Geneva Motor Show 2016: the latest news and most insane cars – The Verge

Olympic skier will use a car and a jetpack suit to become the fastest man on skis

2016-03-03T13:27:29-05:00

Jaguar is trying to help Olympic skier Graham Bell become the world's fastest man on skis, the company announced at the Geneva Motor Show. Bell hopes to reach speeds upwards of 180 miles per hour next year, which would break the world downhill speed skiing record by more than 20 miles per hour.

Bell won't just be using gravity to generate that speed, though. First, he plans to have an all-wheel-drive Jaguar XE tow him to 100 miles per hour, an art known as "skijoring." (Seriously.) Once he passes 100 miles per hour, small jets on his ski suit will ignite to take him the rest of the way to a world record. Yes - Bell wants to literally jet sk …

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BMW’s i8 is even prettier in Protonic Red

2016-03-03T08:03:09-05:00

Let's be honest, the Geneva Motor Show is a beauty contest above all else. None of the cars here move, very few are ever allowed to even make a sound, and the majority of press coverage is built around their appearance. This is why every new car here has to look new, and it's also why companies with no immediate novelty to announce are introducing special editions or fresh design options. BMW has chosen this grand Geneva event to give us our first in-person look at the Protonic Red BMW i8, and it looks stunning.

The BMW i8 is a plug-in hybrid sports car that attracts attention everywhere it goes. That was true in its original silver and blue …

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First Click: Apple CarPlay pulls ahead of Android Auto at Geneva Motor Show

2016-03-03T07:30:03-05:00

This week I've been kicking the tires of the finest, most exclusive, and most exotic cars at the Geneva Motor Show, and I've spotted two emerging trends: cheap oil is bringing huge gas guzzlers back into fashion, and Google's Android Auto is falling behind Apple's CarPlay. Android Auto isn't a complete absentee from the show, of course, but the headline-grabbing cars, the cream of Geneva's crop, have all gravitated toward Apple's solution and ignored Google's alternative.

Lamborghini's big unveiling at the Geneva Motor Show was the Centenario, a car so exclusive that all 40 units of its production run had already been sold - at a price of € …

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The Hyundai Ioniq is a three-pronged attack on the Toyota Prius

2016-03-02T17:18:33-05:00

Since last year, Hyundai has been trickling out news about the Ioniq - the hybrid it hopes can dethrone the Toyota Prius.

Now we've seen it in person at the Geneva Motor Show. The car is unique in the industry because it uses three different powertrains on one platform: hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and full electric.

It's the latter two that are the most interesting. The plug-in hybrid will use a 8.9 kWh battery to go as far as 50 kilometers (around 30 miles) on electric power before the petrol engine kicks in to get you the rest of your journey.

The all-electric Ioniq packs a 28 kWh lithium-ion pack, good for 250 km of range or about 155 mile …

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The €2.4 million Chiron will make a profit for Bugatti (and that’s a big deal)

2016-03-02T15:37:07-05:00

The €2.4 million Bugatti Chiron will make money for Bugatti, and thus, parent company Volkswagen, according to Bugatti President Wolfgang Dürheimer during an interview with The Verge at the Geneva Motor Show today.

"We did our homework in every dimension," says Dürheimer. "This car over its lifetime, with 500 cars and a base price of € 2.4 million, is adding into the bottom line result of Bugatti and we are making money with this project."

This is a big change from the Veyron, Bugatti's prior car - some estimates have pegged the company to a $4 million to $6 million loss on each one sold. But, if Dürheimer has his way, Bugatti's hard-earne …

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I love this Ferrari-red Lamborghini

2016-03-02T12:04:05-05:00

The blood-red Italian sports car in front, the super expensive one that goes really fast, is a Lamborghini. In spite of being Ferrari's signature color, red is also a standard option from Lamborghini, the other Italian super sports car manufacturer with a glorious history and a penchant for marvellous aesthetics. Having been torn between Ferrari and Lamborghini at last year's Geneva Motor Show, today I've found my perfect combination of the two in the Ferrari-red Lamborghini Huracán. It's everything good and gorgeous about sports cars.

The epic Centenario was, of course, Lamborghini's star of the show, but there's something to be said for a …

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Fiat’s Abarth 124 Spider is the best Miata you can buy

2016-03-02T10:20:59-05:00

The Mazda Miata is an awesome little sports car. Perhaps the only way to make it better is to send it off to the espresso-filled engineers at Abarth to juice all the go-faster bits.

The result is the Abarth 124 Spider, a 170-horsepower, rear-wheel drive drop-top that should deliver the best of Italian style with a Miata-sourced interior and chassis. It uses the fantastic little 1.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder from the Fiat 500 Abarth (and the standard Fiat 124 Spider that was announced last year) and, lest the driving purists bang down the gates of Abarth's Turin HQ, it's available with a six-speed manual.

It's coming to Europe later …

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This is the insane motorcycle of Batman’s wildest dreams

2016-03-02T10:16:52-05:00

The Maserati Quattroporte is a large sports saloon that can accommodate and transport four people in sumptuous luxury. To do that, it needs a big and powerful V8 engine. You know what doesn't need a 4.7-liter V8? A motorcycle. But for Ludovic Lazareth, designer of the Lazareth LM847, need is not an important consideration. His new four-wheeled bike is literally built around Maseratti's Quattroporte engine, and the only reason for it is that he just liked the look of the engine. Just because you can, thinks this brazen Frenchman, absolutely means you should.

The Lazareth LM847 will look familiar to Tron lightcycle and Batcycle fans, though i …

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There’s a new Forza game being announced at E3 this year

2016-03-02T09:44:33-05:00

You might remember that Forza Motorsport 6 was announced at a car show - NAIAS in Detroit last January - and now, Microsoft's Turn 10 Studios is doing it again: it just announced that there's a new Forza game in the works, and the hyper-limited Lamborghini Centenario, announced in Geneva this week, will be the cover car. But this time around, Turn 10 isn't saying what that new Forza game is; it's saving that particular bit of news for June's E3, the year's biggest game show.

Presumably, this won't be Forza Motorsport 6: Apex, because that's not big enough of a deal to tease like this. The most obvious guess is a new Forza Horizon, the open- …

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The Bentley Mulsanne Grand Limousine is opulence on an astonishing scale

2016-03-02T09:35:47-05:00

The Bentley Mulsanne is perhaps the most elegant way to be chauffeured around, insulated from the hoi polloi. There's plenty of legroom, massaging seats, and curtains to close out the world and get some privacy, or perhaps just a nap on your way to an important business meeting.

But the back of the Mulsanne only has two seats. What if you have more than two people to haul around? Bentley's bespoke Mulliner division has you covered.

For the extremely well-heeled, the company will happily stretch the already enormous 18-foot 3.5-inch Mulsanne to fit more seats, something it calls the Mulsanne Grand Limousine. This particular model, custom bu …

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