Auto Design

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).