Geneva Motor Demonstrate: Supercars set to roar off the block

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Maybe it is Switzerland’s neutrality that persuades the motor industry’s big guns to turn out in such force for the Geneva Motor Display.

This year, the display is being predominated by the launch of a clutch of supercars, sports cars and luxury motors from the likes of Bugatti, Ferrari, Lamborghini and Aston Martin.

While car shows in Detroit and Frankfurt vie for importance, they tend to be predominated by the host countries’ companies.

It’s Geneva’s level playing field that the good and the excellent who run the industry find attractive – well, that and possibly the chance to squeeze in some skiing.

So the 86th Geneva Motor Demonstrate starts this week with the industry’s mood much improved.

After years of painful restructuring and the near-death of several companies, motor manufacturing has climbed out of recession.

European car sales last year were 14.Two million, 9.2% higher than in 2014, tho’ still below levels before the economic crisis.

And two thousand sixteen has got off to a good embark, with sales up 6.3% in January year-on-year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association.

There has been much debate, especially during the bad times, about whether spending millions of euros and dollars on motor display car launches is worth it.

In the era of social media, YouTube and the iPad, some people argue that motor shows are less significant for getting the message across.

And with today’s cars as much about technical wizardry as spectacle and design, marketing departments are increasingly diverting some of their budgets to tech events like Las Vegas’s Consumer Electronics Demonstrate.

Exotica

Yet, there are few signs at this Geneva display that carmakers are rowing back. The list of product launches is long, as is the showcasing of fresh technologies, concepts and curiosities.

Analyst Tim Urquhart, from IHS, thinks the showcase will be less about themes, and more about “the European industry taking care of business, coming up with compelling product that will bring buyers into showrooms and maintain the current positive sales trend.”

Geneva has a reputation for debuting the exotic, and this year does not disappoint. Take a bow, the Bugatti Chiron.

For petrol goes, the launch of Bugatti’s successor to its Veyron supercar will provide the display’s wow factor.

Jeremy Clarkson described the Veyron thus: “It has rendered everything I’ve ever said about any other car obsolete. It’s rewritten the rule book, moved the goalposts and in the process, given Mother Nature a bloody nose.” The Chiron is Bugatti’s attempt to improve on it.

Details were being kept under wraps until the official unveiling today. But to hit the Veyron, the Chiron needs to do 100km/h in under Two.7 seconds and have a top speed of more than 424kmh (264mph). It’s all road legal – and yours for about $Two.5m (£1.8m; €2.3m).

Glad bday Mr Lamborghini

Back in the real world (if that’s the right phrase), Ferrari is debuting two cars, the California T Treating Speciale and the GTC4 Lusso four-seater. The latter is pitched at the junior family man (and woman). The kids should love doing the 100km/h in Three.Four seconds.

Meantime, Ferrari’s near-neighbour Lamborghini celebrates the birth of its founder one hundred years ago with the unveiling of the Centenario. Lamborghini has been promising an all-new car, not a tweak to an existing model, so aficionados have been getting excited.

However, if you’ve got a spare €2m (£1.5m), look elsewhere. Only forty are being made – and they were all sold two months ago.

Another hotly-anticipated debut is Aston Martin’s DB11, a replacement for the DB9 (the DB10 moniker was skipped because it was used in James Bond’s last film, Spectre).

‘Profit generator’

Last year, Aston’s boss Andy Palmer hinted that the company might address complaints that each fresh generation of cars was commencing to look alike.

That’s sparked a lot of speculation about the DB11’s design. A few spy shots of a camouflaged DB11s have aired on social media, but nothing official has so far been released.

Look out, too, for Maserati’s entry into the crowded market for sports utility vehicles. If Geneva underlines any trend, it’s the seemingly unstoppable growth in SUVs.

Audi, Seat, Skoda are among a string of manufacturers displaying fresh SUV products. Maserati’s Levante is pitched at the top of the market, with the Porsche Cayenne in its glances.

It’s a big diversion for the Italian sportscar rock hard, but it goes after other luxury carmakers, including Jaguar and Bentley, into the SUV market.

“Maserati’s Levante is an significant model for the brand,” says Mr Urquhart. “It is needed as a volume and profit generator, and to bolster the brand’s credentials as a serious competitor to Porsche.”

There are reports that Maserati is working on a plug-in hybrid engine, another example of how alternative technologies are moving up the industry’s value chain.

In fact, “green tech” will be everywhere at Geneva.

Five years after a puny Croatian company, Rimac, exposed its all-electric Concept One supercar, the stiff is unveiling a production version. The car gets 1,073bhp from four electrified motors, and a top speed of 221mph – making it the fastest electrified car on the planet, Rimac claims.

Hydrogen

At the other end of the design scale, the UK’s boutique manufacturer Morgan is showcasing its EV3 electrified three-wheeler. The technology was developed with the help of a £6m UK government grant. The car has a range of about one hundred twenty miles per charge, and with a price tag of £30,000.

Geneva will also see a big thrust of hydrogen technology. Honda is displaying its Clarity Fuel Cell vehicle, Toyota its Mirai.

The fuel cell uses oxygen and hydrogen, producing tens unit, fever and water vapour as by-products – and it clearly has big backers, but many people are sceptical that this will win out over rival technologies.

Just last week, Dieter Zetsche, boss of Daimler, which is working on battery electrical and fuel cell cars, said that the former technology was likely to win out because charging technology and infrastructure was quick improving.

Of course, there will be slew of more mainstream stuff at the showcase, including the launch of the fourth-generation Renault Scenic.

MPVs were the excellent sales success story of the 1990s, but the popularity waned with the rise of SUV and so-called crossover models.

Can the Scenic make us fall in love again with MPVs?

Amid all the supercar glamour and technological hype, it could well be that it is this latest variant of Renault’s segment-leading family car that becomes the lasting sales success to come out of the showcase.

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