Geneva Salon: The auto show of great contrasts

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The auto show of great contrasts

Geneva Salon: The auto show of great contrasts-geneva

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Mercedes is re-introducing the S-Class Coupe. The name CL disappears, instead an S 500, also in coupe form, is called S 500 – and carries a 450 hp V8 under the hood.

Source: Daimler

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The small Renault Twingo (3.60 meters) is somehow related to the big Mercedes – because the Twingo is the first completely new product from the collaboration between Renault and Dai…mler. The future Smart shares the technical platform with the Twingo, which is why the small Renault also has rear-wheel drive and the engine at the rear.

Source: dpa-tmn

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Visually, there are only slight retouching in the revision of the Ferrari California. but under the hood there is now a completely new turbo V8, only 3.9 instead of 4.3 liters… big, but no longer blessed with 490, but with 560 hp. The car is officially called the California T.

Source: Ferrari

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There is still only one design drawing of the third edition of the Audi TT, but it comes directly from Audi. Narrower headlights and a flatter and wider grille read…make the car look even sportier. The highlight in the interior: the virtual cockpit, which the driver can configure almost at will.

Source: Audi

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A four-door coupe at Skoda? It has not yet been decided, the Vision C study can point to a variant of the Octavia as well as the design of the successor to the …Top model Superb.

Source: obs

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The small car project from Peugeot, Citroën and Toyota is entering the second round, here you can see the Peugeot 108, its French one …

Source: dpa-tmn

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… The sister model is called the Citroën C1, the Toyota continues to be called Aygo. All of them are shorter than 3.50 meters, styled much fresher than before, and they can be varied …individualize. Base price: less than 10,000 euros.

Source: dpa-tmn

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After the e-Golf for 34,900 euros, VW is presenting the Golf GTE with plug-in hybrid drive at the Geneva Motor Show. The system output is 204 hp and the electric range is 50 kilometers…r. only the price is not yet revealed.

Source: dpa-tmn

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There are three derivatives of the revised VW Polo on display in Geneva, the Polo GT (left, 150 PS), the BlueMotion (1.0-liter three-cylinder petrol, 90 PS, 4.1 l / 100 km) and the CrossPolo.

Source: Volkswagen

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The double revolution: The new 2 Series Active Tourer (4.34 meters) is not only the first minivan from BMW, but also the first model with front-wheel drive. The platform is shared…m with the also front-wheel drive Mini.

Source: obs

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VW still needs a little more time to enter the booming market for SUVs based on small cars. The 4.20-meter-long T-Roc study is in Geneva and will be available in two or three years… as a Polo SUV could come onto the market.

Source: Volkswagen

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Opel is providing its successful small car Adam (3.70 meters) with a pseudo-SUV version with the nickname Rocks. After all: The Adam Rocks not only has a folding as standard…oh, it was also placed two centimeters higher.

Source: Opel

The Geneva Motor Show, which will start again on March 4th, has always been the premier venue for luxury cars. This time, however, the small cars could be stronger. Even if the most important novelty is still hidden.

A.At the Geneva Motor Show, the world’s car companies are once again bringing up everything they have: new models in abundance – gasoline and diesel, hybrids and all-electric cars, economical small cars and ultra-fast horsepower. The trend of the prestigious auto show is that there really isn’t one this year.

After all, there is a non-trend. In 2011 there was hardly a manufacturer who did not present an electric car or plug-in hybrids, but that is now over, as the automotive economist Ferdinand Dudenhoffer from the University of Duisburg-Essen has determined. Now the carmakers have the "conventional cars firmly in focus again, and they make good money from it", it says in his current analysis.

Luxury and sports cars are therefore highly valued in the fine salon, and everyone likes to proudly present their innovations in this sector. Daimler is coming with the Mercedes S-Class Coupe, which will be called exactly the same and no longer CL as it used to be.

Ferrari brings a turbo again

Initially there will only be the S 500, with a 4.7-liter twin-turbo V8 and 450 hp. Two mighty AMG versions followed later, one of them, the S 65 AMG, even with a twelve-cylinder engine.

Ferrari has the new California on the stand, now for the first time with a turbo engine and 560 hp. McLaren and Lamborghini are also showing new sports cars, and Rolls-Royce will celebrate the steadily growing success of its Bespoke program: only one in 20 customers still buys Rolls off the shelf, individualized extras are popular among this clientele, and the air-conditioned Rolls The Royce stand in the exhibition hall is also always used to initiate business.

Incidentally, Rolls-Royce also has a novelty: the facelift of the Ghost, which has been available for five years. The only difference is that you don’t say a facelift here, but a mid-life update.

Cars for the beautiful and the rich are facing a flood of new products from the other end of the value chain in Geneva this year. The most important small car of the year 2014 is the Smart, which, however, will only be represented at the salon in a heavily camouflaged form.

Twingo becomes Smart

The new Twingo can be discovered at the Renault stand, and it is the first newly developed car from the partnership between the French and Daimler. The four-door and four-seater Smart Forfour will be built on the same platform, and the short version will then be the classic Smart Fortwo.

Visitors to Geneva still have to fantasize about the design of the Smart, as Daimler has decided not to officially present the new Smart now, but only at Easter – at the auto show in Beijing that will then begin.

The 3.60 meter long Renault Twingo carries like the two Smart models the engine at the rear, which necessarily means rear-wheel drive. In small car circles this is a unique selling point; it can set accents in the driving dynamics, and it enabled the designers to equip the Twingo with a short bow. At the same time, they gave the body a cute, rounded appearance. If a Twingo drives by, you can mistake it for a Fiat 500, but that doesn’t have to be a problem – the Cinquecento is a successful car.

The PSA group (Peugeot and Citroën) has maintained an even more intensive collaboration with Toyota for a good ten years. The small car models Peugeot 107, Citroën C1 and Toyota Aygo roll off the assembly line in the same Czech factory, the successors of which can now be seen in Geneva.

When the elders feel younger

While Citroën and Toyota keep their names, the Peugeot has moved up one meter and is now called 108. In the trio of little ones (3.47 meters) it claims the role of the lifestyle model, as it can be ordered in many variants, including with Two-tone paint. There are seven "design worlds" for interior design alone.

A trend continues here, the BMW with the Mini and Fiat established it in the lower price range with the 500: The customization options have become a domain of smaller cars – this is intended to entice young people to buy, or older people can feel a few years younger in such a car.

The same applies to the Opel Adam, which, in addition to the Mokka small SUV, has contributed a lot to the brand’s improved situation. Small cars do not generate much profit, but the configuration options for the Adam are almost endless, and in the depths of the price list you can hide a good profit margin here and there.

Opel continues the Adam story with the Adam Rocks, which optically follows the SUV trend. The body is two centimeters higher and is conspicuously planked. At the same time, the Adam Rocks has a fabric hood that can be opened electrically in five seconds, like a sunroof.

Near-SUV in bonsai format

Although the Adam Rocks is definitely noticeable, it is not alone as a near-SUV in bonsai format. VW has been offering the cross-up for a long time and will also be showing the just revised Polo in a cross version in Geneva. However, a study by the Wolfsburg-based designers is likely to attract even more attention: With the T-Roc, VW has announced that it will soon occupy the booming segment of small-car SUVs.

"VW will bring such a car, just like Audi will bring one," says Audi Board Member for Development Ulrich Hackenberg. It just seems as if, as usual in Wolfsburg, they first watched for a while before the decision was made to enter a growing market as well. It was like that with minivans and SUVs, but this time it’s a little different.

Almost two years ago, the Audi A3, the first model on the Volkswagen Group’s new MQB platform, came out. In the future, this platform will accommodate all cars between the Polo and Passat classes, because the desired flexibility in terms of drive type and model variants is only possible on MQB.

The recently refreshed Polo is not yet an MQB car. "Today’s Polo base does not make it possible to build a car with SUV-specific tires," says Hackenberg. Therefore, one waits until a completely new Polo generation comes onto the market in 2016/2017.

Great extras in cheap cars too

So some projects have to be put on the waiting list until the MQB platform has expanded to all of the major series in the group. This disadvantage, which in the case of the small SUVs allows the competition of successful cars to be sold, is later to be offset by greater flexibility and major cost savings.

VW’s concept car T-Roc was developed on the MQB basis, it measures 4.20 meters and has the same coupe design as the future Audi Q1, of which Audi has published a similar sketch but has not yet made a life-size model.

At the stand, the VW will look as if it could drive off straight away (a 184 hp diesel plus all-wheel drive is installed), but some details about the study stamp it: above all the removable roof halves, which make the car too expensive in reality would.

On the other hand, high-quality extras are no longer tied to large cars, as you can see from the triplets from PSA and Toyota. Basically they will cost less than 10,000 euros, but for a surcharge you can have extras that were not a matter of course for their category for a long time: automatic air conditioning, reversing camera, large touchscreen, keyless access, integration of the smartphone into the infotainment system of the car.

Market share for e-mobiles: 0.2 percent

What is missing from the small cars presented in Geneva is only a glimpse into the post-oil era. Because only when affordable cars can be electrified at low prices will there be any chance of a breakthrough for alternative drives. But it still looks bleak.

Maybe you just take into account that customers are still skeptical, which in turn makes investments risky. Ferdinand Dudenhoffer writes that exactly 6379 electric cars were newly registered in Germany in 2013, which corresponds to a market share of 0.2 percent.

In the booming Chinese market, this figure was only 0.11 percent. Models like the E-Golf at prices of just under 35,000 euros “have no chance in the market,” is Dudenhoffer’s devastating judgment. Something similar can be expected for plug-in hybrids.

The alleged cars of the future are a rarity in Geneva this time. VW is exhibiting the Golf GTE (plug-in hybrid with 204 hp) and Kia is bringing the Soul EV (electric car with a range of 200 kilometers), but then you have to look to the exotic to see more innovations in electric drives.

You show what you can sell

For example, NanoFlowcell AG from Liechtenstein will present a research vehicle called the Quant, which has a completely new type of energy storage system. More is not revealed, only that Bosch is the development partner and the car is designed as a 5.25-meter-long sports sedan.

The American manufacturer Tesla sends its regards, which with the Model S also has a stately, highly motorized electric sedan on the market. And a confident visual appearance never hurts in Geneva.

So if there is a clear trend, it is: Show what you can sell.

"world"-Reporter Stefan Anker regularly tweets spontaneous car news and observations from everyday driving and testing and is pleased if you are here click and follow him. Or check out his Facebook page past.

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