German Car Zone

G'day everyone, went to the motor show the other night! Good fun, lots of nice cars - highlights for me included the Alfa Romeo Brera (Soooooo hot), Peugeot 407 Coupe, Holden Efijy, BMW M6, Maybach 57 S (huge surprise to me, but it looked amazing in the colour combo, pics later) and the new Mini Works range (with huge variety in trim/wheels options, looking great!). New S Class was also very nice and I was very impressed by the Suburu Impreza Facelift - STI's looking sweet!

A few pics, sorry about the random exposures, it's a new cam and it was accidently set on aperture lock:

My favourite of the show, the Holden Efigy concept - never really been a fan but in the flesh it is dropdead gorgeous, a real styling masterpiece








In my opinion the nicest looking production car of the show, an Alfa Romeo Brera 3.2, with ~190kw and one sexxxxy body:






The BMW M6: we actually had the honour of getting shown around it, our 530 has been playing up a little so our salesman told us to speak to some guy and long story short he showed us around it and let us sit in it - he explained all about the weight saving measures (carbon fibre, magnesium, aluminum, polycarbonate whatever) - quite extraordinary really. Very impressive;






Absolutely beaut Maybach 57 S interior - never been a fan of these but who can't like this




A few examples of the new Mini Works trims - complete with carbon fibre mirrors, boot handles, interior as well as some funky new + very attractive wheels



F430's looking good as ever




Shots of the Cayman/Facelift Boxter




Terrible photo, but the very attractive new 407 Coupe - didn't look that great in black though




Beautiful and classy Audi S8 interior



And the very nice Pagani Zonda Roadster - oddly placed in amongst the Elfin stand though which is a small, low budget Australian club car manufacture, which really made the Zonda look like an uber-Elfin to most - not really the best place for it I would have thought.. this is the only example registered in Australia, sitting at ~$1.3million AU retail...




The Last Holden Monaro Ever, being auctioned off on Ebay as we speak here, currently sitting at over $180,000AU - slightly ridiculous for a ~$60,000 car. All for a good cause though




Anyhow that's all, enjoy the pics!

Excellent pics, Germaniac, thanks for sharing!

Great pics Germaniac.

Did you have a look at the Audi Q7? It was meant to be on show.

A good range of pictures, that holden concept looks amazing!

Yeah I did - didn't excite me a great deal to be honest - I've always felt its finer details (front/rear mainly) were not executed as well as they could've been which in my mind reduces the appeal of the whole car.

The car they touted as the 'most important' car of the show was in fact the replacement for the Australian Toyota Avalon called the 'Aurion' - again, it didn't excite me at all, mainly because it looked like a carbon copy of the Ford Falcon (I think it might've been penned by the same guy?) and also, it's FWD, and this alone will heavily jeapodize its marketability....

Oh, and the Citroen C6 was an interesting looking car, verdict's still out on that one for me...


Forgot to look at the RR Phantom LWB, spewin'!


Here's a little video by drive.com.au of the event, mainly covering dull and boring cars noone wants to hear about...
http://media.drive.com.au/?rid=18055&vf=2&bg=33&pp=0

wow man lovin that zonda.. please post more pics..
i dont know if its the lights .. but the colour looks diffrent from the other yellowish zondas ive seen..
well im sure its somewhat diffrent.. cause they offer like 1000 shades of silver..haha.. no joke

Oh really? How would you rate it against the ML? I hope they have it at the Brisbane show in 2 weeks. Too many times they've had cars at Melbourne that dont bother showing up at Brisbane?

Oh yeah I've seen the Aurion being trucked about up here. It is very boring, but at least not as butt ugly as the Avalon.

Hey, good, someone went to the Melbourne show. Guess you guys sometimes actually have something worthwhile to see in that little ol' town of yours. j/k

I'm a little less amazed by the motor shows these days, since I see so much motoring news on the internet. Nothing's really ever 'new' anymore, but it's still good to see cars in the metal. I use the opportunity to collect (more like sign up for, these days) some brochures, and to sit in any prospective purchases all in one place.

I think the Aurion was largely done by Nick Hogios, who did the BA Falcon redesign, I think, especially the sports models. He won a design competition and got his chance at Ford that way. He was one of my tutors in Industrial Design at UNSW, for what it's worth. Interesting to see where he's gone now.

I reckon the Aurion looks better than the Falcon; IMO. Sure, it's a little bland in the way that a mainstream car needs to be, but it's a good bland, as opposed to an ugly bland. Since it's FWD and people are still hung up on which wheels are driven (though my opnion is that not many could tell the difference in a blind test), sure, it'll automatically cause some people to count it out. However, it'll likely at least kill off the Mitsu 380, if not doubly so in tag-team with the forthcoming new Camry.

Ahaha, you and your beloved Zonda.... unfortunately I only had a small (32mb) card with me so had to limit the snaps; I took one other of the Zonda (rear) but it's blurry - I'll post it tomorrow since the computer downstairs is off (it's on that). I'm pretty sure it's just the regular yellow - it looked the same as all those I've seen in pictures and videos. It's a combination of the lighting and the high shutter speed on the camera (unintentional) which makes it look darker. Funny bout the silver


Personally I think the ML is tonnes better looking, and I'm certainly not biassed towards MB, I just think it's the case. Much more aggressive and toned, whereas the Q7 (with its long, round bonnet) looks a little bloated in my opinion - just what you don't want on a SUV (they already look big enough )

Hehe, for some reason I didn't mind the old Avalon - I thought it had quite a bit of character, despite being hideously boring.

Hey you, shut up, at least we know what a good city looks like down here hehe.

Yeah, it's certainly much better to see cars in the flesh, and really the motor show's an environment that's pretty conducive to accentuating what the carmakers want us to see in their cars (nice pretty displays, well positioned lights, rotating thingies, etc).

I'd like to see you take a car out in a blind test You're quite right in that I'm not sure too many would be able tell the difference between FWD/RWD when they're wrapped around a tree with a blindfold on Anyhow - I personally think neither the Falcon or Aurion are very attractive but I just find the Falcon more appealing in its concept and execution - for starters its RWD configuration but also the wider spread of (faster/more enjoyable) engines on offer, the lary/tacky bodykits on many of the models: I dunno, the idea of a bland, solid, reliable FWD V6 Toyota doesn't appeal to me as much as a stonking, loud, RWD grossly unenvironmental 290kw FPV-GTP Falcon Hehe, not that I'd ever buy one, but all idiocy aside I truly think that in a car of this size, RWD is a necessity - my brother slid his 93 Civic into a high gutter going round a corner a little too fast on a slippery road and it was in the most part due to FWD and the loss of control it brought about when he applied the throttle - imagine the damage in a ~1.6tonne family sedan (as opposed to a featherweight 3 door hatch) in the same scenerio - not pretty I would imagine. I'm no scientist and I won't ever pretend to be but it makes more sense to me to have drive and steering going through different wheels, as opposed to the same..

Speaking of the 380, I really feel for it actually - by all accounts it seems to be a pretty good car (leagues ahead of the Magna it replaced anyway), but it seems that because of the heritage that has been bestowed upon it it's been doomed to fail before it was even released. And re-released.

cool man thnx alot once again for the nice pics