Geneva Oddness: Weird And Wonderful Or Just Weird?

PH goes off the beaten motor show track to seek out the good, the bad and the ugly from the Geneva show

Every year, the Geneva show displays some interesting and unusual creations, and 2011 was no exception.

Franco Sbarro can usually be replied upon for some Geneva madness, right back to the days when receiving one of his cars in a game of Top Trumps meant a strong hand to play with. Seeing as Rinspeed went all eco-sensible on us, it was nice to see Sbarro and his car design school - Espera - keep things a little more PH, even if his 'Two for 100' pod car was aimed at reducing emissions. A mid-engined vehicle weighing 500kg, it uses a 600cc turbo three-pot to achieve 2l/100km and a pivoting system to raise the car up higher for 'urban' driving. Sbarro also had student projects in the form of the Evoluzione open sports car powered by a 1.8-litre Audi turbo motor and the older Speed'R roadster with a blown 2.0-litre Alfa V6.

It was intriguing to see the GTA Spano in the 'carbon', not least because we couldn't help but see echoes of the long-lost Cizeta V16T in elements of its slightly awkward shape. Still, with a lightweight chassis and up to 820hp, this sounds a serious bit of kit: a production run of 99 is the target.

When it came to the art of the modified SUV, there were examples everywhere you looked. As you might already have read from our Geneva Show tuning round-up, these ranged from the tacky to the plain ridiculous, but we kept one effort back for this piece purely because we felt it ran away with the wooden spoon trophy (or should that be an oversized alloy wheel mounted on a gilt-edged mahogany plaque?).

This was the Invader L60, a frankly terrifying-looking vehicle based on the Lexus 570 (a posh Toyota Landcruiser). Terrifying, because we've never really seen the Landcruiser as the last word in high-performance SUVs, and this one has 600hp, from a supercharged 5.7-litre V8, with the ability to reach 60mph in 5.5 seconds. A 'heavy-duty' brake system is supplied, thankfully. But just look at that body kit - and in white too. Wow.

Perhaps the oddest stand of all was from a company called Fornasari. Let's start with the good stuff first: the Astro Bionix Thor. Yep, that's the weird orange and black thing in the pictures. Spec sheets can sometimes be a bit tedious, but not this one.

Try this: 7.0-litre V8 with 600hp, four-wheel drive, snorkel, front and rear winches, double shock absorbers, Kevlar body, 200-litre fuel tank, 35cm ground clearance, water fording of 90cm and 0-60mph in 3.8sec. Plus, optional 7.62mm Gatling gun (that should deal with the traffic), pressurised passenger compartment, infra-red night vision, land mine detection, a 400-litre fire-fighting system and enough compliancy codes to fill an EU legislation document. And it's available in 'Desert tan' if you wish, amongst other colours.

Less impressive were Fornasari's range of bizarre, part SUV, part sports car creations. Take the Tender, the half-yacht-half-car thing with the big slabs of wood on it. Like all the company's cars, it's claimed to do 0-60mph in 3.8 seconds, which we're finding hard to believe.

It's difficult to know where to start with the Tender but the paintwork, panel quality and panel gaps were perhaps the worst we've ever seen. Ever. Even one of the side windows had fallen out - on the show car! Inside, there was a thick layer of dust and the cabin looked as though it had done 300,000 miles as a minicab. Who buys these things?

Still, Geneva wouldn't be the same without the variety they bring.

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Collaudatore

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