Geneva Car Show 2011 - Hybrid, Electricity, and ..... ?

So, what's new at the Geneva Car Show 2011? Well, if you need the newspapers, then they claim that 170 new cars are shown by 700 exhibitors. Hmmh. What does "new" mean? I have seen lots of hybrid and semi-electrical derivatives of known cars. I have seen a number of interesting concept cars and a number of quite ugly ones too. I have seen new versions of sportscars.
So, what do I really remember after 8 hours of constant walking around and taking pictures? Yes, the BMW Vision concept car is quite impressive. The Alfa Romeo 4C concept car hopefully never makes it close to production, it's clearly not my cup of tea. I certainly will remember forever the highly attractive Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato (from 1962) at the Aston booth. It probably was the most beautiful car of the show. I was quite impressed by the Mazda 4 door saloon concept car, nice design and good presentation, really! And then the Bertone Jaguar 4 door saloon car. First I really liked the car, when I spotted it in a newspaper. But now, having seen it in the real world, I am not so sure anymore. Would the design really last well over time? I doubt it. It's too short term oriended in my eyes.
Wiesmann showed a design concept that makes you like the current designs even more. I was positively suprised when looking at the Carozzeria Touring design for a potential new Gumpert. The existing car is quite functional and beauty probably wasn't high on the criteria list, but the Touring version could make it one of the better super cars in my eyes.
Giugiaro showed a Volkswagen that makes the existing fleet of Volkswagen look quite old and outdated. Yes, that's a direction I could support! The Saab concept car makes you hungry for more, while the Lamborghini Aventador sort seems to be more of the same, no real quantum leap that I would have hoped Lamborghini could do (think Miura versus Countach). De Tomaso surprised with a comeback presenting the de Tomaso Deauville. There's a good and a bad message here: The Deauville is not pretty at all and really nothing you would dream of, the people from de Tomaso announced that they will present a new Pantera later this year, so we still can hope for better things to come. Some nice displays with old cars were shown as well, I mentioned the Aston, but there was also a Jaguary E Type from 1961, a Mercedes Simplex and a Lehner-Porsche. Too bad Renault only tried it halfway, cutting a 1961 Renault R4L in pieces ....
What would I want to buy? I honestly don't know!
More and other pictures can be found here!

Does the Volkswagen XL1 stand a chance?

Volkswagen has presented the VW XL1, a car doing almost 100 km with 1 litre of diesel fuel. So yet another prototype. Let's turn the page. But stop, Volkswagen also announced that they will be producing this car in two years and everyone can buy one. Surprise! If Volkswagen really is able to produce this prototype style sports two seater then I will be putting it on my wish list. Honestly, it looks good and stylish, it has the gullwing doors I love and I can drive it to save the world. Great, isn't it? Of course it's a question of pricing too. I would not want to pay more than let's say 40'000 Euros for a car with the performance of an 80ies saloon car despite all the styling bells and wistles. But clearly this is the most advanced thing Volkswagen has presented in a decade and I will follow its progress closely

Auto Zurich 2010 - McLaren MP4-12C Ferrari 599 GTO Aston-Martin Cygnet ...

Auto Zurich cannot be compared with the Geneva car show. But looking at the range of new cars presented in Zurich it must be said that it's still an impressive show. New cars on scene were the Ferrari 599 GTO (for people with a lot of money) , McLaren MP4-12C (for people with a need for exclusivity), Volkswagen Passat (for people with families), Aston-Martin Cygnet (for people who want to pay twice the money to receive a Toyota IQ), Ranger Rover Evoque (for people who thing the BMW X6 isn't nice enough), Brabus Mercedes-Benz SLS (for people who thing the standard thing isn't expensive enough), Mercedes-Benz CLS (or people who only know short people to get into the back), Porsche Carrera GTS (same as a standard 911 for the GT3 price when fully loaded), new Veritas (if convenience is not an objective), Mitsubishi MIEV (if electricity is available where you park), and so on. The Zurich show is also a good show, because you can see all the cars in roughly 90 minutes ...

Have we gone beyond the tipping point in automobile engineering?

Recently I was involved in a discussion on whether we have gone beyond the tipping point in automobile engineering. The question discussed was whether future cars will not be "truly" better than the cars produced today and points mentioned where things such as engine downsizing, cars getting heavier and heavier, more and more electronics taking away the fun from driving, noise restrictions, emission regulations enforcing direct fuel injections, etc..
Of course you can have many different perspectives here. Let me just mention a few:
(I) The best cars are the ones from the last decade. Cars like the Audi RS4/SE, BMW M3, Porsche 911 Carrera GT3/GT3 RS, Audi RS8 V10, Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggiera, maybe even the Bugatti Veyron, etc. have set the bar and shown what is feasible. With new laws and restrictions you can only make it worse, but barely better.
(II) The best cars come from the 50ies and early 60ies, as then racing and competition cars (especially GTs and prototype type two seaters) could be driven on the road and offered maximum driving pleasure and a great sound spectrum. Take a Jaguar C-Type or a Porsche Carrera 6 as example. And don't think about convenience and usability.
(III) The best cars are still to come as with modern computer technology they will be extremely safe, extremely convenient taking over most/all of the driver's activivities and offer full access to web, TV, sound and entertainment while moving from A to B.
All of the three perspective have some "raison d'être". And for all there are exceptions and counter arguments of course. It's all a matter of what you want and value.
However there are some facts out there as well. The Volkswagen V6 engine built into the R32 for example offered an incredible sound, which the new 4 cylinder Golf R can't match. On the other side modern sound engineering and computer controlled exhaust systems in cars such as the Maserati coupé or the Aston Martin DBS/DB9 enables interesting noise patterns as well. Or just listen to a Ferrari 430 Scuderia. And it's obvious that the current cars offer superior road handling thanks to electronics, modern tyre technology and great suspension design. And it's also clear that weight spoils driving pleasure to some extent, so a 600kg sportscar of the 60ies has certain advantages against a 2 ton Aston Martin, even if the advantage doesn't translate to better lap times.
So, it's a wide topic or as you can say in German "das ist ein weites Feld". Enjoy what you like best and let room for the others with different opinions.

New Volkswagen Passat looks a bit very much like expected

Could you trust a computer to design a new car? Well, hopefully not. But in this case it may have worked. This is the new Volkswagen Passat. It's quite pretty and much smoother than it's predecessor. It basically made the same transition than the Golf going from V to VI. So, if you had a good morphing software and you could instruct to do a similar evolution with the old Passat that was done with the Golf, you would pretty much get what you see here on the picture. That's not only bad news and it's certainly good for the business of the German car manufacturer. But it's a bit boring too.

Parking with classic cars is really much easier!

It's now official! Auto Motor and Sport compared a range of cars including the Volkswagen Touran, Mercedes E-Series Convertible, Toyota Prius, BMW 5-Series Station Wagon and a number of others in how easy it is to park them. They measured how much you can see from the driver position, how big the car is, how easy it gets into a 5.5 m parking spot and a number of other criterias and they also looked at the electronic gizmo to help with parking. Well, the winner is, the BMW 3-series E30 limousine from the 80ies. It actually has beaten the modern cars by a factor, thanks to the smaller body, the great 360 degree view and the fact that you can actually see the end of the car when you sit in it. Despite the fact that none of the modern accessories was on board, i.e. park distance control, parking assistance, cameras, etc., the people at AMS found it much easier to park this car compared to the modern rivals. I am really happy that they brought in this 80ies benchmark when comparing the modern cars, as this now so transparently shows how cars got worse along these criteria over time. Of course there are reasons, why modern cars are as they are, one being safety. But even with today's standards cars could have larger windows and better visibility today, if the designers didn't think differently.

Oldtimer Sunday Morning in Zug - great variety and really rare cars

Finally I found the time again to visit the Oldtimer Sunday Morning Meeting in Zug. It usually takes place on the first Sunday during the summer months. Usually there's a special topic, today it was "Alfa-Romeo - cuore sportivo". And with probably 100+ Alfas there was a great selection ranging from Giulietta Spiders, to GTAs and other rare types. There was even an Alfasud, that many of you probably remember. I also found quite a selection of Lancias. What really makes this meeting special is that there's everything at one place. You can see Volkswagen Beetles side by side with a Ferrari 250 GT Lusso or an ASA race car. And you can find big American classic cars, Italian and English cars just sitting side by side. It's all about bringing your car and watching all the others. It's a lot of fun.

An argument for hard top convertible cars?

I have been arguing a lot against the current trend to build convertibles with hard tops for quite a number of reasons:
1) Heavy
2) Complex (just think about all the hydraulics)
3) Bad weight distribution (where does the top sit when it's folded down?)
4) Design/look - fat end cars
However when I looked at this picture I had to admit that there are some proper advantages too having a hard fold-able top on your car. And I must also say that the new BMW Z4 actually looks quite sharp. But at the end of the day, a convertible should be driven with the top down and in most of the cases the fabric top should only be your last resort, so why carrying around all that metal and complexity?

Lada Niva - a classic car you can buy new today

This is a Lada Niva, difficult to say what year. Few people know that this is one of the cars with the longest production history. Since 34 years it has been produced with minor changes except engine updates. 34 years is quite something, the Ford Model T for example was only manufacturered for 19 years. And even the Mercedes SL R107 made it "only" 18 years until it was replaced by its successor. But there are a few cars that are even more successful long runners, i.e. the Volkswagen Beetle with 65 years or the Porsche 911 with 47 years (if you include the water cooled generation), the Morgan 4/4, +4 with roughly 74 years (still in production) or the Land Rover (Defender) with 62 years of manufacturing history. Now, a good question is, whether these cars really have been the same car from the first to the last version produced. At the end it's a marketing decision, whether the name or the shape of a car changes. For example the 911 has probably changed quite drastically in the 47 years it has been produced, a shift from air cooled to water cooled engines is just one aspect. I would say that if basic parameters substantially change (i.e. drag factor, length, width, height, weight) then it's questionable whether we still can speak from the same car. But it's not an easy distinction.
Let's go back to the Lada Niva. I tried to convince my father to buy one of these 30+ years ago. They were cheap then, they still are. They were robust, they still are. And they offered a low cost entry into 4 wheel off road driving, they still are. But off road cars around the Niva have changed quite a bit, so buying a new Niva today is probably more like buying a classic car than a state of the art off road vehicle.

Why are Car Operating Manuals so fat today?

Have you recently bought a car? Did you read the operating manual(s)? Well, if you buy a car such as the Volkswagen Passat you receive a booklet with approximately 500 pages. It's so fat that it doesn't even properly fit into the dashboard compartment. If you want to read it page by page, you probably spend more than three hours. And this is only one language! So, next time, when you rent a car, will you go through all of this? Probably not.
Well, in the past this was quite different. As you can see on the picture there are a number of car manuals displayed. The operating manual of the Renault 4 has 24 pages, the one for the Ford Granada 64 pages. That's a fraction of what the new car brings to the owner. Why this difference? This probably has a number of reasons: Cars have become more complex, things like the entertainment system need a lot of explanation. Car manufacturers have become much more risk averse. Anything I driver could do wrongly and has the potential to create a liability lawsuit needs to be documented in the manual. And, people today have much less technical understanding compared to the past. Remember, in the 50ies or 60ies you were asked technical questions for getting your driving certificate!
I am still impressed from the Renault 4 operating manual. It's so condensed, the 24 pages even include the index and the table of content. And funnily they had to add another 4 pages to add corrections to the 24 pages already printed in large numbers before.