The future of motoring in Geneva

Besides traditional people mover cars and supersportscars there were also a number of futuristic cars at this year's Geneva Auto Show. If what we see at Opel and Renault is the future of motoring, then we probably will seat behind each other in the car of the future and the transportation mean is quite simple, rather like a micro car of the Fifties. A bit more comfort comes with the bionic car of Toyota. Well, if today's designers are as successful in predicting the future as their counterparts of the Fifties and Sixties then the motoring future will probably look quite different anyway ...

Toyota's GT in Geneva

Toyota presents the GT 86 in Geneva, the new sportscar coupé built together with Subaru. It's a nice car and the power goes to the rear axle which is a good sign! But what really made the appearance special was the Toyota GT 2000 shown together with the new GT 86. The GT 2000 is probably one of the most beautiful car any Japanese manufacturer ever built. In white, presented in front of a red background it looks even better. Wonderful, but very very rare!

The sportscar future from Honda and Infinity in Geneva

Two japanese car manufacturers brought elegant sportscars to Geneva this year. Honda presented the "NSX concept", a V6 hybrid, while Infinity surprised with the Emerg-E, an electrical sportscar with range extender in the 400 hp segment.
Interestingly the two cars were both painted in silver and the shapes are somewhat similar. For me the Infinity looks even a bit more elegant than the Honda, but the Honda of course profits from its own tradition and history, as we haven't forgotten the NSX sportscar from the Nineties, haven't we?

The new Ferrari F12 Berlinetta in Geneva 2012

A new Ferrari is always a sensation, the new F12 Berlinetta makes no difference. Ferrari not only changed (again) the logic of the model naming they also packed all their engineering knowhow into the car, resulting in a bit less weight and a lot more power (700+ hp).
Never before the difference between what you get and what you actually can use in normal driving conditions was so big. When driving with the almost normal 80 km/h roughly 15 hp are enough, and even at 120 km/h you don't need more than 40 or 50 hp. So what on earth will you do with the other 650+ hp? They are there and they make the car expensive as everything needs to be adapted to cope with this massive power. Anyway, so be it. But maybe you remember the Fifties, when a Ferrari had some 120 or 150 hp and drivers have been able to use all of them quite often ....

Geneva girls 2012

One of the highlight of autoshows are the models trying to put some glamour on cars that otherwise wouldn't even be looked at. This year's Geneva car show (2012) is no exception here. For longtime observers it seems like there were less girls than in other years, but so what.
Have a look yourself and enjoy ...

More air for the Lamborghini Aventador J

Lamborghini presented the unique Lamborghini Aventador J at the Geneva Autoshow 2012. It's kind of a barchetta version of the Aventador, but really very extreme. Well, have a look yourself, it definitely steals the new Ferrari F12 a bit the show ...
P.S. The car has been sold for 2.1 million Swiss Francs, so no need to think too much about it.

Touring Superleggera presents Disco Volante in Geneva 2012

It's interesting! We have been talking about "retro design" for quite a bit of time, but usually we were observing the car manufacturers, but not the Italian design shops to come up with retro styled vehicles.
Yesterday though Touring Superleggera presented its Alfa Romeo Disco Volante 2012. And they were brave enough to show it together with the original Disco Volante coupé from 1953 - though on a poster.
The new car isn't bad, but if you remember how revolutionary and extreme the original Disco Volante was, then you may be disappointed.

Kodak - a famous brand fades away

Kodak is probably one of the most well known brands of the world. Almost a hundred years Kodak dominated the photography or influenced it substantially to say the least. And now the end of this empire seems to have come close. Unbelievable!
Why would a car buff like me talk about Kodak? What does Kodak have to do with cars? A lot, yeah! On a substantial share of all the black and white films, the Kodachrome and Ektachrome slides and all the other film materials Kodak produced cars were pictured! Our fathers used a Kodak Retina camera, the generations in the Sixties and Seventies grew up with a Kodak Instamatic or a Kodak Instamatic Pocket camera and yes, of course, the took pictures of cars and a lot of them. Many of them have survived thanks to the quality of the Kodak products, otherwise the pictured cars maybe would have gone forgotten just like the cameras that took the pictures.
Yet another puzzle piece of the good old times vanishes, it's quite sad!

Colorful Porsche World in the Seventies

You could't imagine such a world today. Porsche sportscars in yellow, bright blue, organge, red, green, etc. But this is how buyers ordered their Porsche in the seventies. To make my point I have added two color portfolios of 1974 and three pictures of Porsche sportscars from 1976 und 1971.
Make up your own mind, wouldn't you rather want to live in a Porsche world full of wonderful colors, compared to the silver, grey, black, dark blue trends we have today?