FRANKFURT, 17 September 2005 — The 61st International Motor Show in Frankfurt opens to the public today, in bullish and spectacular fashion, mammoth both in scale and spread, and defiant in the face of increasing environmental concerns and corruption scandals that have recently rocked the German car industry.
Officially opened by Chancellor Gerhard Schroder on Sept. 13, only a few days ahead of the German national elections, the Frankfurt Motor Show, one of the largest and most important events on the auto show calendar, is expected to see nearly a million visitors before it closes on Sept. 25.
And they’ll have plenty to see with around 1,000 exhibitors from 44 countries with 122 vehicle premieres, 80 of those world premieres, including, for the first time, cars displayed by Chinese manufacturers at a major European show.
The presence of Geely, Brilliance and Jiangling from the world’s third largest country still riding high on the crest of the boom-or-bust economic wave, announced the confidence of these fledgling car makers and their intention to bring cheap cars to the masses beyond the newly auto-hungry of China.
But with car production apparently set to spiral absurdly out of control through foreign and local factories ready to pump out vehicles in the far eastern nation, a nation eager to race to the top of the industrial league, manufactures from DaimleyChrsyler to Toyota and even Lada have used the show to offer a flood of hybrid applications to calm the fears of anxious environmentalists. With the promise of “miraculous” fuel cell tech cars also “just round the corner”.
Look closely though and the contradictions emerge. The leading producers of hybrid vehicles, Honda and Toyota, have so far failed to slice out feasibly large chunks of the retail markets for their saintly petrol-electric engined cars, with little over 135,000 total hybrids sold in the largest market, the US, in the first eight months of this year.
