Barcelona’s annual orgy of car lust

Bicycles were the fashion-accessory of choice for car manufacturers at this year’s Barcelona Car Show. A shiny Mercedes sedan was bedecked with two Mercedes-branded mountain bikes, while Skoda showed off its nifty Roomster with built-in bike carrier, and the numerous SUV’s on display invariably had a couple of mountain bikes on board.

The bikes weren’t the only green-washing going down at the show with a number of manufacturers pushing their purpose built bio-fuel vehicles. Cars that very, very soon will be competing with the world’s poorest for corn and other staples.

With the tens of thousands of visitors, myself included, enjoying the acres of exhibition space given over to an orgy of car lust it’s hard to take the manufacturers claims at environmental concern too seriously.

While dozens of men were ogling the latest Lotuses, Mercedes and Rolls Royces– and the young hostesses who invariably drape themselves over them – there was literally no-one at the stall for the all electric Reva.

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In a twist on the law of diminishing returns the higher the price tag on the car the less material available for the hostesses’ skirts.

The hostess at the Indian manufactured Reva stand, wearing a suitably sensible ankle-length dress, claimed against all the evidence that the little electric commuter was generating a real buzz.

With a top speed of 64kmh the steel and plastic Reva is designed for inner-city use. The manufacturer claims it costs less than one US cent a kilometre to run and can drive up to 80 km on a single charge. A full charge can be obtained in eight hours by plugging into a standard socket or an 80% charge in just two and a half hours.

Another car with a legitimate claim to being a pioneer in frugal fuel consumption was attracting the punters: a 50-year-old Citroen 2CV that was part of the cars of Tintin exhibition.

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The exhibition, that will no doubt be of interest to Peter Jackson, features real life examples of most, if not all, the cars and motorcycles to appear in the Tintin comic books.

Bicycles and electric car aside this year’s Barcelona Motor Show was the usual celebration of speed and grunt. With the Spanish manufacturer SEAT showcasing its first ever SUV and Citroen presenting a Joe 90ish six wheel all terrain vehicle.

Global warming may be almost an almost universally acknowledged fact but we’re a long way from breaking our addiction to shiny individualised polluting machines.

It’s an inconvenient truth that when Al Gore wanted to show off his environmental credentials before an address to the Senate he did so by arriving in a hybrid SUV not public transport or a bicycle.

Jeremy Rose is a Wellington journalist currently based in Barcelona. He will be back in New Zealand, and looking for work, from early July. Jeremy.rose @clear.net.nz

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