Geneva Motor Show highlights

At the Detroit Motor Show, VW tried to impress with powerful and spacious cars. In Geneva they're catering to European tastes und present the up! - a low-pollution automobile that can deal with narrow, winding streets in ancient Italian hill towns. It's VW's smallest car, and it's available with an electric motor. It even comes equipped with a 300-Watt music power plant.

GM's German subsidiary Opel, back on the road to success, has peered into the future of mobility and seen the merger of man and machine. This concept car knows its driver, senses her mood and, if the driver permits, tries to cheer her up. The car is meant to be operated hands-free - the GT Concept is completely voice-controlled.

The Alpine was one of French carmaker Renault's biggest past successes - a beautifully shaped sports car that performed well in rally-racing in the 1960s and '70s. Like its predecessor, the reborn Alpine will be manufactured at Dieppe in northern France.

Mercedes is celebrating the soon-to-come Spring with a brand new C-class convertible. They've kept it under wraps for now, the better to build tension for its eventual unveiling. Here, the new beauty is surrounded by several different Mercedes convertibles, including a topless version of a Smart.

Munich-based carmaker BMW presents a new edition of its 7 Series: The M760Li xDrive. Its 12-Cylinder TwinPower Turbo engine generates 600 HP, which makes the car somewhat thirsty: it uses more than 12 liters of high-octane fossil fuel to travel 100 kilometers. It's not a car Elon Musk would approve of.

Porsche is offering the 718 Boxster with a smaller engine: Four instead of six cylinders. But even the smaller engine provides the vehicle with some 300 HP. If you don't speed, the Boxster won't need more than seven liters to run 100 kilometers. But then: Who wants to ride a Porsche and NOT speed?

You'll be able to acquire a Jaguar F-Type SVR with 340 HP delivered by a rear-wheel-drive V6, or an 8-Cylinder four-wheel-drive version with 575 HP capable of accelerating up to 322 km/h. We suppose this is why there are still no speed limits on some German freeways. Otherwise, there'd be simply no point in building cars with hugely overpowered engines.

If you're obscenely wealthy and Donald Trump's your man, consider a Bugatti Chiron. It can accelerate from a standstill to 100 km/h in 2.2 seconds. For a low, low price of €2 million, you get a 16-Cylinder engine that produces 1500 HP. Bugatti doesn't want to build more than 500 Chirons - thanks and praise be to God's spinster aunt Diana, who doesn't want the horses frightened more than necessary.

Et tu, Maserati: Even this sports car manufacturers from Italy has joined the club and built an SUV. Bentley and Jaguar, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, even Rolls-Royce - they're all into SUVs these days. Perhaps they anticipate a world of unpaved roads after the climate goes bananas and civilisation collapses. Meanwhile, Ladies who Lunch can drive to the mall in palatial comfort.

Even VW-owned Czech carmakers Skoda want to be part of the SUV trend. Our picture shows the Vision S, a study. Next year, Skoda's Kodiak SUV will go into production. The Vision S has a plug-in hybrid engine. Let's hope that'll be an option for the Kodiak, too. The panoply of other SUV makers might want to take a memo.

In the field of e-mobility, South Korean carmaker Hyundai is following Toyota's early lead: The world's number-one carmaker has long offered the Prius, and now the Koreans have answered the challenge with the new Hyundai Ioniq, which was specifically designed for lower-carbon engine technologies. It's available either as a Hybrid, plug-in hybrid, or 100 percent electric vehicle. Well done, Korea.