The Big Show: Geneva 2013 Part 2

If you missed yesterday’s post, don’t beat yourself with your iPad.  (The warranty doesn’t cover use as a punishment device.)  Just go check it out.  Then check out the rest of the cool stuff to emerge from under the sheets this week:

Despite Lamborghini’s best defenses with the Veneno, Ferrari conquered Geneva this year with their latest hypercar.  We knew it was coming.  The successor to the F40, the F50, and the unfathomable Enzo.  It emerged and it had a name: LaFerrari.  What?  Yeah.  It’s basically called the Ferrari The Ferrari.  No, we won’t get used to that.  Who else gets away with something like that?  I can’t find a Ford vonFord anywhere.  Anyway, this is the The Ferrari, and aside from the name and the stupid semi-truck mirrors, there’s nothing to hate.  Its hybrid drivetrain produces a combined 963 hp.  It gets to 60 in under three seconds, and only 499 will be built.

Not to go completely unnoticed, Chevy chose Geneva to unveil the Corvette Stingray Convertible.  It loses the shoulder vents and that pesky, black b-pillar.  Without the swooping fastback, the acre of deck lid is more pronounced, though designers ironed in more creases to differentiate it from the softer curves of the outgoing model.

We’ve already provided you with a doctorate on the newest British hypercar, the McLaren P1.  An example showed up at the McLaren booth with a couple of 12cs and an extremely rare example of the F1, the LM XP1, worth about $10 million.  That’s nearly a yard of alphanumerics, but translated, it means that this was the prototype for the five F1 LMs, which were outfitted for racing at Le Mans.  Hopefully the P1 will go racing sometime, too.

You know your segment is making a comeback when Mercedes wants in.  Their AMG A45 hatchback is built on the platform of the new mini-Merc, the CLA, but it features another rear door, and it’s been worked over by the dungeon masters at AMG to produce 360 hp.  No big deal, right?  Except that they’ve coaxed all that from a turbocharged 2 liter four cylinder.  As the owner of a 2 liter four, I’m ready to publicly state that 360 hp is maniacal.  Thankfully that power heads to all four wheels, rather than just the fronts, as it would in the CLA.  The A45 seems slightly out of place, though, in the hot hatch segment.  Considering so much power and AWD, we’re not really surprised that it doesn’t offer a manual, normally a lynchpin of hot hatch preference.  AMG will be torturing a version of the CLA sedan soon, too, which will head to our shores, but the A45 is Old World only.

And if you think that’s exclusive, try buying a car that isn’t even built by a car company.  Once in a while a design house will come up with a concept car just to show off.  This was the case with the Pininfarina Sergio, a roofless cartoon character made from a Ferrari 458 Spider.  There’s no windshield, the headrests come out of the roll bar, and the nose has been sharpened to a sharky grin.  It’s probably just happy that it can reach 60 mph in 3.4 seconds and can keep going, as long as its drivers are wearing face shields, until it hits 199 mph.  If you have a 458 Spider and a great steaming pile of money, Pininfarina will build you one.

Try getting rival design house ItalDesign to build you a copy of what they brought to Geneva, the Giugiaro Parcour, and you’re out of luck.  The Parcour is still a concept, but it’s one of my favorite offerings of this year’s show.  Take a mid-engine supercar, an AWD Lamborghini Gallardo, perhaps, and jack it up for rallying, and you have the Parcour.  It has adjustable ride height, and uses a suspension system Giugiaro is calling pushrod 2.0.  They say it will ride very stiff and racy on the road, but can be adjusted to activate 8 shocks for off-road fun.  Okay, so they didn’t say “off-road,” but look at that thing!  It’s no Baja racer, but it could certainly handle a special stage or two.  There’s no word on a production model, though, so the Local Motors Rally Fighter will go unchallenged for the foreseeable future.

Did we cover all your favorites from Geneva this year?  What did we miss?  What were the coolest cars to show up?