L.A. Auto Show: The Lexus IS; first rabid, now topless

[Update: read the review of the Lexus IS 250C and 350C here.]

Ah, the cliches of Paris in October. Cool air, warm baguettes, hot espressos.  What better way to enjoy all the niceties of a French automne then driving down the Champs-Elysees … in your Japanese hardtop convertible?

Well, it made sense to Lexus, who chose October’s Paris Auto Show to introduce the world to its new drop-top, the IS 250C and IS 350C. Why it didn’t wait for an auto show in a warmer, more appropriate clime is a little vague. Maybe company officials like France's crepes more than our huevos rancheros. Regardless, we North Americans had to wait another month before Lexus debuted its latest convertible to our continent at the L.A. Auto Show.

Oh no, Renault! The Ondelios is too much like the Aurora

At the recent Paris Motor Show, amid the smoke, epilesy-inducing light shows, barely dressed dancers and fanged sports cars, there was a familar face. Well, not so much a familar face, but an awful and frightening one: The Renault Ondelios concept car (right), sporting a huge, pillow-lipped, baleen-filled smile that was oh-so-reminiscent of the infamous Aurora (below), a car widely regarded as the ugliest ever made.

Compare for yourself.

I know it's traumatic. But it's important to know how far designers can go wrong. The Aurora was the creation of a Catholic priest, Father Alfred A. Juliano, who in the mid-1950s, with the backing of his parishioners in Branford, Conn., set out to build a lifesaving car. Father Juliano, it seems, was a frustrated car designer who was sketching cars even as he was studying at the seminary. According to his family -- and as reported in a story in the New York Times -- a scholarship offer to work for General Motors under Harley Earl arrived too late, and Father Juliano had to decline. Boy, if that doesn't sound like divine intervention.

Built on the wrecked chassis of an old Buick, the Aurora featured a distinctive gullet, constructed of soft foam rubber, intended to safely scoop up luckless pedestrians who wandered into the vehicle's path -- although such an incident was unlikely, since the natural impulse is to run away from the visage as fast as possible.

The Aurora had many novel safety features, including a convex windshield bubbled forward in order to minimize head injuries in a crash. Alas, Father Juliano never got anyone to back his wild ideas and he eventually abandoned his car-designing career.

It's touching, actually, that Renault should pay tribute to the Aurora. Now, just make it go away.

-- Dan Neil

Photos: Andy Saunders / Renault

An armored limo, fit for a (mob) king

At last week's Paris Motor Show, Mercedes-Benz whipped the silk off its latest and most majestic armored limousine yet, the S600 Pullman Guard, a mobile bomb shelter designed to protect heads of state, captains of industry, royalty and, of course, Russians.

With a B6/B7 ballistic rating, the Pullman Guard ignores AK47 rounds as if they were gnats and can repulse RPGs with its windshield wipers. Several tons of oligarchic fun, the Pullman Guard is powered by a 12-cylinder/517 hp bi-turbo engine that quaffs gas out of a ballistically reinforced, self-sealing gas tank. The four-seat limousine interior is, naturally, astonishing. (As it should be, since it'll set you back somewhere between $400,000 and $600,000, depending on the options.)

Meanwhile, over in an ignominious corner of the Mercedes-Benz stand sat a lone Maybach Landaulet, a show car that's become a familiar face on the circuit. While Mercedes-Benz Chairman Dieter Zetsche palavered about the Pullman Guard, it seemed painfully obvious that Maybach is on its way out. The company held no press conference, presented no concept cars nor made announcements of any kind. The multibillion-dollar revival of one of the great old names in German coach-building seems destined to sink beneath the waves of history. If you're super-duper rich and you need an awesome Mercedes limo -- accent on the "awe" -- the Pullman Guard will have to do.

-- Dan Neil

Photos of the Pullman Guard by Dan Neil (top) and Daimler (bottom).

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Honda Insight hybrid to be cheaper, if dealers cooperate

The thrust of the new Honda Insight hybrid -- which debuted in Paris this week as a near-production concept -- is to "bring hybrid vehicles into a price bracket where a broader range of people can afford them," says the press materials. Cheaper, in other words. The current estimate is that the Insight -- powered by a 1.3-liter gas engine and Integrated Motor Assist, good for about 45 mpg, on average -- will cost about $20,000, though final pricing will be announced closer to the on-sale date next spring.

It must have taken a heroic effort for Honda to hit that price point. According to the company, major savings had to be realized in the design and manufacturing of the IMA and other hybrid components (like the battery). Tankers of midnight oil must have been docked right outside Honda's R&D center.

However, all that hard work -- and the neat marketing and sales strategy designed to undercut Prius -- will amount to little if Honda dealers tag on thousands of dollars more in dealer markups and price premiums, as they have been notoriously doing with the Fit and Civic Hybrid. "We don't like it whenever premiums are added," says company spokesman Kurt Antonius. "But it's driven by supply and demand. We don't condone it but we can't control it."

Perhaps not, but Honda of America could probably, oh, let's say, de-incentivize the practice, and considering that the low entry price of the new Insight hybrid is the whole point, I suspect they probably will.

More about the car: Yes, it looks vaguely like a Prius. "We would say it looks more like the Clarity," says Antonius, referring to Honda's sleek and awesome hydrogen-powered car. I would say that the Prius, the GM Volt and the Honda Insight all resemble one another as a consequence of aerodynamics and engineering constraints that nominalize design. In other words, if you want a car of a certain size to carry five passengers and some luggage, and you want it to be as aerodynamically efficient as possible, there's only so much you can do about styling.

Unlike the Prius, the Insight does not move under electric power alone. Honda has long believed the tradeoffs of weight and cost don't justify electric-only propulsion. The company expects overall mileage to be like that of the Civic Hybrid.

Honda expects to make 200,000 Insights per year for the world market, 100,000 of them destined for the U.S.

-- Dan Neil

Photo: Honda

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Manfred, the Man: A conversation with Lamborghini's design director

Manfred Fitzgerald has worked for Lamborghini for nine years, first as the brand director and now as head of design. Between Fitzgerald and Chief Executive Stefan Winkelmann, they have reinvented the brand under VW Group's ownership. But now, with the Paris Motor Show introduction of a four-door coupe/sedan concept — the stunning, heart-stealing Epoque — Fitzgerald is taking the brand in a very different direction. No longer content to sharpen the spears of the hyper sports car market, Lambo is entering the Gran Turismo market. What of all the pronouncements that Lambo would never dilute the brand? "I've spent the past nine years creating a distinct image for the brand," Fitzgerald said. "Extreme, uncompromising, and Italian." But, he said, "It would be a mistake to reduce the brand to what we've done before."

In fact, the Estoque project evolved fundamentally differently than other Lambo projects. Typically, the technical parameters — size, acceleration, performance, horsepower — set the agenda, and the design and styling try to wrap it all up in a functional, visually pleasing package. With the Estoque, the mission was to create, as Fitzgerald said, "a consequent design." Which is to say, it started with the ferocious aesthetic of the car and the engineering was required to keep up.

"It's contrary to what we're used to doing," Fitzgerald said. "R&D had to follow the design, think it through."

Interestingly, the packaging hard points were assumed around Lamborghini's biggest engine, the gas-powered V-10. However, since Lambo has a variety of smaller corporate engines to choose from, including V-8s and V-10 diesels, those engines are production possibilities. Even, Fitzgerald said, a hybrid power train.

With the state of turmoil in the world's markets, this might seem a poor time to launch into an entirely new segment of the market, but Fitzgerald said it's exactly the right time. "We have to expand the brand so we won't be dependent on just two lines of extreme sports cars," he said. "That market is very volatile."

—Dan Neil

Photo: Dan Neil / Los Angeles Times

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Alfa girls at the Paris Motor Show: No competition

I feel terrible about this. I really do. I feel like such a perv when I aim my camera at young hotties on the show stand, even though, hey, that's why they are there and they don't really seem to mind. Of course, they don't seem to respond to light and heat, either. Nonetheless, I'm informed by the keepers of our Web-page hits that  photos of smokin' hot girls in 5-inch heels could boost our numbers. It's in the spirit of team playing that I offer the following.

Paris Motor Show verdict: No question, Alfa Romeo had the most killer babes. Photos after the jump.

—Dan Neil

BMW Concept X1 -- best enjoyed from the driver’s seat?

If this thing was spotted in the wilds of Alaska, Sarah Palin would probably shoot it. This is BMW’s Concept X1, a compact crossover SUV based on the BMW 1 Series compact car. And it’s about now that people should start to worry for BMW, especially its cars badged with an X.

Granted, the Concept X1 was probably off the drawing board and into the clay model stages well before SUV sales in the U.S. fell off the cliff, but it’s hard to find any kind of point for something like this. Especially looking the way it does -- just when the current 3 Series Coupe seemed to herald a more appealing approach to design. Is BMW serious about those wheel arches?

Word from the Paris show has it that something awfully similar will be in the showrooms within a year. No doubt it will have those wonderful engines from the 128i and 135i, and be great to drive -- like all BMWs. But is that really enough?

-- Colin Ryan

Photos: EPA / Ian Langsdon, BMW

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Four-door diesel Lambo suggested; world wobbles on its axis

A few hours ago, at the Parc de Expositions in Paris, sex-drenched hyper-sports car manufacturer Lamborghini revealed the Estoque concept car, a huge, long (16.73 feet) and sleek car with four doors. As in sedan. As in, not a crazy-cramped, scissor-door mid-engine felon of Italian road rage. The Paris Motor Show, which begins on Thursday, is getting off to an interesting start.

Lambo -- a subsidiary of VW Group -- is drunk with cash from the emerging BRIC market. With marquee players such as Porsche (Panamera) and Aston Martin (Rapide) jumping into the family grocery-getter segment and the deep engineering and design reserves now available to the Sant'Agata Bolognese company, the Estoque makes a lot of sense. Even if the back end does look like a 2010 Chevy Camaro.

The language of the presentation is even more audacious, suggesting that the Estoque will be only the first of a new line of gran turismos from Lambo. And, get this, the possible engine package for this mid-front engine, all-wheel-drive sedan coupe could include a diesel plucked from the shelves of the VW parent company.

A front-engine four-wheel drive diesel sedan from Lambo? Check the weather. The world might be ending.

A couple of notes: This is not the first four-door Lambo. I can recall at least one other, the LM002 sport-utility. It's certainly not the first four-seater. Recall, with dreamy desire, the Espada.

By the way, in keeping with the company's convention of using hallowed names of bullfighting, the Estoque name refers to the blade that brave young matadors (sarcasm beams to maximum!) use to dispatch bulls in the arena.

-- Dan Neil

Photos: Lamborghini

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Paris Motor Show 2008 -- French confections coming soon...

Paris (France, not Texas) is known as the City of Light, but from October 4 to 19, it’s going to be the city of headlights. That’s when the 2008 Paris Motor Show takes place. Interestingly, the first-ever car show happened in Gay Paree, way back in 1898. Ever since then, it’s been the event that kicks off the auto show season and gets the automotive rumor mill grinding from Tokyo to Detroit.

For European marques, Paris is especially important. That’s why Porsche and Lamborghini are revealing their latest models here. Both are all-new, not a variation of some existing car. For Porsche, it’s the Panamera sedan. For Lamborghini, word has it that this too will be a sedan. In the meantime, all the companies have done is release teaser shots.

As for car brands we don't get to see on the streets of L.A., there's more teasing from Peugeot with its RC Concept, which looks like another swoopy four-door. There seems to be a theme developing here. The RC has what its makers call “highly innovative hybrid architecture” -- whatever that means. Citroen takes a similar “don’t use too much light in this shot” approach with its GT Concept.

What else can we expect from Paris? How about a two-door compact SUV from BMW, a VW R42 and a Lexus IS 250 convertible? Voulez-vous rouler avec Dan Neil? Our man on all things auto will be loading up on croissants and Orangina to give us the full report, and we’re also curating our own little Louvre -- a gallery of voitures that tickle our fancy.

>>Production Cars from Paris Motor Show

>>Concept Cars from Paris Motor Show

-- Colin Ryan

Photo: Peugeot

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