Geneva this year, there’s one that comes with its own lift and espresso bar.

You couldn’t miss Fiat’s gigantic tribute to its hugely successful supermini at this year’s show. It’s literally the size of a house; you walk in via the wheelarches. Inside it there are interactive video displays on which you can view the 500 in all its guises and permutations. There’s a lift where the back seats should be, taking you up to the mezzanine level, where you can look at video screens positioned where the windows would be.

But what impressed me most was the scale-sized front seats, steering wheel and gearknob. Seeing them makes you feel like you’re in “Honey, Fiat Shrunk The Geneva Motor Show.” I don’t usually go much for this kind of show gimmick, but I have to hand it to Fiat for this one: it put a giant-sized smile on my face.

Geneva - baby Suzuki will be big

Mike Duff — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:19:00 GMT

It's always the way at big motor shows - sometimes you find yourself stumbling across cool stuff almost by accident.

In this case, the Suzuki A-Star - a handsome little concept that hints in very broad terms at Suzuki's new city car, developed in conjunction with Maruti Suzuki in India and coming later this year. The concept was originally shown at the Delhi show in India, perhaps explaining the lack of hoopla made over it here. But I thought it was a thoroughly handsome little thing, looking like an upmarket Aygo, even beneath the show bling.

I know that the Toyota iQ has won most attention here - but to me it's the baby Suzuki that's far closer to the future of smart urban transportation.

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VW Scirocco - new nose but no news

Steve Cropley — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:31:22 GMT

Not much new to discover about the new VW Scirocco coupe — we’ve already published our own pics — except whether the unpromising-looking new VW corporate nose looks better in the flesh. This new model appeared first as the Iroc concept in 2006 pretty much as it is now, except that its eye-catching ‘mouth’ grille has given way to a treatment consisting of a conventional under-bumper airscoop with a few lateral flutes above.

The reasons are well argued: VWs were starting to look too emotional and ‘premium’, they were acquiring the upmarket character of Audis, which have frontal treatments that aren’t that different. And just for good measure, the Iroc’s trapezoidal grille looked eerily like the new Ford grille, already in production.

So VW’s reasons for changing Iroc treatment make sense. The only problem is the production car simply doesn’t have the impact of the concept. We’re back to the age-old problem of a car looking better as a proposal than it does in production. If this is the new corporate nose for VW, then it is... well... dowdy. Don’t expect things to stop here for very long.

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Fisker Karma - the hybrid supercar

Richard Bremner — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:47:22 GMT

Fisker continues to take a steady stream of orders for the Karma, its hybrid four-seat supercar. In addition to the first 100, sold for £55,000 each, the company has more than 50 more orders with deposits.

The Karma goes into production in 2009, and company boss Henrik Fisker will be having meetings with two major car companies - at least one of them German - about partnering on the project immediately after the Geneva show. Fisker also needs to have selected the range-extending petrol engine that it will use in conjunction with the car’s electric drive. The Karma uses technology similar to that in the Chevrolet Volt, and if Fisker hits his on-sale target of 2009 he will beat mighty GM to market, albeit with a lower volume car.

Part of the reason for Fisker’s confidence lies with the car’s lithium-ion battery technology. “The battery works perfectly,” he said. “We’ve solved the temperature problem with a combination of chemistry and software. You have to control the battery, the generator, the electric motor and the petrol engine seamlessly.”

US military supplier Quantum has been working on the technology for four years, says Fisker, which is longer than the Karma has been under development. Fisker also revealed that the Karma’s interior will be reworked, by the designer of the current BMW 3 Series, who has recently joined the company. But the exterior design is frozen.

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Scirocco: Not so dull after all

Matt Prior — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:08:34 GMT

I’ve just been to the Volkswagen stand to see the new Scirocco in the flesh and, to my surprise, found I rather liked it. So surprised, in fact, that I had to go back five minutes later and check again. And I still like it.

Like most bods in the Autocar office and most other industry types I’ve spoken to about it, that’s more than I’d have thought last week. I thought VW had ruined the IROC concept and turned it into the dullest coupe of the year.

But in the metal, and in a rather better colour than white-on-white-background of the first studio shots, it looks rakish, nicely proportioned, even mildly aggressive.

The interior can seat four, though you wouldn’t want to spend too long in the back, while it’s a pretty uninteresting cabin design. But you can’t have everything I suppose, and after being so impressed with its outside, it’d be churlish to criticise.

Tata takes Geneva by storm

Chas Hallett — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:55:02 GMT

Tata first came to Geneva 11 years ago. I was at the press conference - with about four other people. And, to be honest, in subsequent years there’s been a similar lack of interest. In fact, it was only recently that Ratan Tata himself was personally calling an Autocar reporter in an attempt to drum up some interest.

This year, though, it was madness. I’m only guessing, but I doubt any Geneva unveil has ever been more crowded. Hundreds of hacks and cameramen were jostling for position to see Mr Tata take the wraps off the new Indica supermini and the first Nano in Europe. Typically he gave a very modest speech, thanking the Europeans for their support and saying how proud he was that his car company was finally making a contribution to the global car business.

You can say that again. Now that Ratan’s on the brink of buying Jaguar and Land Rover he’s never ever going to be speaking to an empty house at a major motor show again.

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Twingo Renault Sport – a fruity exhaust

Matt Prior — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:26:33 GMT

This bunch of bananas is the exhaust on Renault’s forthcoming Twingo Renault Sport, brought to you by the same bunch of engineers who developed the Renault Sport Clios and Méganes.

The sportiest Twingo produces 131bhp from a honed 1.6-litre normally aspirated engine, rather than a tuned 1.2-litre turbo, because the littler engine couldn’t really take it. The stronger 1.6 unit revs to the other side of 7000rpm, with peak power at 6750, so it should prove to be a real fizzer.

Just as importantly, the Twingo weighs in at under 1000kg in regular form.

Renault Sport has done the usual on the suspension. The track is 60mm wider front and rear, the rear anti-roll bar is 25 per cent stiffer. The ride height is down by 10mm, while both springs and dampers are stiffened by 30 per cent. If that’s not enough, there’ll be a Cup chassis too, with another 4mm suspension drop and further stiffening of the springs and dampers. The Cup gets 17-inch alloys, the regular RS 16-inchers, both on 195-section tyres.

Renault reckons there’ll be plenty of difference between this car’s price and the Clio 197 and Cup, which means it should be less than thirteen grand.

We’ll get to drive it in September. On the current form of the Megane and Clio, forgive me if I have high hopes.

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Chinese cars – the real fakes

Dan Stevens — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:00:12 GMT

Copying things has worked very well for the Chinese, but it’s not going to work when it comes to cars.

Take the BYD F1 and F6, both on show here in Geneva. The F1 looks so much like a Toyota Aygo that I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Toyota’s lawyers are already drafting a letter – it even has a three-cylinder engine – while the plain F6 uses an interior based on the last generation Honda Accord, including very similar switches, equally peculiar wood and the awful cranked handbrake.

The trouble is, the Chinese car makers not copying anything desirable, and they can’t do exact replicas. Fakes only work if people believe they’re real. Chinese-made copies of Hermes bags are indistinguishable from the real thing, but Chinese copies of Toyota Aygos are not, not least because they don’t have Toyota badges on. This will not work in Europe because if Europeans want a cheap car they’ll buy a real Aygo, or a Dacia Logan, or a Chevrolet Aveo. But not a BYD F1.

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Toyota iQ at Geneva – a car with brains

Hilton Holloway — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:41:42 GMT

If you ever doubted Toyota’s recent ability to think out of the box, the production version of the iQ city car will convince you otherwise.

Although on the surface it looks like another well-executed version of the Smart concept, it is a much more sophisticated piece of engineering.

Toyota has redesigned and rethought what can be packaged into a small car – in this case, just short of 3m from nose to tail. A 12cm-wider track than a Smart ForTwo should keep the car stable at high speeds.

The fuel tank is mounted under the floor and is just 120mm deep. The transmission has been redesigned, so the driveshafts exit forward of the engine’s centre line, which allows the front wheels to be mounted further forward. The steering rack is also mounted much higher than normal, freeing up even more space in the engine bay.

The 3+1 seating layout is executed so that the front passenger seat is situated much further forward than the driver’s seat. This allows a full-size adult to sit in the rear of the car, behind the passenger. But this in turn meant designing a very compact heating and ventilation system, which allows the dashboard to be less deep on the passenger side. Behind the driver is the jump seat, for either a child or for luggage.

Of course, at under 3m long with 3.5 seats, the boot is just wide enough for a briefcase. But the rear seats will fold down. The whole cabin is wide enough to have the same shoulder room as an Auris.

This is no budget run-around. Toyota will position the iQ above the Aygo and is happy with selling 100,000 units in Europe and Japan. One version will be rated at 99g/km, but there’ll be no hybrid.

Manufacturers have long harboured the idea of the chic and comparatively expensive city car. Pressure on city-centre dwellers to downsize - especially in London - suggests the iQ may have arrived right on schedule.

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Maximum Bob

Mike Duff — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:47:00 GMT

Is Bob Lutz the world’s coolest 76-year old? GM’s product supremo has long been one of the car game’s most charismatic characters, and although his views on global warming hardly endear him to the environmental lobby – or, indeed, many other senior industry execs – he still relishes grappling with the formidable challenges of kicking GM’s product strategy into shape at an age when most of his contemporaries are happier snoozing under a blanket.

A chance to interview him at the unveiling of Saab’s 9-X concept gave me a fascinating chance to get close to one of the industry’s biggest fish – and one of the sharpest minds I’ve ever stood next to. You can watch the video by clicking here - but just one fact first. Immediately before I interviewed him he was speaking to a German TV crew, and I watched his animated conversation from a distance wondering why he was being asked so many questions when he would clearly need to be either dubbed or subtitled for the audience to understand him. It was only when I got closer that I realised he was already speaking in fluent German – and I remembered that before GM, Chrslyer and Ford he was once on the board of BMW.

Now try to name another senior American car exec with anything like Lutz’s breadth of experience: I can’t.