40 FEATURE Geneva Motor Show
Spring is a time for renewal, so the Geneva Motor Show each March is traditionally an opportunity for the car industry to show lots of fresh metal, in the form of some of the new cars that will appear in the showrooms over the coming months. But Geneva is also a significant show as the usual quota of concept
Pagani Huayra
cars – the flights of fancy that emerge uncompromised from the imaginations of car designers, but which are often a foretaste of how cars will look in a few years – is bolstered by output from specialist design houses such as Bertone and Pininfarina. If this year’s show is anything to go by, the green shoots of recovery are very much in evidence as far as the car manufacturers are concerned. There were lots of new and interesting cars on show, indicating a healthy prognosis for an in industry that seemed in deep trouble just a couple of years ago. Of course, it’s not that simple: the western economies are still suffering
Lamborghini Aventador
from the effects of the banks-induced meltdown and busy dealing with the hangover from the consumer-stoked profligacy of the noughties. And with news from North Africa and the Middle East, in particular Libya, forming a backdrop to the show, with the resultant nervousness over rising oil prices, visitors to the show could be excused for wondering if the show’s attendees were divorced from the reality of the outside world. There is some method to the car companies’ madness, though. The development time for a new car takes many years, so the manufacturers have to invest in R&D in the lean times in order to have new product ready and available when any economic upturn eventually kicks in. It may seem unreal, even obscene, to see new supercars costing hundreds of thousands of pounds on show (yes, we mean you, Lamborghini Aventador and Pagani Huayra) while industrial democracies are cutting jobs and public services left, right and centre: but there is a twisted logic to it – especially as the bankers who will be the natural customers for such cars are eyeing up ways to spend their returning bonuses. It’s not only the top end of the car market that appears buoyant, however. The environmental pressures that the industry is finally addressing are also leading to the development of new cars that are more efficient and less polluting, including new electric cars and hybrids. And there were certainly lots of these on show in Geneva. As you’d expect from the company that gave us the ground-breaking
hybrid Prius, Toyota showed that it wasn’t resting on its laurels. So in Geneva we saw the Prius+ plug-in hybrid first shown in Detroit at the start of the year, which will be adapted for Europe as a seven-seater, plus a hybrid concept version of the new Yaris that will debut later this year and an electric-only variant of the iQ city car. Then there was a diesel hybrid version of the Range Rover Sport
Range Rover_e
were very much in evidence
driving | April / May 2011
The green shoots of car industry recovery
from Land Rover, the Range_e, that, with emissions of just 89g/ km, equals the Prius. Yes, that’s right: a Range Rover with the same emissions as the Prius, which we’ll see on our roads in 2013. That can’t come too soon, we reckon. Indeed, diesel hybrids – which have always seemed a more logical alternative to the petrol-electric variety – were all the rage in Geneva. Peugeot showed a 3008 crossover with its Hybrid 4 system (featuring an electric motor producing 37bhp) that will sip diesel at a rate of 74.3mpg and emit just 99g/km of CO2 when it arrives later this year. Volvo also unveiled a diesel hybrid V60 to be launched next year that
will outstrip its rivals, thanks to emissions of 49g/km, an equivalent fuel consumption of 150mpg and a range of 32 miles, thanks to a 70bhp electric motor powering the rear wheels. Of course, fully electric cars are even more of a desirable goal if
we’re to minimise damage to the planet, as they eradicate tailpipe emissions entirely (there are related emissions from the generation of
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