Auto Design

This is a list of some of the new cars to be seen in Geneva, to be updated and completed.
Pre-production are those cars that will enter production in a year or so, presented by their car maker as “Concept Car” according to rules set by the organizers which do not allow to show any “production car” that is not on sale at a public price.

Alfa Romeo MiTo GTA                         pre-production

Bentley Continental Supersports         pre-production

BMW Gran Turismo                               pre-production

Citroen Inside DS                                   pre-production

Dacia crossover/coupe                          pre-production

DR 2 (Chery A1)                                     pre-production

Kia YN                                                      pre-production

Rolls-Royce EX200                                 pre-production

Zagato Perana Z-One                             pre-production

Aston Martin V12 Vantage                   production

Audi A4 Allroad                                     production

Audi TT RS                                             production

Chevrolet Spark                                      production

Fiat 500 C                                                 production

Fioravanti LF 1                                        concept car

Fioravanti Tris                                         concept car

Ford small minivan                                 concept car

Hyundai HED-6 ix-onic                          concept car

I.DE.A ERA                                             concept car

Infiniti Essence                                       concept car

Italdesign Namir                                      concept car

Mazda 3 i-stop                                        production

Mazda 3 MPS                                          production

Mercedes-Benz E class coupe              production

Mercedes-Benz E class sedan              production

Mitsubishi i MiEV Sport Air                 concept car

Nissan NV200                                          production

Nissan Qazana                                        concept car

Opel Ampera                                           production

Peugeot 3008                                           production

Renault Grand Scenic                             production

Renault Megane Tourer                        production

Renault Scenic                                        production

Rinspeed iChange                                  concept car

Rinspeed E2                                             tuning

Saab 9-3x                                                  production

Seat Exeo ST                                            production

Skoda Yeti                                                production

Toyota Verso                                          production

VW Polo                                                   production

Leonardo Fioravanti latest design will not go unnoticed at the Geneva Motor Show. He is not showing the car the market (and the car industry) will ever need. This year on one side he is reproposing a low-cost car he designed almost a decade ago and that goes by the same name of This. And a very provocative and apparently useless prject of a F1 racing car that answer questions nobody has asked so far, not even the ruling FIA association. Never mind though the full scale mock-up of Fioravanti’s idea a of a F1 which, he tells the Italian motoring magazine Quattroruote, has been patented. This is how Fioravanti introduce his LF 1.  In contrast with the wide and long LF1 is the TRIS described as “a new way of low cost vehicle design, based on patented solutions, for the maximum reduction of body components in order to simplify as much as possible the whole project chain: from the feasibility through engineering, tooling, production, assembly and logistic.

A relatively compact 5-seater SUV with a CO2 emission rate of just 149 g/km is what Hyundai is showing at the Geneva Motor Show with the name of HED ix-onic (pronounced “ik-sonnik”). The latest show car from the successful Korean carmaker has been created by the company’s design studio based in Rüsselsheim (Germany) and directed by Thomas Bürkle. The new concept has been developed by a team that included Eduardo Ramirez (project leader), Thomas Sälzle (exterior) and Jörg Maluschka (interior). Read the rest of this entry »

  The electrifying supercar that Italdesign-Giugiaro is about to unveil at the Geneva Motor Show has no name yet but it will carry the Frazer-Nash logo, even though the British company that has joined its expertise in hybrid technology with that of the Italian design house has never been in the car business. Read the rest of this entry »

Italdesign-Giugiaro is not slowing down its innovation drive through the car industry freeze but keeps investing and expanding its horizon. Read the rest of this entry »

South African carmaker Perana Performance Group is making its first international appearance at the Geneva Motor Show on the Zagato exhibit. There, the world famous Italian designer will be showing their all-new Perana Z-One (read Piranha Zee-One). Read the rest of this entry »

Geneva will offer a preview of the powerplants that Fiat would share with Chrysler in the USA, as early as next year, if the alliance currently under scrutiny will get the green light. Read the rest of this entry »

In the cat-and-mouse game, it is just too easy to guess who are the cat and the mouse when it comes to car drivers and oil companies. The price of gasoline goes up and down on Russian Mountains according to rules that even powerful nations seems to be in control of. Thus, as soon as car drivers moved towards smaller and more fuel-efficient car, to keep their own budget under control and fuel consumption was quickly cut by several percentage points, the gas price at fuel station went down again and again. Now gasoline is again affordable and the mood is switching again to SUV and bigger cars. The come back would be a lot swifter without the world financial disaster that is freezing economies and shopping decisions.

Nevertheless, the business show must go on and the Geneva Motor Show will be sending many messages or just signal about the way the world car industry is going to react and redesign its future through new strategies. The Geneva Show itself is sending its own message. At a time when an increasing number of carmakers are cancelling their exhibitions at major motor show and quite a number of motor-show are cancelling themselves (even the Tokyo Motor Show is reportedly under question), the Geneva Show is going to be as good and as interesting as ever, filled with attractive new ideas, propositions and announcement, even though its overall surface will not be expanded once more but somewhat reduced. This is in itself good news. It will prove that growth is not the only way to go and that smaller (if not small) can be beautiful.

Back to the cat-and-mouse, oil-companies-and-car-drivers, game it will be interesting to see how many smaller cars (and SUV) will be unveiled at the show and compare their number with extreme cars, going in the two opposite directions: small and very fuel efficient versus supercars that fly over the financial crises and the fuel price.

The series of first announcements and teasers is very promising (to be update, on regular base).

A preview of the “smaller” Rolls-Royce, so far known as the RR4 (that is the fourth model in the range after the Phantom, its Coupé and Drophead) will be offered by the British carmaker of prestigious car with their “Rolls-Royce 200EX”, at the Geneva Motor Show.

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I have known Christopher “Chris” Bangle since he was at Opel at the time when he designed the interior of the Opel Junior show-car. Through the years we have talked several times. I cannot consider him a friend. We never met for other reasons than our jobs and in our roles, but through the years I have been appreciating more and more what he was doing at Fiat, when he was there and at BMW.

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