By now, you'll no doubt have read all about the cars and concepts that you were interested in at last week's Geneva auto show. But if you've still apetite to digest and cogitate, Drew Smith - of the Downsideupdesign blog - and myself are producing a two part podcast with pics to cover all of the major production debuts and concepts, which you'll be able to see/hear in the next few days. For now though, you might be interested in some of the details, elements and irreverant bits and bats that I noticed in the Palexpo last week. So without further ado...
Citroen reimagined the ReVolt from Frankfurt as a racer for the road in the form of the SurVolt (above). Only Citroen could get away with painting it gloss blue, matte grey, pink and orange. But they did. Note these graphics - they were quite fun, a play on PCBs - used to signify the electric drivetrain.
Meanwhile over at Mercedes (above), they'd got wood... (sorry, couldn't resist). The use of wood laminates in this interior was fantastic - it vied with the Pegueot (see below) for concept interior of the show, and previews an altogether more 'light of touch' future Mercedes interior design language...
Peugeot marked its return to form with the SR1 (although special note to the glorious bike also on the stand) - which previews the brand's altogether more acceptable new face (thank god the rictus grin's gone). But it was the interior that really stood out in this car...great work Julien et al:
Speaking of gorgeous things, here's a shot of the superb little Pininfarina Alfa Duettotanta that makes me go a little bit weak at the knees...
...while over at Bertone, they'd 'done' Alfa in a completely different way. The inspiration for the exterior design comes from algorythms - and is a bit too literal in our eyes:
The stand girl raised quite a few eyebrows - wearing quite the most surreal set of boots that we've ever seen...
Sticking with Alfa, the new production Guilietta managed to look a lot more convincing in the flesh than in pictures, but here's a little design flaw: you tug the alfa badge to pop the trunk open, but it doesn't pivot as (say) a VW does - it's got an electronic solenoid system, and the badge stays where it is when you tug it. So with no exterior handle, actually lifting the trunk lid is a complete pain - one that'll require repeat hand dirtying episodes in the real world. Form over function clearly isn't dead...
If you wanted premium design cues, you needed to head over to the Audi stand, where everything was on-message brand-wise, except for the bizarre appearance of Justin Timberlake and some Swedish band no one's ever heard of, at the A1 press conference...
That being said, if you want an appropriate, high-design, modern city car, we'd stick with the A1 - peerless interior quality 'n all:
...just think, you could have three of them for the same price as one chintzily retrimmed Toyota iQ - otherwise known as the Aston Martin Cygnet, the less said about which, the better...
...and while we're on AM, if we were paying £150k for a Rapide, we'd like ours to be a little better finished than this please...
Aston's stand made for an interesting contrast with Porsche, which it faced. While Aston clearly think the best way to show it's going green is to dress Toyota city cars in party frocks, Porsche just went hybird bonkers - unveiling the 918 Spyder, much to everyone's surprise (including parent VW apparently!). Still, if it were ours, we'd probably have removed those translucent wheel discs:
What else, you cry? Well, we can't bring ourselves to show you the exterior of the new Nissan Micra, but if we said "decontenting" and showed you this picture of the interior, you'd probably get the idea...
... while you'd never guess that the Kia Sportage was heading to America with icons like this in the door bins. Otherwise, nice colour, nice car, nice design. Watch out world, Kia's coming...
The VW Touareg was the latest in a long line to get LED light detailing completely wrong, which surprises us given the VW group's leadership in this area to date...no wait, this might actually be the new Sharan... actually, who cares?
...and we could happily have stood and looked at Bentley's 'material wall' all day long - "like being inside a Joseph Cornell art work"...
Honda now appear to be the only company actively going out on a limb to think about the future of mobility - for which we applaud them. Everyone else has just decided sticking a battery in is going to do, which brings to mind words like "missed" and "opportunity".
Special mention goes to this 'quilted bin bag' (copyright Joe Simpson) finish on the "DR", which actively made us laugh, and smelt (unbelievably) a lot worse than it looks...
Finally, seeing the Nissan Juke in the flesh did little to change our opinion that this is the best production car design of the year so far. As we left the stand, Ford's J Mays was having a good, long stare at it. Ford B-segment cross-over SUV? You heard it here first folks...
Check back soon for some border-line serious, border-line contemptuous car-based podcast malarky with myself and Drew soon.
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 9th March 2010.
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