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First, an apology. Despite our best, most determined and ambitious efforts, and our promises earlier in the week, we were unable to capture any imagery of lightly comedic European hairstyles at this year’s Frankfurt motor show.
But we did have a plan B: looking at exciting cars. And, as you’re no doubt aware by now, there were quite a few to choose from in what was one of the biggest and most important motor shows in years.Lamborghini showed us what an extremely hard and extremely red Gallardo looks like, while Jaguar showed Porsche the size of its supercharger with the simply gorgeous C-X16. It’s a big ‘un.
So sit back, grab a caffeinated beverage and enjoy our team's highlights of all the important stuff from the show.
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And there you sat, gleefully chirruping your certainty that Lamborghini couldn't possibly make the Gallardo any harder or any more red. Obviously, you are wrong, and Lamborghini is right. The Gallardo LP570-4 Super Trofeo Stradale is lighter than a standard car and features a racing-spec carbon fibre rear wing capable of decapitating your gleeful chirrups of certainty.
Oh, and Lambo also took the opportunity to tell us the track-only Sesto Elemento concept will see a limited production run.
Frankfurt 2011: Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 Super Trofeo Stradale
Mercedes likes gullwing doors. It also likes sat nav systems operated using ‘intuitive hand gestures' and big luxury for people fond of transporting themselves and their limbs: meet the F125 concept.
It is a battery/hydrogen hybrid car, and you can read all about it below. There was also a police-liveried B-Class on Merc's stand, which we thought rather fetching. Sure beats the boys' attempts at Cop-mobiles...
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Henrik Fisker is on a crusade; a crusade to make hybrid cars a viable choice for the driver who hasn't traded in his leather brogues for slip-ons made from penguin tears. The Surf is the second string to the company's eco bow, following in the footsteps of the rather delectable Karma.
It's a five-door shooting brake with 400bhp and 981 torques and rear-wheel-drive and emits fewer CO2s than a Toyota Prius.
Our foremost purveyors of Reasonableness donned their shoutiest party outfits and cooked up a rear-wheel-drive, 390bhp four-door sports saloon concept.
That's right, a turbocharged, V6-engined Kia sports-saloon. You can bet many Gambon spin-offs that if this ever sees the light of a production line, it probably won't be reasonably priced.
Land Rover has said that a new Defender - an all-new Defender - will grace us in 2015, and to prove its intent, it showcased a concept at Frankfurt.
That concept was roofless and bright yellow.
The point of the concept was to prove that the next-gen Defender is ‘configurable'. For Paul Horrell's full story on the new Landie, hit the link below.
If the question you asked yourself this morning after waking was, "how orange can an Aston DBS get?" Frankfurt had the answer. That answer was "very".
Meet the DBS Carbon Edition, a trim-special featuring two new paint hues - this, and a more subtle grey - along with carbon fibre panelling and some coloured callipers. That's it.
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Submissive male Baboons often display their inferiority to superior Baboons by ‘presenting' their behinds to them. Well, TopGear.com, prepare to show your rump to the new Lotus Exige S.
It is much more powerful than it's four-pot predecessor and features a new V6 engine from the Evora. Did we mention it's much more powerful?
You want this car. It is very pretty. It is very powerful and it will be, at the very least, moderately entertaining. It is the Jaguar C-X16, and it has come amongst us to take on the Porsche 911. Let battle commence.
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It's the Return Of The Audi A2. Yes, it might wear a concept badge at Frankfurt, but Audi tells us a lot of engineering nous has been thrown at this supermini. Principally because it's going up against BMW's forthcoming i3.
What happens when Volvo dreams up a new, full-size premium car with moderately derivate styling but overall appeal: this is the 'You'. Not you, but a ‘You'.
It's underpinned by something very technical, which you can read all about below, abbreviated to SPA. If you can correctly guess what that stands for before clicking the link, you win absolutely nothing but a mildly appreciative head nod.
Be honest, you always knew it'd look sort of the same, didn't you? Regardless, it'll also be pretty good to drive. This is the new Porsche 911, and it made its world debut at Frankfurt. Read Jason Barlow's take on it below.
Did you think the city car business was a game? VW doesn't, and is actually quite serious about the new Up, which is why its put a serious amount of work into its new model. And it shows, because the Up is actually rather interesting indeed, as Ollie Marriage found out below.
This isn't the new Capri, despite Internet rumblings telling you so. It is an early example of Ford's new design language, taking over from ‘Kinetic', as well as previewing some clever technology positing the car as your own personal assistant. We doubt the gullwing doors will make production, though.
Ford tells us the new four-litre, 247bhp ST is cleaner and more efficient than its predecessor. What we are really interested in however, is how a four-pot will sound compared to the old model's five-cylinder. Ford tells us they have tuned it mercilessly, comparing the old ST to Beethoven and the new one as Mozart...
Does Europe really need another small four-door sports saloon? And with a Seat badge?
Remains to be seen, but Seat tells us the IBL previews the design of the future production cars. Nice.
We first brought you news of this when it didn't have a name. It does now. It's called the RAKe, and it's an electric city car. And it also looks like its stepped out of Tron. This is Good. Also weighs less than Cheryl Cole.
Citroen's fun bus rolled into Frankfurt with PSA's Hybrid4 system underneath and a mad, bad body on top. This is rude, and precisely what we expected from the Gallic purveyors of zest.
Citroen told us it was a ground-up rethink of the MPV where "travel is more important than the destination", and we will tell you it needs to be made.
There is nothing new about this Alfa Romeo 4C - its the same car that stole the show at Geneva earlier this year. Except this one has taken colour inspiration from a Terminator exo-skeleton. Still utterly, utterly bewitching. Now with added changey-metal-human-killing-intent.
This is Peugeot's call-to-arms to the legions of family types yearning for an MPV that doesn't scream "I Have Long Since Given Up On Finding Joy In Life".
It's nearly as low, wide and long as a Lamborghini Aventador and features the coolest centre-row seating configuration we have seen for some time.
More power, many more torques and aluminium bits set this Bentley GTC apart from the old one.
It'll cost £149,350 when it goes on sale, and, if the earlier model is anything to go by, will be rather tasty...
This is built for ‘extended city tours', fuelled by batteries and based on an LMP1-style cockpit with staggered 1+1 seating. Bonkers.
This is the new Honda Civic. And what you really want to know is whether there will be a high-revving, ballistic Type-R version. You can find out by clicking the link below.
In our dream world, would we want Maserati's next car to be this, the Kubang SUV? No. Do we blame them piling into a market which will hopefully guarantee them much cash to spend on much better cars? No.
We've seen the Ferrari 458 Spider a few times in the run up to Frankfurt - notably in this video as Fernando Alonso nails it for all he's worth to a shamelessly 1980s soundtrack.
We still want one.
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