Best of Beijing

By Joe Harmon

The Beijing Auto Show is always quite different from shows in other parts of the world, and 2008’s event is no exception. Even though few of the cars will go on sale in the US or UK, it’s still a lot of fun to try to identify the sources of each plagiarised, misappropriated styling cue.

Plenty of oddities were present as expected, along with several interesting concepts and production vehicles of merit.  Let’s take a look at some of the highlights and lowlights.

The highlights
Beijing 700R

This car has me totally confused. If the Chinese are capable of hotness like this, why do they produce so many blurry, smudged photocopies of existing sheet metal? Ok, ok, so it isn’t exactly of bastion of original shapes, and the character line on the side flirts with disaster when it kicks into the rear fender, but this car looks pretty good. Really.

Guangzhou Honda Linian

This little purple devil is definitely the sleeper of the show, and an obscure floor location was not enough to keep admirers from finding it. While a tad reminiscent of the excellent Ford Verve concept, this CUV has its own language and a drastically different stance. Reported to be an initial study of Honda’s Chinese-market answer to Toyota’s Scion, the horizon is looking pretty good.

Buick Invicta

Buick’s brand is strong in China, but it still seems strange that they would choose to debut an internationally important car in China rather than Detroit or maybe LA.

Either way, the Invicta is a strong, handsome concept with a distinct design direction. Whether it’s really invincible, as the Latin nomenclature suggests, will remain to be seen until the sedan hits the market, but it’s sure to outsell the stodgy Lucerne it’s slated to replace.

The lowlights
HonQi SUV Concept

Ever wondered what would happen if you mated a Porsche Cayenne with a Lincoln Navigator? Those crazy guys at HonQi obviously did. The horrid front fender is ungainly and out of proportion with the rest of the truck, but with a grille shaped like Tiananmen Square and taillights like ancient Chinese weapons, who would really notice? Sheesh.

Geely Tiger GT Concept

Maybe I am being a little too hard on the Tiger.  Many considered it to be the star of the show, and, partly, I can see why.  It’s really a sinuous, attractive car from the rear end up to the front wheel well, but that’s where things go awry.

The fender line, that extends from the top of the headlight through the door, peaks about a foot too far forward and appears droopy. The entire bulbous front end looks like it would be more comfortable as a garish body kit for a teenager’s hatchback than the face of a sleek, refined GT car.

A front end this bad makes me wonder if the rest was merely a fluke.  So close, yet still so far away.

Geely NL

The Geely NL was a big letdown, but not necessarily a big surprise. The pre-show renderings were handsome, but the concept did little more than illustrate the complexity of bringing a sketch to life.

Somewhere in the modelling stage, the foglights blew out of scale, the front end became rounded and lost definition, the side lost volume, and the parting line at the trailing edge of the back doors became a borderline disaster.

What’s worse, the subtle graphic change around the grille now looks strikingly Chevy-esque. Despite all the problems in this and the Tiger concept, I suspect Geely is only a couple of years away from pulling things together stylistically.

All images provided by autoblog.com