Yes motor shows are about cars, but they’re also about many other, interesting things.
One of these is promo girls.
And even though American motor shows aren’t as renowned for their girls as those held in Europe, the girls at New York seemed to buck the trend.
So in honour of this achievement, we’ve bring you this – the Girls of New York.
Enjoy.
In the world of motor shows, there is a clear hierarchy.
Detroit, Geneva and Frankfurt, for example, are top of the tree.
But looming behind them, like a starved behemoth, is China.
With a new car market of almost 20 million a year, China is billed as motoring golden land where sales will skyrocket and costs will stay cheap. Forever.
Every car maker wants a piece of the pie, making China’s annual motor show – currently being held in Shanghai – an orgy of motoring excitement.
Don’t believe us?
Check out this gallery to see the highlights from the show so far.
“Cover up girls!”
That’s the catchcry at this year’s Shanghai Motor Show, where organisers have banned promo girls from wearing skimpy costumes.
It’s a move shrouded in controversy, but one that follows the example set by several other shows that outlawed risque costumes earlier this year.
Still, the new rules haven’t stopped models turning up to Shanghai in their droves.
So to celebrate this beautiful display, we’ve compiled a gallery in one convenient place for your enjoyment.
You’re welcome.
The future of motoring is here!
And it’s in Shanghai.
With China now the world’s largest market for new cars, manufacturers are falling over themselves to sell the Chinese new, ground breaking designs.
So it should come as no surprise that this year’s Shanghai Motor Show is jam packed full of futuristic concepts.
Click the gallery and step into the twilight zone. If you dare.
If you’re a Volkswagen fan, or a fan of anything within the VW group, the Worthersee festival in Austria is like Disneyland.
On steroids.
Think of it as a motoring festival where VW lets loose.
A place where the world’s biggest car maker gives its engineers free reign to show what they can do.
That means unveiling a new 370kW twin-turbo Golf GTI concept, making the fastest Audi TT ever and even making a GTI version of the VW Amarok.
It’s not all factory-made exotica, though, with VW tragics flocking from all over Europe to display their cars.
Here are some of the cars on display this year.
It was one of the most dangerous, and deadly, circuits on the Formula One calendar, but that hasn’t stopped Michael Schumacher piloting a modern F1 machine around the infamous Nürburgring.
Schumacher drove a 2011-spec Mercedes-Benz F1 car at the circuit yesterday as part of a promotional stunt for the German company.
Such is the circuit’s notoriety, Formula One hasn’t raced on the full Nürbugring since 1976.
Schumacher, a seven-time F1 champ, shared the circuit with a handful of other Mercedes drivers, including current F1 ace Nico Rosberg, Bernd Schneider, Bernd Maylander and Karl Wendlinger.
Sadly, Schumacher wasn’t allowed to set any lap records, steering his ‘Silver Arrow’ around the circuit at a relatively sedate pace.
Still, it’s not every day you see a modern F1 machine tackle the Nürburgirng!
Click through the gallery to see Schumacher in action.
It’s a petrol head’s wet dream. A world class garden party that’s more burning rubber than high tea.
Welcome everyone to the Goodwood Festival of Speed: an exotic orgy of thousands of the world’s fastest and more expensive cars.
And with the 2013 event being held over the weekend, we thought it timely to bring you this highlights gallery.
If like us, you weren’t able to attend, hopefully it will give you a taste on what we missed out on.
Oh how we wish we’d gone…
Official shots of BMW’s hero car for this year’s Frankfurt Motor show, the i8, have leaked online days before its official debut.
The images show the highly anticipated plug-in hybrid in production-ready form, giving us a greater look at its two-tone interior and drivetrain underpinnings.
First shown as a concept at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2009, the i8 is tipped to redefine the electric sportscar segment, with its 266kW/570Nm powerplant capable of a 0-100km/h charge of just 4.5 seconds and a top speed of 250km/h.
Check the current issue ofWheels for our exclusive first drive.
Porsche has finally ripped the covers off a production-ready variant of its 918 plug-in hypercar – but don’t expect it to grow an extra pair of doors any time soon.
Speculation that Porsche was developing a secret four-door 918 was rife leading into the Frankfurt Motor show, with AutoCar reporting the project, labelled 984, was so advanced models had already been fashioned.
But when approached by Wheels, Porsche execs dismissed the idea as ‘rubbish’, and claimed no such program exists.
They did however confirm Porsche’s Ferrari-killing mid-engined supercar, or ‘baby 918’ is still destined for production at this stage.
No official word either if Australia is likely to receive any of the new, left-hand-drive only 918s, with the limited-edition ‘green’ hypercar expected to cost over $1.3 million.
Producing 661kW from its combination of a race-engineered 4.6-litre V8 and twin-electrics motors, the 918 will rocket from 0-100km/h in 2.8 seconds and hit 300km/h in 23 seconds.
Those numbers mightn’t be as brutal as the new Ferrari LaFerrari or McLaren P1, but Porsche is confident the 918 will be quicker around a circuit thanks to its advanced four-wheel-drive and torque-vectoring systems.
All in a car capable of travelling 30km solely on electrical, zero-emission, power.
Porsche also had its new Panamera S E-Hybrid and Panamera diesel on display.
Flick through the gallery to check out the production 918 Spyder.
First it’s a darkly lit silhouette, or maybe a shining headlight. A tantalising glimpse of a forthcoming model weeks before its motor show debut.
Then, as the countdown nears its conclusion, a single photo is ‘leaked’, which the media republish eagerly, along with whatever hasty speculation an overworked news editor can cobble together from a nod and a wink. By the time the vehicle’s actual debut at a motor show comes around, the world is primed to receive the car company’s message along with whatever facts are earmarked for release.
That’s how it works with concept cars, like the Jaguar CX-17 for example. For production cars, like the Audi A3 Cabriolet or Audi A8, both of which have their world debut at the Frankfurt Show this week, the whole game is given away weeks ahead to ensure consumers have maximum time to prime their bank managers for upcoming expenditure.
So, when a concept car somehow gets all the way through to the actual motor show without being subject to The Slow Reveal, or leaked by a Russian magazine that went to press too early, you can be sure of one thing: There’s no hope in Hell of the car or anything vaguely resembling the car ever reaching production. Such is the case with Audi’s strangely-named nanuk quattro concept car. Part performance coupe, part go-anywhere SUV, the Nanuk is the work of Audi’s pet design house Italdesign Giugiaro. And it has about as much chance of making production as Kevin Rudd does of becoming Prime Minister for the third time.
Which is a shame, because the Audi nanuk would absolutely blitz its way through the desert thanks to a mid-mounted 5.0-litre V10 turbodiesel engine delivering 410kW and more than 1,000Nm to all four wheels. That’s the kind of performance that uses sand dunes as runways, that crosses arid expanses faster than a feral camel with heatstroke chasing imaginary oases.
Not sure, then, why Audi felt compelled to give this 1900kg King of the Outback four-wheel steering to realise what it calls “the perfect turning circle”. Perhaps it’s to help with that other crucial SUV chore: the school run.
Nanuk, if you must know, is Inuit for polar bear. Which makes perfect sense to us.
