It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a substantial portion of foot traffic at the NY auto show hovers around the luxury automakers. It’s a bit ironic, as high end brands typically keep their displays somewhat low key by forgoing extremely flashy displays and for the most part, announcers. But when your venue is smack dab in the middle of real estate the majority of Americans can’t afford, you probably don’t need to advertise too much.
The Lamborghini Centenario is an extremely exclusive vehicle, and that’s really saying something for a super car. Total production numbers will top out at forty, with an even split between coupes and roadsters. It’s obvious the company designed it to be a superlative vehicle, as it’s body is completely carbon fiber and its engine is a V12, with an output of 760 horsepower. And it weighs less than 3,400 Ibs, which means it can propel itself from 0-62 MPH in 2.8 seconds.
The Chiron Sport, seen flanking the Lambo, is even more exclusive, with a base price of $3.2 million. It’s got four more cylinders than the Centenario as well. Plus four turbochargers, 1,500 horsepower, and a less attractive exterior. But outer beauty isn’t really important for these cars, right?
Unlike the Centenario and Chiron Sport, the Urus is far less exclusive, and it’s also designed to be a daily driver, at least if you’ve got $200,000 dollars to shell out on a new car.
Can enthusiasts finally relax about the supposed dilution of brands that introduce performance SUV’s or crossovers into their respective lineups? The Urus recently received extremely favorable reviews from all over, with some even calling it the best performing SUV ever. If the few remaining holdouts decide to change their minds and offer some type of utility vehicle in the future, they’ll follow a path similar to Lamborghini.
Until seeing this car at the auto show, I had no idea Rimac existed. This beauty, named the C Two, is a fully electric near-production model with an estimated 0-60 time of 1.85 seconds. It also has a facial recognition system that allows the owner to operate the car without any sort of key or fob device. I assume this works fine until you’re involved in some type of Face/Off like situation where your arch nemesis steals your face and ruins your life while you try to prove to everyone that you’re not a terrorist, despite having the face of one.
Did you know Rimac is a Croatian automotive company? Eastern Europe isn’t really known for producing high quality automobiles, so hopefully Rimac can challenge traditional assumptions about cars originating from the region. I still think of Crazy Vaclav every time someone mentions cars and Eastern Europe in the same sentence. Put it in H!
The relationship between Range Rover and Land Rover has never ceased to confuse me. I’ve always thought the company should just adopt one or the other. And it’s always strange to see a Land Rover product with Range Rover branding on the same vehicle. But I understand why they continue to separate the brands.
And the confusion between the two brands does nothing to detract from their modern products. Like this Velar, which sports an appropriately substantial name.
With a starting price just under $50K, the Velar competes with a whole slew of luxury and non-luxury vehicles.
One way a luxury automaker can differentiate itself from more mainstream brands, at least in this day and age, is by equipping their vehicles with high resolution LCD screens on the center stack and the cockpit. The LCD resolution parity has definitely been decreasing recently, but it seems like the luxury automakers still hold an advantage, at least for now. That digital display you see on the dash is a single 12.3″ unit!
I wasn’t kidding about the abundance of screens in these fancy vehicles. These are both 10″ setups, and they were basically fully functional, which allowed me to fiddle with them for a bit. They seemed pretty snappy, although the amount of icons on both screens would make for some distracting driving. I imagine the display in the cockpit would mitigate that.
Luxury makes can also stand out by making their interior quality a step above the mainstream brands. An Explorer Platinum or Mazda CX-9 Signature doesn’t have speaker grilles quite as opulent as the ones in the Velar. Believe it or not, these grilles were actually pleasing to touch.
The Discovery is a a bit more posh compared to its predecessors. but it still looks quite imposing.
Like the Velar, the Discovery has a very nice setup for the driver.
In lieu of dual screens, the Disco ops for a single unit that is also pretty wide. Now what’s that screen showing?
I’m a big fan of GPS systems that can accurately depict where they are while inside the Javits Center. Not all of them can do that.
Over at corporate cousin Jaguar, there is a move to electrify the lineup. Of course I don’t mean an effort to spice things up. I’m talking about actual electrification.
The E-Pace is not an electric vehicle. Sorry for the misdirection. But I do find it strange that the company decided to name their first EV “I-Pace” while leaving the obvious moniker for a compact crossover. Still, its a good looking car that distills the essence of Jaguar into a compact crossover.
Jaguar’s I-Pace is the first EV from the luxury automaker. It’s possible we’ll be laughing at this post ten years from now, when even the most mainstream car company is selling a 400 mile all wheel drive crossover for about $30,000. Until then, we’re going to be watching the birth of competitive electric vehicles that can take on Tesla. Because obviously that’s who Jaguar is gunning for here.
The I-Pace looks a lot like every other Jaguar currently available. Although it gets some more muscle on the sides of the hood, and out back the rear end levels off and almost fools you into thinking its a trunk.
The Jaguar I-Pace will be priced exactly $10,000 less than the Tesla Model X. That’s going to put pressure on other luxury automakers to price their future EV’s similarly. And it might even lead to a cheaper X too.
I’m not entirely convinced the center stack in this I-Pace was displaying what was actually happening inside the car, as I don’t recall the AC being on while I was inside it. And it definitely would have been noticeable, because on the day of my visit the temperature was about 40 degrees, with some light snow. The Jaguar was probably in some sort of demo mode.
The I-Pace interior succeeds in form and function. I’m a big fan of floating center consoles, especially because they free up more space for storage. Jaguar did a good job here.
Amidst all the crossovers, EV’s, and other mainstream body styles, a number of wagons made their presence known, like the Jaguar XF “Sportbrake.”
Fortunately, the XF looks great as an estate. Unfortunately, it cost a little over $70k for the entry level model.
Yeah, that’s a good looking wagon.
Thankfully, Mercedes also brought one of its wagons to New York. Let the contrast between the E 400 and XF serve as a lesson to any automaker who thinks bringing basic colored vehicles to an auto show is a good idea. It’s not. My eyes immediately favor the Mercedes simply due to the stunning red paint.
I’m really not sure what wagon I’d pick if I had the money to acquire one. They’re both going to be extremely rare in the United States, so exclusivity isn’t a selling point for just one of the duo. Although I did actually see an E 4oo wagon a couple of weeks ago, which surprised me.
I may have just undermined my argument about the importance of color for display cars at the auto show by presenting this picture of a BMW X2 in Galvanic Gold Metallic. I’ve never studied German, so a quick visit to Google Translate yields “Cat Puke Metallic” as its English equivalent.
What a difference one color makes! I’d really like to know how many people actually opt for colors like Galvanic Gold Metallic. I like some weird colors, but not that weird.
Despite the terrible color, the X2 pictured here is a good looking vehicle. It looks a bit more substantial than its competition too. It’s also been well received by the automotive press.
BMW did have interesting colors on hand at the show, including this matte red M5. Apparently this color either doesn’t exist or is simply unavailable in the United States, because it’s not listed as an option on the M5’s page.
Availability aside, it looks pretty good. My guess is the BMW also looks good in the metallic variant of this color as well. Matte paint jobs aren’t usually red, right? I usually see greyscale matte paint on cars, but not anything else. At least in respect to factory offerings.
I’ll conclude this section with another winner of the color wars. This BMW Alpina B7 is decked out in a blue I didn’t think I’d like. Then I got closer and fell in love with it. I imagine anyone who spends $140K on something like this should feel similarly if they’re going to take the plunge on one of these things.
Stay tuned for part 3!
Related Reading:
CC visits the 2018 New York auto show, Part 1: General Motors and Nissan
For what it’s worth, that cat puke gold color is the one used in the TV commercials. It may not be the most attractive color, but it is the one representing the new model. It makes sense for the car at the show to reinforce that marketing.
I think that cat puke gold is a little harsh. I was thinking calf shit yellow.
That Jaguar XF Sportbrake wagon is fantastic looking. It will make the ten folks that buy one very happy!
I saw one in traffic around here the other day, it was quite striking and as you state, bound to be fairly rare.
Excellent coverage! And great photos!
The new Jaguar/Land Rover capacitative controls are really interesting. They debuted on the Range Rover Velar, but the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport received facelifts for 2018 and got them as well. And, as you photographed, they’re also on the all-new i-PACE.
As for the Urus, it and the Bentayga are heretofore uncharted territory for Volkswagen Group, so it should be interesting.
I think the Bentayga will do just fine; I was living in Chicago when they first came out in early 2016. Almost immediately, they started popping up around the city like dandelions
I saw one parked last week, they cost AUD$420k here so that will slow them up a bit.
The Urus looks like someone should turn it into a futuristic themed monster truck to me.
To the guy whose cars are quite simple, this is a batch of foreign cars in more than one sense of the term. I think I have reached the stage in life where cars like these make me want to go home, make a cup of coffee and read a book. 🙂
Or perhaps I am still emotionally stuck in 1950 after my deep dive into GM history over the past two or three weeks.
I’ve seen 1 or 2 Bentayga here in Jacksonville. The most striking thing about them is their size, the styling….MEH.
I too have found the Range Rover versus Land Rover “thing” confusing. Vehicles badged Range Rover used to be the stylish models while the Land Rover name usually was used on the boxy/utilitarian models. Now that ALL Rovers are stylish, it looks like the cheaper models are the Land Rovers while the ridiculously expensive models are the Range Rovers. BTW, I recently saw a soft top Evoque, it looks borderline odd.
CAR magazine last month had a sketch of the next Defender. It drops the boxy look….sort of, and the sketch that I saw made it look like the styling was inspired by children’s toys. (As in big/wide wheels/tires with huge flares to try and cover them.)
Range Rover is, at this point, a sub-brand, but even with the Discovery and Discovery Sport in mind, the Range Rover family has a distinct school of design.
-Ath
Actually, Land Rover is the overall brand (like Ford for example). Range Rover is a model (like Explorer). The actual name is the Land Rover Range Rover. Then the Range Rover model line has sub-brands such as Land Rover Range Rover Sport and Land Rover Range Rover Velar etc.
Every Range Rover has a Land Rover badge. But Land Rovers such as the Discovery, 110, 90 etc don’t have Range Rover badging since they are distinct Land Rover models, just like the Range Rover itself is.
If you go to RangeRover.com you actually land on the Range Rover page of the overall LandRover.com website.
That M5 is one of only 400 coveted First Edition vehicles and its Frozen Dark Red Metallic (yes, it’s a matte metallic!) is not offered on any other vehicle, even as one of the 100+ BMW Individual colors. What I would give to have one of those!
And the Alpina B7 Biturbo’s paint is quite literally called “Alpina Blue”. It’s one of Alpina’s two signature colors, the other being “Alpina Green”. You can only get them on Alpina vehicles, not any regular BMW-badged vehicle.
Interesting… are these sprayed in their colors at the BMW factory or applied afterwards?
Metallic Matte means “satin” in my own personal dictionary. Still stunning, I am not a fan of true matte paint on cars. Looks cheap.
The Lamborghini Urus could use 2-3 more inches of side window depth and a matching subtraction from those t-a-l-l sides. Also, be prepared for people to call it “Lambo SUV” since “Urus” sounds too much like “Yaris” to work for mass-market rap and other braggers.
I don’t see the point of 0-60 in 1.85 seconds when a fillup takes 8 hours. They’re solving the wrong problem.
The Lamborghini Uretha, sorry, Aztek, is a bright example of a concept quite lost in translation.
Have a look at the original motor show effort. Short-assed, relatively direct and co-ordinated sculpting, it looked like a credible Lambo, and really rather good for what is a pretty fatuous vehicle type.
It has turned out that the Pontiac was indeed ahead of its time, a time now seemingly and paradoxically close its apogee and thus nadir. Not good.
And that name! I need to pee.
The two most vulgar and hideous crossovers I’ve ever seen are the new Bentley and the new rolls Royce vulgar tasteless and naff they cost all that money for the fraction of the price you could buy an elegant stylish sorted mint classic car john blachley must be turning in his grave
Can enthusiasts finally relax about the supposed dilution of brands that introduce performance SUV’s or crossovers into their respective lineups?
No. I have paid zero attention to the goings on and development of the Lamborghini SUV since I have heard the announcement, so this is truly the first time I have seen it, and until I saw the badge I would have never thought it was a Lamborghini over the other names in the headline. Frankly it looks like a Kia.
Watching these vaunted brands cash in on all of their brand equity is like witnessing a grandparent marry a gold digger.
The Urus recently received extremely favorable reviews from all over, with some even calling it the best performing SUV ever.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a more apt use of the phrase ‘world’s tallest midget’. But I’m also certain the press wouldn’t want to sully their opportunities to get real Lamborghini press cars in the future by ripping this insipid basketball wife mobile the way it deserves, so I don’t blame them.