2014 Paris Motor Show

"BATC42" (BATC42) 10/11/2014 at 18:44 • Filed to: Paris Motor Show

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I went to the Mondial de l'Automobile in Paris, that you guys might now under the name Paris Motor Show. And I was dissapointed. More after the jump, and I took some picture, but not as much as I would've liked.

We arrivec before opening, and it was already packed. Yay for getting there early... Once inside we first went to hall 5 which was housing BMW group (so Mini, BMW, and RR) as well as JLR, Opel, Mercedes as well as Subaru and Ssangyong.

Mini was displaying some of its previous generation cars, like Mini Coupé and its hat-less sister, the Roadster, both JCW flavoured. As well as the Countryman and one I've never seen in the street yet, the Paceman, which is HUGE for a 2-door. On display was also the brand new (not-so) Mini, in this lovely shade of Yellow (and blue for the 5-door). Even if it's bigger I quite like it, especially those headlights. And they also brought the Supperlegera Concept with them.

BMW was here with just a few cars. No i8 was on display, and I didn't see an i3 on their stand (though there were several throughout the show). They brought with them some nice cars like this lovely orange M4 coupé and also a convertible one.

They also had a 2-series convertible and a M5, both a which were not on the main display, so you couldn't get to them. I didn't went through their stand since it was packed with so many people. It was rather small though, and they didn't seem to have many cars.

Rolls Royce was, of course, invite-only, you could just watch from afar. Weridly this was also the cas for Jaguar-Land Rover , it wasn't on invitation, but it was a controlled access display (even for the Defender) and the line was quite long. We waited for 10/15 minutes and decided it was time to move on. But we got to see Land Rover awesome show for the discovery sport which consisted of a moving display with the SUV over it and water raining from the ceiling over the Discovery.

Subaru as well as Opel (who would've thought) and Mercedes were overcrowded, and you couldn't even get in a car (let alone try to take a picture). Infiniti was also quite packed, but some of their cars were parked outside for a drive in Paris so we got to see them closer. I'm not a fan a their weird SUVs, but the Q50 is a nice luxury car.

Then we moved, and went to the hall housing PSA and Renault-Nissan , as well as Suzuki , Aston Martin , Venturi and Tesla .

Peugeot 's new concept, the Quartz is a behemoth, but nice looking, and the Exalt is a gorgeous piece of design.

Their display was mostly made of 108's, 308's and the refreshed 508. A few 208's and other models managed to squeeze throught the doors though, like their 208 HybridAir concept which is supposed to get a mileage of 2L/100km. Below you have pictures of the regular 308 grill (with the Lion on the bonnet), the interior from a 308 GT wagon (with the instrument panel over the wheel).

Citroën had a lot of Cactus (Cactiis ?). First time I've seen one up close on it's quite nice, weird, but nice, it's a fresh touch in the car industry that was much needed. They also had a few DS's.

Renault had, by far, the biggest display of the show. And i've never seen so many people buzzing around Renault's cars. Their biggest hits at the show were, of course, their 2 brand new cars, Twingo 3 and Espace 5, and they had brought almost 10 of the latter, and it was packed. It made quite the show. But in the middle of all that there was a small, sleek, yellow sports car, the Renault Sport RS01 (see top shot of the page).

At the neighbour, Nissan , everything was built around the new Pulsar, and the refreshed Juke. There was, apparently a GTR Nismo on display but all I saw was a sea of loud people. They also had their Pulsar Nismo Concept on display as well as the 2 IDx.

In a corner of the hall, next to Tesla , we stumbled upon a small brand, from Monaco, bearing the name of former French sports car maker, Venturi. They had with them their Formula E car, an original Venturi and this, the Venturi America.

Then we moved to the biggest deception of them all, Volvo 's stand; I was expecting to see a few S and V60's, maybe a Polestar version, but no, all they had was an "hologram" of these cars and TWO, yes just TWO, XC90... The car is nice and all (the interior is gorgeous), but it doesn't make up for the lack of other cars...

The car is super comfortable, and the touch screen is one of the best I've ever used in the car (probably even better than Tesla's).

Then something you guys will like, Ford . They had a lot of interesting cars, like the new Edge (just kidding), the ST sisters (and an ESTATE focus ST), the new Mondeo (Fusion for you, which is superb), but most of all they a V8 Mustang on display (and just one sadly). All I can say is that this thing is HUGE, that's a really big car. But what amazed me the most is that everyone seems to love this car, for us Europeans the Mustang is the perfect display of an American car. And everyone loves it, it's impressive. Some people look at it like it's Ferrari or the likes.

Fiat wasn't exciting for one bit, Jeep was way better, and they were hundreds of people in front of Ferrari . We didn't get to see any cars of the VW group because their hall was full of people and had trouble getting in. I really wanted to see the XT sports, too bad. But as we shuffled trhough the show we came to see a few unusual things. First a PGO Hemera. This car was donated by PGO to a school, the Mines d'Alès (PGO was created in the city of Alès) and the students converted it to an EV.

A design school was also there to recruit new students and to showcase its talents.

And then we stumbled upon what we were not expecting. A company which imports US cars. They had a Challenger SRT, 2 Ford SVT Raptors , several RAM 1500 EcoDiesel (one was bro-lifted, and one was a tow truck), and a $kaybait, yes a Ford GT.

That's a wrap.

I was a bit dissapointed by this year motorshow. Some interesting stuff, but nothing huge. I wasn't able to take as many pictures as I wanted, because of idiots not looking were they were standing (you know the kind of guy who comes right in front of you with his cell phone, stands there for 10 seconds, takes a picture and moves onto the next car.), and don't get me started on kids... Who brings their kids in a stroller to an event like this one ????, and kids runign everywhere. I really should get press passes next time (even though that is impossible to happen).

Most of the pictures were taken with a 50mm f/1.4 Canon FD lens (some where on the 16-50mm Fuji lens) on a Fuji X-A1 camera. Shoot in RAW, postprocessed in Lightroom 5.6 with Fuji's color profiles.

The Transporter > BATC42 10/12/2014 at 11:32

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I love how everyone thought the Mustang is a big car. It's not even the biggest pony car by far. I should take you on a ride in an F-150 or a Silverado some time.