Citroen E-Mehari/Bollore Bluesummer
Citroen caught people by surprise with its announcement to start building the E-Mehari from the spring of 2016. That would have been a very quick transition from the Cactus-M Concept revealed in Frankfurt this fall to production ready car. But even a brief glance at the car and the concept shows that these two have nothing in common, and that in fact the E-Mehari does not seem to share parts usually distributed throughout a producers range (side repeaters, rearview mirrors etc) with a Citroen in production. This should come as little surprise, however. Since September this year PSA has been producing the Bluesommer for the electric car company Bollere at its Rennes factory. Surprise, surprise, apart from a reskin (easy to do with plastic pannels) the E-Mehari is identical to the Bluesummer and matches its technical specifications to a T. Still a cool car though, but not quite a Citroen...
Facelifted BMW 1-Series
I wasn't a huge fan of the second generation 1-Series, despite its references to the 2000CS. But after the facelift it just looks aweful. Particularly from the back. All that matt plastic in the back and the oversized two-part rear lights make it look like a Kia from two generations ago. And that after the 2-series active cruiser already looks like a Kia Clarens. Really makes you wonder.
Electric BMWs
I've recently seen and heard quite a few electric BMWs. Mostly 1-Series Electric Drive in Berlin and one i3 in Munich just a few days after its official lunch. They sound gloriously futuristic and the i3 certainly looks the part. Though the dipping shoulder line looked on the second gen Citroen Picasso and still hasn't gained much greater visual appeal, as nice as it might be for kids in the back.
Overall it's a bold statement, though, and judging by the reactions of my non-car owning 30-something friends in Berlin who've also embraced DriveNow and Car2Go, BMW might be on to something, yet maybe not as a sales proposition but rather as a gadget to lease or share. This thing seems to be made for DriveNow. Another thing that struck me, though, was the naming: the 'i' is not a vowel that works well with a number in German. Instead it encourages the English pronunciation. The primarily global target is only more pronounced by launching the car in London, New York and Shanghai with no event on say Berlin or Munich.
BMW X5
The current, or now old, X5 used to be the last good looking SUV in the BMW portfolio. The new, unfortunately brings this exception to an end. Unveiled today, Munich's new full-scale off-roader looks like the unhappy love child of a Mercedes GL and a X1, with a bit of Honda CR-V, and BMW X3 and 3-Series thrown in for good measure. In short, it looks heavy and awkward. And the decision to increase the width while narrowing the tracks sure doesn't help with that.
And the back is shutline galore or hell. In the attempt to hide the fact that the rear window is not all that raked and probably improve aerodynamics BMW added blacked out buttresses together with a body color spoiler, neither of which lines up with the actual rear window. Add to that the shutline of the split tailgate and the cut off x1 and E34 5 series (which I love, by the way) style taillights and you really got yourself into one busy mess.
For the first time, at least, BMW provided a functional explanation for these obnoxious fender vents cropping up on their new models: supposedly they help channel air through the wheel houses for cooling purposes. If that's true, than I wished they had had found a more elegant solution.
This general tendency to imbue cars with 'athletic' design, i.e. excessive vents, flared arches and the likes, is a bit galling. But that's for another post.
Peugeot and the rediscovery of French elegance
Peugeot seems to have its mojo back, or at least its sense of history. After almost a decade of ever more awkward design, the French firm with the lion as its logo seems to have understood that 'feline' need not mean 'roaring beast'. The new 308 is instead a piece of restrained poise not seen since at least the 406 and in particular the Pininfarina designed coupe of that series. The 508 (despite the sagging boot, maybe a failed reference to the 504) and the 208 already pointed in the right direction. But the 308 got it pretty much right. It might seem a bit derivative from certain angles - there's a hint of Kia in the front and something reminds me of the Mitsubishi Lancer Sportback from three-quarters in the way that the rear-lights and the sides meet - but then most Peugeots of the 70s and 80s had a very quiet design.
In general, I don't quite understand the whole overt sportiness thing. not from a design stand point (Mercedes used to be timeless, very similar to Peugeot here; and Audi used to be clean. now you can order all these fake add-on air vents which certainly help the bottom line, but not the looks) nor from a driving point of view: I certainly enjoy a well-handling car, but for 95% of the time it doesn't matter, while a compliant suspension dealing well with expansion joints and potholes does. In a round about way this brings me back to the new Peugeot: together with the small steering wheel and the so-called 'head-up' positioning of the instrument binnacle, Peugeot seems to have taken inspiration from Aston Martin: the rev counter runs counter-clockwise to form a perfect symmetry with the speedometer. This source of inspiration also prevents me from hailing it as a piece of French idiosyncrasy. Charming nonetheless, though.
Lamborghini lost in solipsistic aggression
Lamborghini just revealed another concept to celebrate its 50th anniversary as a car manufacturer this year. According to its designer Walter da Silva - otherwise head of design for all of Volkswagen - the cars profile is resembling a charging bull. Not so sure about this. To me it looks more like a cockroach. certainly also fierce animals, but not quite celebrated in the way the fighting bulls celebrated in the Italian manufacturers nomenclature.
I am generally not so sure about these hyper-exclusive styling exercises (the Sesto Elemento, Veneno etc.) while the Gallardo is now over a decade old - and has just received another at the very least debatable update. To some extent the corporate schedule at Audi and Volkswagen has to be blamed for this. But the Estoque, for example, at least provided a vision for what a large, elegant Lamborghini could be. And Lamborghini was certainly also about elegant tourers, think Espada, and not only about hyper-aggressive pseudo-racers.
French Micro Cars in Rome
So I knew that Rome was the largest urban market for Smart, but what I didn't realize was the ubiquity of French microcars. With a 500ccm engine and about 5HP they can be driven with a motorino license and seemed to be exempt from parking tickets.
Far from the underdesigned boxes that I knew from the 90s, the current models produced by Aixam, Chatenet and the like are consciously modeled on 'real' cars such as the Mini and, my favorite, on the Range Rover Evoque.
Labels: Micro cars with scooter engines
