AUDI
The A1 Sportback concept goes into production in 2010 as the plain old A1, and what you see above in our picture gallery is roughly what you’ll get, minus the vertically split glass tailgate, the jazzy lights and possibly the carbon-fibre and plastic body panels. Audi aims to emphasise the sporty nature of this five-door, four-seat hatch, however, so the magnetic ride suspension might stay. Under the bonnet, the show car was powered by a hybrid engine emitting 92g/km of carbon dioxide, but at launch the A1 will come with a range of conventional diesel and petrol engines, including the 1.4 TFSI petrol unit.
At the other end of the fuel-supping spectrum, Audi showcased the new S4 saloon and its Avant estate version. No high-performance saloon is worth its salt these days without a significant reduction in CO2 emissions, so the new 330bhp V6 replaces the old V8 and emits 30 per cent less carbon than its predecessor while having “the potential” for a fuel consumption figure of 29mpg. Hmm... The S4 goes on sale in November, priced from £36,000.
BMW
The X1 might have been unveiled as a concept, but it’s basically the car that will appear in showrooms in 2010. Roughly the same length as an X3 but significantly lower, the X1 will be BMW’s entry-level SUV. Despite having four-wheel drive and an elevated ride height, the emphasis will be on the X1’s on-road ride and handling qualities. To make room for the new model in BMW’s existing range, the new X3 will be specified to a higher standard, with prices to match.
Also on the BMW stand were the new 7-series (full driving impressions will appear in these pages next week) and the facelifted 3-series, with an updated 330d diesel engine developing 245bhp.
CITROEN
Christian Streiff, President of the PSA Group, which owns both Citroen and Peugeot, declared the group’s ambitious vision that by 2010 - just two years away - every model range will have “stop and start” technology, and furthermore that the PSA hybrid diesel engine, called “Hymotion4” in conjunction with four-wheel drive, will go into production. “This group is the champion of the ecological car,” he said. Fifty per cent of all PSA Group car sales in Europe are models that emit under 140g/km of CO2.
There was also a nod to the current global economic meltdown: “ We are maintaining our market share in Europe in a little more difficult economic context than we had thought,” said Streiff. Wry smiles all round. None the less, by 2010 PSA plans 50 different body styles in order to cover 90 per cent of the global car market.
On the Citroen stand, the C3 Picasso is the latest addition to Citroen’s MPV family, styled as a magic box, “magic” as in 500 litres of storage, and “box” as in, er, not pretty. Due on sale next summer, its main competitor will be the Vauxhall Meriva, so expect a starting price of about 11,000 pounds.
The Hypnos is Citroen’s high-end, luxury green concept. The SUV/coupe crossover (this autumn’s must-have accessory for any self-respecting car company) houses the “Hymotion4” system. Will we see the Hypnos in production? Bits of it. Which bits? Wait and see. Very useful.
Also on show is the dramatic GT Concept, a fantasy creation destined to appear in the Gran Turismo video game.
FERRARI
The California is a 4.3-litre, 460bhp, 357lb ft, front-engined V8 Ferrari for women. No, we’re not sure what that last bit means either, but we’re driving it in a fortnight so we’ll let you know then. We sat in it on the stand and can report no sign of a special box for shoes or holes in the headrests for ponytails. So pretty unisex, really, apart from the slightly girly silver “California” badge in twirly script above the glove compartment. Still, it’s good of Ferrari to acknowledge that women can handle more than 100bhp. And then some - the California has a top speed of 192mph and reaches 62mph in four seconds. Cue the Beach Boys: “I wish they all could be California girls...” The car has a price tag of 179,000 euros (£140,909); the order book is open, with deliveries next summer.
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FORD
A phantasmagoria of marketing zeroed in on the launch of the second-generation Ford Ka, with weird lighting, a woman saxophone player, a “rawk” band, DJs, beautiful people, a real-life Bond girl (Olga Kurylenko, who plays Camille in the forthcoming Quantum Of Solace) plus Ford of Europe’s chief executive John Fleming, all bundled into a chi-chi night club on the right bank of the Seine. This was to usher in the tiny hatchback that wil be built at Fiat’s plant in Tychy, Poland and is based on the same chassis/floorpan as the Fiat 500 and Panda. My daughter Scarlett (16) has already sternly warned the company about “too much getting down with the kids”, but at least John Fleming manfully resisted the urge to do some dad-dancing with Olga, even if his hips did sway rather alarmingly.
Truth is, however, that the average age of a Ka buyer is far higher than Ford would care to admit. In fact the new Ka poses problems for Ford that it didn’t think it would face 12 years ago at the launch of the original. For a start it is a cooperative effort with Fiat, so factory gate prices are fixed, which means there is only limited room to sell the Ka at a loss if Ford thinks it can gain an advantage by doing so. The other thing is that Ka boosted production of Fiesta parts (on which it was based) at a time when the sales of the mainstay hatchback were sloping down at the end of its life. “Ka was too damn successful,” a Ford exec once told me. Ford thinks it still has room for manoeuvre on pricing and it will spin other models off the current Fiesta platform to maintain sales volumes. It might need to: Ford UK sales this year are down 21 per cent on 2007, although it is hardly an exception in that respect. Ka has in a cameo role in the forthcoming Bondathon, and you might want to wait until our driving impressions later this month before signing the cheque.
LAMBORGHINI
Gadzooks — a Lamborghini four-door, four-seat saloon. Strictly a concept at present, the Estoque (no, we don’t know how to pronounce it either) sports a detuned, 500bhp V10 engine from the Gallardo, with longer inlet tracts to reduce the engine’s height and to extend the torque curve further down the rev range. “It could take an FSi V8 engine, also a turbodiesel,” says chief engineer Maurizio Reggiani, which are words you will never have heard before from a Lamborghini engineer. With the engine completely behind the front axle line, it is officially classed a mid-front-engined and has a weight distribution of 55 per cent front, 45 per cent rear. The transmission is a seven-speed, twin-clutch DSG unit from the parent VW Group, driving all four wheels.
Will it be built? “It is a concept for our third model, but now we have to investigate whether the possibility exists,” says Reggiani. With Porsche’s forthcoming Panamerica and Aston Martin’s Rapide reintroducing the idea of four-seat coupé/saloons to the market, perhaps Lamborghini is on to something. “Even if the answer is yes, it will take four years to make it,” says Reggiani, although he admits he would feel happier about the future when the financial masters of the universe start earning their bonuses again.
LEXUS
More green stuff from a manufacturer of powerful, heavy, gas-guzzling cars. Next year’s RX SUV will be available with a hybrid powertrain only, like the current RX400h. No more petrol versions, ever. Lexus expects higher sales of the RX now it’s an acceptable SUV... even if a small diesel-engined Fiat Panda 4x4 would be a more environmentally friendly choice.
Also strutting its stuff was the IS 250C, the convertible IS with three-piece folding hard top. Power comes from a 2.5-litre V6 mated to a six-speed automatic gearbox with steering-wheel-mounted paddles. It will be on sale in the UK next summer and Lexus expects sales of 1,000 next year. Expect prices comparable with its nearest competitor, the BMW 3-series.
MAZDA
Kiyora apparently means “pure and proper” in Japanese, although most people associate it with a disgusting orange drink you used to dunk Wagon Wheels into at the cinema. Up to now these Mazda design studies have been based on supercar flights of fancy, although this hatchback is more serious. Well a bit. The engine is a 1.3-litre, direct-injection petrol unit that Mazda doesn’t actually make yet, ditto the transmission. It is undoubtedly a city car, but is it the new Mazda 1?
MERCEDES-BENZ
As if more evidence were needed that the downturn is affecting more than just city traders, consider Merc’s year-to-date UK sales drop of just over four per cent against Ford’s 21. The three-pointed star is concerned, though, that we don’t talk ourselves into a crisis. “We are not excluded from these changes in the market,” says sales and marketing vice president Klaus Maier.
He thinks that the Fascination concept could point the way to the future in more ways than one. It certainly debuts the face of next year’s E-class coupe, which will replace the CLK coupe, but could it become a model in its own right? These sleek coupe estates concepts have been tried in the past by Chevrolet and Saab. They don’t play well in the US, though, where the term “wagon” is derogative, but Maier thinks the Fascination could be built for European and Chinese markets if there is sufficient demand. “We could make it work without US sales,” he says, “but it is only a test of reaction at present.”
In the meantime a host of new Blue Efficiency model variants will be arriving on our shores in the next few months, including stop/start versions of the 150 and 170bhp A-class and B-class. These will simply replace the standard cars, which proves M-B is serious about the technology. The fully armoured S600 Guard model, however, will not be coming to the UK. “The company doesn’t think Britain is violent enough for it,” said a spokesman, who’s obviously never been to Portsmouth on a Saturday night.
MINI
The main story was the frankly pig-ugly Crossover Concept. In an effort to deflect attention from its looks, MINI has come up with a devilishly clever marketing strategy: the number four. As in fourth variant in the range, four doors, four-wheel drive, four single seats and four metres long. See what they’ve done there? Neat. It still looks weird though. We reported on this car in last month’s What’s New pages. Suffice to say it will appear on a road near you in the near future.
PEUGEOT
We reported on the stunning RC grand tourer concept last month; some of its styling will appear on the next 408, albeit toned down. Shame, although one Peugeot insider did hint that what we were looking at might be “a dress rehearsal” for something exciting at the 2010 Paris show. Ooooh. The full name for the concept is the RC Hymotion4, because under the bonnet is PSA’s hybrid system (see Citroen), although this time a 1.6-litre petrol engine joins the electric motor. The combined powertrain develops 313bhp and emissions of 109g/km.
Of more real-world significance was the Prologue concept, which in all but name is the new 3008 MPV. Sitting on a new platform, the Prologue/3008 will go on sale next year with a range of engines taken from the 308, which was at the show in CC convertible form and very fine it looked, too. Under the show car bonnet was yet another form of the Hymotion4 system, using a 2.0-litre diesel engine combined with an electric motor for 218bhp and 109g/km of CO2.
RENAULT
We’ve already seen (if not driven) the new Renault Mégane in five-door guise, but Paris marked the first appearance of the three-door coupé version. In the UK the five-door will go on sale in mid November, with the three-door coupé in the showrooms early in 2009. Prices are expected to start at about £13,000. After the previous model’s distinctive bustle, the five-door looks strangely staid, but the coupe is a real looker. It lacks the vertically hinged doors of the Geneva concept, but otherwise the coachwork of the production car follows that of the concept fairly closely. Renault design chief Patrick Le Quement was quoted as saying that if the production car wasn’t 80 per cent of the concept, “then I will eat it.” His knife and fork (and his digestion) can rest easy.
Also on show was the Ondelios, a strangely grey concept that some are speculating might form a bridge between Espace MPV and the compellingly weird Vel Satis and provide the basis for Renault’s future big car. Will Le Quement and his team be allowed off the leash again by Carlos Ghosn? We doubt it; far more likely is that a big car would share a conventional base with an existing Nissan floorpan.
VENTURI
Milk-float lookalike the Eclectic debuted as a concept two years ago, but this is the production version, which goes on sale next year at 15,000 euros (£11,808) for the basic lead-acid battery version and 18,500 (£14,563) for the lithium-ion version. A 31-mile range is common to both, the difference lies in the life of the battery packs; 2.5 years for the lead acid, eight years for the lithium ion. The roof-mounted solar panels are mainly there for effect as they develop only tiny amounts of electricity.
The dinky windmill, however, is said to generate about 10 miles worth of range after six hours spinning – as long as it is windy. For the most part the vehicles will be recharged via mains electricity, which in France is largely nuclear-generated. The vehicles will be built at a new factory near Le Mans.
In the meantime there are plans for a limited run of Fetish models; 25 only, price on application. Powered with lithium-ion batteries, this 112mph sports car will accelerate from 0-62mph in less than 4sec. Venturi also debuted a design study based on Michelin’s advanced electric wheel motors called the Volage. A pretty little Lotus Elise-style sport coupe, this running prototype will be on display at next year’s Michelin Bibendum Challenge for alternative propulsion vehicles.
VOLKSWAGEN
Big announcements for VW: plans are in action to get the emissions of the Golf BlueMotion (the most economical variant) down to just 99g/km of CO2 from its 1.6-litre diesel engine, and the same engine in next winter’s Passat will produce 109g/km. Meanwhile, for those who think “green” is simply a bad colour choice for cars, the new GTI was on display. Power comes from a 2.0-litre, four-cylinder TSI unit developing 208bhp; that’s a gain of 9bhp over the MkV but emissions, naturally, are down, to 178g/km. Sales will start early next summer with prices announced nearer the time.
VOLVO
Not a thirsty XC90 SUV in sight. Instead, the stand was full of Volvo’s DRIVe, sub-120g/km range, which is available in C30, S40 and V50 guise. A new 1.6-litre diesel engine pushes all three models into VED band B, with CO2 figures of 115g/km for the C30 and 118g/km for the S40 and V50. A subtle DRIVe emblem adorns the bodywork. First deliveries will be in January; prices start at £15,410 for the C30 and rise to £21,660 for the V50 in SE Lux trim.
Meanwhile, three days into the job, Volvo’s new chief executive Stephen Odell was anxious to tell the world that he is not in the job to sell the company for owners, Ford. “No one at Ford said, ‘Get the bride ready’,” said the former chief operating officer for Ford of Europe. “My job is to get Volvo back to sustained profitability.”
Odell is Volvo’s first non-Swedish CEO and he is anxious to respect the company’s traditions even if he needs to make some hard decisions in the next few weeks, including a likely round of job losses, which will follow the 3,000 redundancies made already this year.
“The market is tough to predict,” he said, “but we need to match our cost base to where we think we will be. I am reviewing fixed costs at the moment and we need to move very quickly. I am more than aware that every piece of paper we look at means people and families.”
Odell is planning to announce a round of cost reductions at the end of the month, but claims that will be it for the foreseeable future. The company is at least 200,000 short of its Ford-imposed target of 600,000 annual sales, but Odell says he is pretty happy with Volvo’s business and model plans even if the market contracts sharply. “I am not looking at target sales,” he said, “I just want Volvo’s unfair [sic] share of whatever business is out there.”
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