AutoRAI 2011

Even though nearly half a year has passed, better late than never.

In April 2011 I visited the largest car exhibition of the Netherlands called AutoRAI. It takes place in the Amsterdam RAI exhibition centre, and its name originates from Rijwiel- en Automobiel Industrie Vereniging (“Bicycle and Automobile Industry Association”, founded in 1893).

Below you will mainly find pictures and very little text, because I don’t know a damn thing about it seeing is believing.

As a true geek, at any automobile exhibition I’m predominantly interested in the following three things: bizarre cars, electric vehicles and girls. All three were in abundance there.

Fancy things

Here’s a dreamcar from Citroën:

And here’s something even more fancy under the name Renault Captur:

Its interior:

Notice the camera replacing the side mirror:

But the best perspective to look at is decidedly as follows:

The opposite of the future also had a good presence here, in the form of vintage cars:

A quite an interesting concept of Mercedes-Benz F-CELL Roadster hybrid. It’s been developed by 150 trainees of Daimler AG’s Sindelfingen plant in about a year (more details here).

Sportcars by Ferrari and Mercedes-Benz:

Some more exotic ones:

Cars from movies:

Electric cars

Let’s move to electric vehicles now. Almost every car maker brought either a prototype or a production version.

The world’s first serial fully electric car, the famous Tesla Roadster. Accelerates 0 to 100 km/h in 3.7 s.

A tiny Renault Twizy Z.E. (Zero Emission) is just for the driver:

Citroën C-Zero. You charge it using a usual outlet:

Mitsubishi i-MiEV. The interior is pretty much conventional:

A small charger for it:

Volvo C30 DRIVe Electric:

Peogeot iOn looks exactly like Peogeot 107 from outside, but it has a battery inside. You can buy them already and even have a test drive:

An electric bus prototype built by students of some university:

Other stuff

The most items were traditional models of cars.

Ferrari:

Rolls-Royce, Bentley:

Lamborgini:

Bugatti:

Lancia:

Jaguar:

Lotus:

Wiesmann:

Lexus (only € 508 000):

Porsche:

BMW:

For some reason Audi cars were mostly red:

Mazda roadster on a stage with a nice purple underlight:

Here Mazda show how much stuff you can shove into their miniwan:

Renault. Anyone could “Like” the car on the Facebook to be listed on the screen beside it.

Here a girl shows how the roof in Volvo V70 is unfolded from the trunk:

You could even play with radio controlled toy cars:

Girls

Girls accompanied almost every car maker. It’s curious that some of them would easily allow and even pose for taking photos of them, whereas others firmly declined the very idea of it. So the ones who didn’t object are below.Girls who welcomed the visitors at the entrance:

The most girls were at Ford’s, I think. Here’s the willing part of them:

Citroën girls:

And a more special one:

A Mercedes girl has a business look:

Dacia girls holding their iPhones:

A professional model was advertising some auxiliary stuff:

Some Chinese make (Great Wall?):

KIA Motors:

Volvo:

Peugeot:

Some car device named I-Charge:

Jeep:

They said their feet got tired, so they climbed to the Jeep’s roof:

A tired in the end of the exhibition day Shell’s girl. She told me they’d to wear glasses to “look smarter”. She definitely looks better without them:

Of course that’s far not everything you could see there. In four hours I’ve spent there (after my work) I could only have a quick glance, not even to mention details. ■