IS IT the blemish free autobahns or the stream of Porsches which pound limitlessly along them? Whatever it is, you only need look at their latest motorshow to know the Germans don't do things by halves.
Considering it's one of of the world's biggest automotive events I've never really wanted to visit the Frankfurt Motorshow, unless I was doing it as a sponsored walk for charity. Better journalists than I take pedometers with them on this traditionally expansive event, and can clock anything up to 20 miles to catch up with the latest cars. Even looking through the manufacturers' news releases, hundreds of miles away in the comfort of The Champion office, hurts my head because of the sheer number of new models and announcements involved.
Jaguar's C-X16 is obviously the star of the show, or is it? Is it the new Land Rover Life On Cars featured not long ago? Or Volkswagen's Up? Or Honda's new Civic? Or one of no less three new fast Fords? Or Porsche's latest 911? Or a new Maserati off-roader I'd forgotten about until I started typing this paragraph? These are just the tip of an enormous automotive iceberg. There were, at the last count, more than 500 images of motoring metal to sift through.
I do, amongst all that, think I've found an unlikely star of this year's show, in the form of Citroen's Tubik. Lots of boring people have told me that a car is just a big shiny box but this Citroen literally is; angular to the point of being avantgarde, blessed with the same basic proportions as a cupboard and covered in what it appears to be tinfoil. But that's exactly what you get with an Airstream trailer, which is age-defyingly cool. So, I reckon, is the big, boxy French star.
If you've made it this far into the column with getting bored I think I can get away with telling you it is in fact a homage to the H-Van, the Citroen cargo carrier which spent decades as the staple transport of every small business from Calais to Cannes. It's this square-rigged star of its motoring past that Citroen's toying with reinventing, and even though it's still in the concept stages I'd love to see them come up with a production version, which the company reckons could carry nine in comfort. Try that with your Ford Galaxy.
So my highlight of what's a proudly German event is a shiny box created by the French. How very European of me.
