Geneva 2010: in pictures

Welcome to the Geneva motor show. It's Wednesday and we're buzzing with industrial quantities of low-grade coffee. Get ready for a whistle-stop tour of the show floor.

Actually, ‘whistle-stop' is probably a bit hopeful. 'Get ready for a meandering tour of the show floor, no doubt missing out several Worthy And Important cars' would be more accurate. Click through the gallery for all the best/most obvious bits from Geneva - and don't forget to click the linky bits for the full stories.

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Alfa Giulietta
Alfa's 147 replacement and Volkswagen Golf rival looks better in the metal than it did in the preview pictures. Rather lovely, in other words. Would you take one over a new Focus? You're not even looking at the car, are you?

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Aston Cygnet
We've been staring at it for a good 20 minutes, and we still have no idea what to make of Aston's rebadged, re-faced Toyota iQ. We think... we think... we think we probably need another coffee.

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Audi A1
Surprisingly small in the flesh, is Audi's new baby. Which isn't surprising, really, as it's a direct Mini rival. There's an 'E-Tron' electric version on the stand, while an Audi spokesman told us that we're 'very likely' to see a hot version in the next couple of years. A Mini JCW-battling A1 hot hatch? Yes please...

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Audi RS5
In the right spec, Audi's M3 Coupe-rival could be a proper sleeper. 444bhp from a reworked version of the R8's 4.2-litre V8, a clever new diff, 174mph (if you get the limiter removed), and a whole bunch of veiled Teutonic menace. We want drivings.

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Bentley Conti Supersports Convertible
It’s the convertible version of the most powerfullest Bentley ever, and it’s reassuringly Massive and Imposing. 621bhp, 202mph, absolutely no Premiership footballers in sight. They don’t let the riff-raff in here, y’know…

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Citroen DS3 Racing
We're a bit excited about this one. The first proper Citroen hot hatch in bloody ages, armed with 196bhp and more stickers than a schoolgirl's lunchbox. Utterly over-the-top, utterly fabulous.

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Ford Focus estate
It’s the estate version of the new Ford Focus! It has a bigger boot that you can put more things in! It will inevitably be entirely excellent! That is all.

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Lexus CT200h
It's Lexus's long-awaited BMW 1-Series rival, and it is indeed a hybrid. We haven't exactly fallen in love with the design yet - do you reckon it's a grower like the 1-Series?

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Lambo Gallardo Superleggera
40kg lighter than the standard Gallardo, 10bhp more powerful, loads of carbon fibre - what's not to love?

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This is, clearly, a very important and worthy car. The Auris hybrid uses a Prius-like petrol-electric system to return 89g/km of CO2 and 74.3mpg. Those are amazing numbers and... why have you already clicked onto the next photo?

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Lotus Elise
Is the facelifted Elise the happiest car that has ever existed? Look at its cute little smiley face! Don't you just want to give it a big hug... and then rag the bejesus out of it around a track until the rear tyres become very much on fire? Yeah, us too.

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Mini Countryman
Yeah, we know you've seen it loads already, but we thought you might want to know what the Mini crossover looks like on a show-stand surrounded by thoughtful humans (insert different description in here as appropriate). Yes, it looks like a Mini crossover surrounded by thoughtful humans. We think the looks are growing on us, though. We think.

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Mitsubishi ASX
The pointy-faced little Mitsu looks ready to take the fight to the Nissan Qashqai. It'll be a friendly, wholesome sort of fight, we'd imagine. With a picnic and a light stroll to finish.

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Nissan Juke
If you're still struggling to figure out the size of Nissan's jacked-up little crossover, we're here to help. Look, it's this big. Well, not actually this big. That'd be silly.

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Porsche 911 RSR Hybrid racer
Fascinating fact alert: the 911 RSR Hybrid - set to compete in the Nurburgring 24 Hours in May - features the flywheel from the Williams F1 car. Or, rather, exactly the same flywheel as is found in the Williams F1 car. We're pretty sure Porsche didn't just head down to Williams HQ with an angle grinder and a load of spanners.

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Porsche 911 Turbo S
It's a 911 Turbo... with a bit more. And that bit is a very good bit. If you're thinking ‘yeah, it's just another 911, innit?', take a good hard look at 523bhp, a 3.3-second 0-62mph time... and tell us you wouldn't sell your nan to Satan to get one.

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Renault Wind
We are far too mature to make any jokes about the name of Renault's dinky hard-top convertible. Mainly because we used them all up in our news story last month. Instead, we can happily report that the Wind smells entirely fragrant, and seems to make all females in the immediate vicinity go all weird and maternal.

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Seat Ibiza Sport Tourer
It's the estate version of Seat's little Polo-rival. Yep. Looks cute, but we still wonder whether estate versions of city cars are fundamentally self-defeating entities. We may be overthinking this one.

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Vauxhall Meriva
We saw photos. We read press releases. Still we were unconvinced. But yes, it is true: the new Vauxhall Meriva has suicide doors. We expect those awful children from Meriva/Zafira adverts to suffer ‘an unfortunate accident' at some point soon.

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VW Polo GTI
No, you are not looking at a Golf GTI viewed from slightly further away. This is the Polo GTI, and beneath that strait-laced exterior beats a 177bhp heart of darkness. OK, not darkness exactly, but at least a dusky grey...

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To celebrate Alfa's centenary, styling house Bertone has created this astonishing concept, based on the 8C Competizione. It's a pure prototype and will never, ever be made... but heck, ain't it nice?

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Citroen DS High Rider
Or ‘how the DS4 production car will look if you get rid of a couple of the spangly bits'. Where the DS3 is all about sportiness, the DS4 will be much more of a luxo-affair. And probably Really Quite Good, we suspect.

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Mercedes F800 Style
Check back to TopGear.com soon for Paul ‘The Foreman' Horrell's rundown on the CLS-previewing F800 concept, because there's a lot going on here. This, we reckon, is where Merc styling is heading over the next few years, and there's definitely a Marmite quality to the F800. By which we mean that you'll either love it or hate it, not that it's got an oddly moreish salty-yeasty taste.

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Peugeot 5
Here's the 508-previewing concept, looking as tidy in the metal as it did in the pre-Geneva shots - if just a tiny bit generic. Generic is better than gurning. Along with the SR1, it's definite proof of a Peugeot design renaissance. But guys, please ditch that ‘5 by Peugeot' name-thing. We hate.

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Peugeot SR1
Jeez, two handsome new Peugeot concept on the same stand: who'd have thunk it? We actually heard someone complain that the SR1 ‘looks too much like a V8 Vantage'. And that's a bad thing because...?

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Citroen Survolt
Another brilliantly over-the-top concept from our favourite far-out Frenchmen: an all-electric track-day special that could - maybe, just maybe - be brought to production for a one-make race series. Bring it, we say.

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Porsche 918 Spyder
The Carrera GT is back, and this time it's hybridised. Porsche's petrol-electric hypercar concept stole the Geneva show, and all the signs are that they're going to actually build it. Oh yes.

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We thought this might be a full-blown Impreza-based crossover from Subaru, complete with jacked-up springs and locking diffs and the rest. It isn't. It's an Impreza with slightly chunkier, more plasticky arches and some roof rails. Ah.

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Ferrari HY-KERS
Tsk. You wait ages for a hybrid supercar concept to turn up... and then two rock up on the same day. Taking the petrol-electric fight to the Porsche 918 Spyder is Ferrari's hybrid 599, and Bill Thomas has all the details...

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Volvo S60
Heading up Volvo's stand is the new S60, the super-safe Scandinavian rival to the Mondeo, Insignia... and all those pesky Teutonic saloons.

It gets the world's first pedestrian detection system, which scans the road ahead and will slow the car if it spots a squishy person in the way. Despite all the safety kit, the company's CEO reckons the new S60 will be the best-driving car Volvo has ever produced. We'll find out when we drive it in a few month's time.

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If a Morgan is just a bit too modern for you, how about one of these retro-styled... things from Aussie upstarts Bufori?

Named, perhaps a trifle obsequiously, after the very city in which it has been unveiled, the Geneva packs a Chrysler-sourced, 6.1-litre V8 hemi putting out around 430bhp. But there's a supercharged option with around 600bhp...

It's more technical than it looks, the Geneva. The body is made of Kevlar and carbon fibre, and there's the full range of electronic gadgetry on board: night vision, adaptive cruise control, espresso machine (really) and piezoelectric gramaphone (not really).

Bufori says it can produce 300 Genevas each year, but will cap annual production at 60 cars for now. The price? For you, sir, four thousand guineas and sixpence.

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Porsche Cayenne
Being comprehensively overshadowed by the amazing 918 Spyder on the Porsche stand was the new Cayenne. Four cm longer than the outgoing model and nearly 200kg lighter, it should be better off-road thanks to a revised chassis and stability systems. But yeah, it still looks like a hippo.

Like the new VW Touareg, the Cayenne will be available with a hybrid drivetrain: an Audi-derived 3.0-litre V6 petrol matched to a 38kW electric motor. That's good for a combined output of 375bhp and a 0-62mph time of 6.5 seconds. It can run on electric power alone for a mile or so, and in hybrid mode will return 34.5mph and 193g/km of CO2.

Now, back to that 918...

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Seat IBE
Star of the Seat stand is the IBE concept, a dinky all-electric coupe that points at the Spanish brand's future design direction. 25cm shorter than an Ibiza, its front wheels are driven by an electric motor that can manage 204bhp in short bursts or 68bhp in normal driving.

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Skoda Fabia vRS
Polo GTI, Ibiza Cupra or this, the new Fabia vRS? Tough call. They're all powered by the same 1.4-litre, 178bhp petrol engine, and they all get a seven-speed DSG as standard. Clearly the only way to decide is to drive them all back-to-back. Roll on June, then.

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