The Paris Motor Show is as exotic as ever, but, writes Andrew Hamilton, it showed some very fine motorcars, for today and for the future
Motor shows never lack exotica and with Paris, it's hard to know where to start. Maybe Bentley is worth consideration. We all think of the Bentley as a sedate sort of chariot. Not so the Continental GT, a fearsome intimidating brute.
It develops more than 500 bhp from a twin turbocharged version of the 6.0 litre engine that is used in VW's luxury car, the Phaeton. It will go to 180 mph and getting to 60 mph is a couple of eye blinks, in under five seconds. Bentley is now a VW company which proclaimed the Continental GT at Paris as "the fastest four-seater in the world".
Price is almost an irrelevant detail here but buyers will need an awful lot of euro, nearly €200,000 here. Buyers will have to form an orderly queue and be prepared to wait a while. The first 1,000, which is roughly one year's production, have already been sold.
Paris also hosted a slightly downsized Maybach, Maybach being the Mercedes-Benz answer to Bentley and Rolls-Royce.
There was a first viewing of the new Jaguar XJ and at the show it looked dramatic in polished, unpainted silver form. This was to highlight its new aluminium spaceframe.
The flagship car comes loaded with new technology including a new air suspension, a first for Jaguar. There will be as a choice of four petrol engines at launch next year but significantly still no diesel.
Topping the line-up will be a supercharged 4.2 litre V8 producing 400 bhp.
Nissan's current Micra is getting somewhat long in the tooth, but then the car has had a life much longer than all of its supermini competitors. The new car, unveiled at Paris, seems innovative. It follows the trend to make small cars taller and with more erect seating to maximise interior room.
The rear seat can be pushed back to create more legroom or pulled forward to increase cargo space. It also comes with an Intelligent Card, allowing the doors and tailgate to be locked and unlocked and the engine started, without inserting a key or card into the vehicle.
The Micra goes on Irish sale early next year. Like its bigger Primera sibling, it will be built at Sunderland. A convertible version of the new Micra with retractable hardtop, is also on the cards, judging from a concept at the stand.
Press visitors were much impressed how Citroen have expanded the versatility and flexibility of their Pluriel model, itself a derivative of the C3. It's essentially five shapes in one including even an open-air pick up.
That cleverness was evident too, in the Opel Meriva. Only the driver's seat of this Corsa-based junior MPV, is fixed. The rear seats fold and move from side to side, as well as fore and aft, to make a roomy four-seater.
Renault has a tradition of being more "way out" at motor shows and their chief offering in this department was the Ellypse. It's meant to epitomise the type of environmentally friendly car that could be in use in 10 years. Among its eye-catching features, Ellypse uses ultra-thin seats that can disappear into the floor.
Its left side has traditional doors while on the right side is a door that can open from the back or the front.
Not many of us would see the Opel Speedster as frugal or even politically correct. But Opel's Eco Speedster has a small 1.3 litre common-rail diesel engine that was jointly developed with Fiat. The Eco Speedster with weight-saving carbon fibre bodywork, incredibly promises 155 mph with 113 mpg economy.
The engine develops 112 bhp in concept form but in production cars, this figure will be 70 bhp. We will see it first in the Corsa and Punto in the summer of 2003 and later in other Opel and Fiat models. The Eco Speedster was a smart way of whetting the appetite
That's good news, showing the power and supremacy of diesel these days. Paris, as we said, was a gargantuan automotive feast but it wasn't all about galloping consumption!