Geneva Auto Show

Just got back from the Geneva Auto show. Wow, what an event! It was estimated that 700k+ people attended overall (most of them on the day we went...). I'm posting this in the NW threads because the general threads already have had a couple of postings from the show.

We got one of the f-car owner's invites to the Ferrari booth. That was way cool. Many hundreds of people (I counted about 500-600) were jam packed around the booth perimeter snapping shots when we waltzed right up and in with our invites like rock stars. I'm sure we ticked off more than a few people by being in their pictures while on stage wiping our drool off the cars. We had the obligatory glass of champagne on the second floor overlooking the auto show while trying to act important.

Of importance were the Superamerica and the F430 Spider.

The Superamerica's top was interesting, but impractical due to the "flip top lid" design. As has been previously observed, everything that's in the top when it's open is simply flipped onto the passengers when closed. This happened when we watched the roof being cycled. Dust and cigarette ash were visibly dumped into the cabin. :-(

The F430 Spider was cool. The rear end looks much better in person than in pictures. The front end (nostrils) looks worse (but don't take me off the waiting list!). The large F430 plaque on the front dash was way too much. I hope they have an option to delete it. All the show f-cars were either corsa or silverstone.

Of other cars, the hit of the show in my book was the Pagani Zonda roadster. Damn that thing looked cool. Simply stunning. Of course, at the cost of an Enzo, it should be!

The Lambo exhibit was somewhat lame. They had three white cars (baby, Murci, and baby convertible concept with the split front seats via bodywork).

After the show, we went into the local auto museum. It had an interesting selection of cars from 1910 or so up to 1990. My vote goes to the CA highway patrol car they had!

Cheers!

Tim
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They appeared to be huge nostrils. Much too big for the front end in relation to everything else. The problem is that while the actual intake screens are of reasonable size, they have additional area painted black that act as air scoops (towards the nose of the car). So, rather than the apparent scoops being the size of the actual screens (as on the 360 for example), in person it looked like the majority of the front end was intake. Somewhat comical in my opinion.

In contrast, the rear end (um, the F430 rear end in the picture) looked better to me in real life. A picture shows it to be very busy and misproportioned, yet it kind of worked once you could actually see the angles and curves. Note that both pictures were taken close so they have somewhat of a fisheye effect.

Tim
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