The Good, The Bad and The Ugly...and The Beautiful and the Blobby

All, and when I say "All", I Mean "ALL" of the car press today are going on about the 2013 Geneva Motor Show.  The show opens on Thursday in, of all places, Geneva.

But they've let the press in already.

Very much as I'd love to be there with them, I cannot be for various reasons including work commitments, family commitments, finances, logistics and the fact that I'm not a real journalist.

So I have to pick apart what they are all reporting.

Let's start with the good. That would be The Mitsubishi CE-MiEV.

This is the much-better follow-up to the i-MiEV.  Autocar cover it here.  It is an electric car with better range and recharging times than the i-MiEV but still not as good as the Silex Power Chreos.

 

Most importantly, though, it doesn't look stupid like the i-MiEV - actually, I think it looks a lot like a Prius.  But not as good looking as Mitsubishi's other offering at the show, the GR-HEV:

A futuristic- looking  hybrid pick-up with a one-tonne payload.

 

OK, so that's the "good", evironmentally friendly and all that, now for the "bad".  I don't mean "bad" as in "not good", I mean "bad" in the Michael Jackson way.

 

Now, I don't mean "Michael Jackson way" as in the dodgy allegations that saw him in Court, I mean the "Michael Jackson way" as in the 1987 album he called "Bad".

 

Now that's clarified, I expected the "baddest" car at Geneva to be the McLaren P1 but it seems to have had the headlines taken off it by the Rolls-Royce Wraith. 

Here's one of Autoguide's stories on it. It is described as the most powerful Rolls ever. I'd say it would be a bit of a Bentley-worrier. They claim it's in a different price-bracket but I think it's a lot more attractive and should appeal to the Cheshire set - it's only the suicide-doors that I don't like. It also has a neat headlining inside which looks like a starry sky at night. It has been done before but will give that "out in a cabriolet on a warm Summer's evening" feeling that everyone loves so much.

 

Don't they?

 

Oh well, even so, it does look appealing.

 

Which brings me neatly round to...

 

...THE UGLY!

Not sure what the man in the photo is doing.  That thing is a Toyota i-Road.  It's an electric three-wheeler, two-seater much in the vein of the Renault Twizy.  And the glass doors means it shares a problem with the Twizy in that people will be able to see you driving it.  I've read a few reviews of the Twizy being tested in the UK and each time the reviewer has commented about derogatory remarks being shouted at him.  Now I can't possibly condone such action. 

 

But I can well understand it.

 

Now to "the beautiful".  When I read this article in caradvice.com.au about the ItalDesign Giugiaro Parcour concept, I immediately thought of  the Silex Power Chreos in as much as it is a pretty, computer-generated car:

However, if this is vapour-ware, it is very solid because here are some people having a good, close look at it...

I think it is gorgeous and very reminiscent of the supercars of my childhood in the '70s.

 

That was a time when ItalDesign were doing their only other work that I am aware of - ie, the squaring off of the Morris Marina to produce the Morris Ital:

Also, the peak time for Ford to be producing the Escort.  I keep thinking they've started again because I keep seeing stories about this car at Geneva:

It's the Ford EcoSport - which looks like "Escort" when you're flicking through car stories.  This car looks nothing like an Escort, though. It looks like a tall Ford Kuga - the Ford Kuga it will be replacing as opposed to the bigger "World Car" Ford Kuga that seems to have replaced the outgoing Ford Kuga here in The UK.  Confusing eh?

 

So, in summary, that's the 2013 Geneva Motor Show.  You don't need to go now.

Drivel 2022

Sounds like a desktop computer doesn't it? Maybe from the mid-1990s.

It's actually a GM plan for the future prosperity of the Vauxhall Opel Group.

It is outlined in a story in Autocar yesterday. The article tells us that "Under the plan, which was approved six weeks ago by GM's main board,
 Vauxhall-Opel will cut fixed costs by $500m by mid-decade, launch 23 new models and 13 new engines between now and 2016 and start building non Opel-Vauxhalls" and it "will also expand and implement the recently announced alliance with PSA." That follows on from my story a few months back in which I voiced my concerns about a possible merger with PSA, the French group behind Citroën and Peugeot.

It appears that this is the latest of many rescue/restructuring plans but there's not too much management-speak - apart from “Vauxhall 
is an example of best practice” and “not to include hope as part of the strategy" which are not too bad really when you think about it. I've checked out the photos of GM Europe
 president Steve Girsky and vice CEO Thomas Sedran and neither of them look like this manager:

or, if you happen to be American...

so there's a bit of hope there to go with the strategy.

The new car sales situation is very mixed at the moment - looking at the BBC Global Car Industry News page today is showing Ford taking on 2200 workers in America because of increased sales with BMW and Rolls Royce reporting record sales. There are also reports of increased car sales in both Japan and the UK.

However, they also report Honda laying of 800 UK staff blaming weak demand across Europe and that Ferrari sales slump in Italy. Perhaps more significantly for this item, Peugeot Citroen hit by 'crisis' in European car sales.

I live quite close to a Vauxhall factory and know people who work there. The GM management-speak here does seem positive and they do seem to have a 10-year plan which is unusually forward thinking these days.



Oh, my eyesight! It says "DRIVE! 2022"

Rolling Around in The British Countryside

This video has turned up on a couple of sites recently including Autoguide who use the lovely word "hoonage".It shows a Rolls Royce Phantom being thrashed about the countryside.

Nobody seems to know the story behind this - like who owns the car, who owns the land and who is driving.

Whoever made the video has gone to some trouble to pixelate the number plate. But not a very good job. With a bit of squinting and freeze-frame - and the knowledge that lots of Rolls Royces numbers start with HX - and the fact that it is a newish car (only 2500 miles on the clock) - it is quite possible to work it out. Especially if you put it into a car-check site like mycarcheck.com to confirm the vehicle make - I did and it came up with "a Rolls Royce Phantom Ewb Auto (4 Door Saloon)" so I'm quite confident I got it right. An earlier attempt came up with "Optare Solo Bus" but that was before I'd remembered the HX bit.

I'll not publish the number plate for a couple of reasons - one being that this could be a chauffeur having a bit of fun with his boss's motor - another reason being I could have got it wrong and coincidentally managed to find the number plate of ANOTHER Rolls Royce Phantom Ewb Auto (4 Door Saloon).

This could just be a rich playboy (or girl) but then he (or she) could be illegally churning up the land.

It could also be a case of someone borrowing Daddy's car.

Or maybe Rolls themselves have done this to get people on the Internet talking about their cars.

No - that would never work!