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Show’s over?
3 years ago
For a few days each year in March, the entire auto industry decamped to Geneva
Flashy, but not as blingy as Shanghai or Beijing. Techy, but not as all-out geeky as the CES in Las Vegas. In short, it was human-sized and enjoyable. As long as you had a huge wad of Swiss francs on you, of course: it was always outrageously expensive, for exhibitors and attendees both.
But what, you might ask, was a lowly engineer like me doing at these shows? I was not a C-suite bigwig who needed to hobnob behind the scenes with other powerbrokers, nor a designer who might presumably take inspiration from seeing the fresh new shapes revealed by the competition – although cynics might say that the designer community is so tight-knit that they are the very last people that ever see anything new at a motor show. And only later in my career was I trusted enough to be put in front of those nasty, tricksy journalist types…
No, most of the time I was there like all the other engineers that you see wandering around on Press or Industry Day – the day or two before a motor show opens to the public, where access is limited to hacks and professionals only. I was, quite simply, a spy. Okay, let’s not get all excited, we’re not talking about proper industrial espionage – the kind that involves sophisticated cyberattacks or gathering ‘humint’, often by taking advantage of naive geeks on business trips to foreign locations with exotic food, excessive amounts of alcohol and even more exotic members of the opposite sex. No, I’m talking about above-board competitor benchmarking here.
Car companies routinely pay engineers like me to go to car shows and try to evaluate, photograph and, where possible, measure specific bits of cars, or write reports on technical trends that might be detectable. A closures engineer might be sent with the task of studying, photographing and understanding door seals on a particular new competitor. A headlamp engineer might want to look at all the new lighting trends coming out of the Chinese market. UI/UX engineers will crawl all over competitor dashboards to try to figure out their thinking on the touchscreen versus button debate.
"They were obviously neither journalists nor car dealers, so I walked over and politely asked if they needed anything. They scrambled to their feet as awkwardly as a boyfriend buying lingerie for his beloved and mumbled that no, they were just browsing"
Of course, this form of competitor benchmarking is completely legal. What a car company puts on a stand at a show is, by its very definition, public domain and hence fair game. But it’s quite amusing that there is still a bit of an illicit feel about it – most of us engineers lack the bald-faced cheek to just get on with it.
At the Geneva show in March 2012, I was part of the Renault staff lurking on the stand to witter on about our then-brand-new ZOE, which was still nine months out from launch, and as a full BEV – unlike these days – a rare beast. I noticed three fresh-faced, neatly-but-inexpensively dressed young chaps, huddled around the nose of one of the cars on display. They had popped the charge port, and were peering into it intensely, snapping close-up images. Amusingly, I noticed that they had tucked their passes in between their shirt buttons to try – wholly unnecessarily – to remain undercover.
But they were obviously neither journalists nor car dealers, so this subterfuge was in vain. I walked over and politely asked if they needed anything. They scrambled to their feet as awkwardly as a boyfriend buying lingerie for his beloved and mumbled that no, they were just browsing. I asked them straightforwardly what car company they worked for, and they sheepishly pulled out their badges to show the blue propeller roundel of BMW. I smiled and said to let me know if they needed anything – all of us knowing damn well that I was not going to tell them anything remotely useful. But it was nice to know that the i3 technical team were doing their homework.
“Unfortunately, by now we’d moved on from our 4C benchmark car, having realised that it was…well, not a very good benchmark. Fortunately, I was off to the Geneva show, so the team tasked their boss with carrying out a very specific benchmarking task”
Geneva was also the scene of my own most embarrassing motor show benchmarking moment. It was 2016 and we were working to finalise the details of the A110 (ask Dan, it’s a little French sports car that’s apparently not as good as a Golf 7.5). We had recently stumbled on a tricky little issue. The A110’s engine air intakes are behind the little quarter windows – discreet little curved scoops that allow the snorty little 1.8-litre motor to suck in enough O2 to keep the fires burning. Somewhat late in the day, one of our design reviews identified that we had forgotten to include an anti-cigarette butt grille in the air intake. Oops.
If you are wondering what an anti-cigarette butt grille is, the clue is in the name. In short, it’s a wire grille or mesh, with openings less than 5mm across, that stops ciggie butts being sucked up and into the air filter. It so happens that lots of cars have a low-pressure area just behind the front bumper, nicely placed to hoover a freshly-chucked and hence still-burning butt thrown out of the car in front into the upper regions of the engine bay, where you will often find the air intake that feeds nice cold air into the inlet duct.
In the not-so-distant past, many air filter elements were made of non-treated, and hence flammable paper. Unlikely, but it really has happened. So Renault – and Nissan – have strict standards that decree all cars should have belts (non-flammable air filter elements) and braces (a suitable anti-butt grille). What’s worse: this idiot here had signed off the appropriate technical standard – and then promptly forgot to make sure we’d applied it to the A110.
So just add one in, right? Well, it was not that easy in reality. We were late in the day and it was hard to squeeze in the right grille. Even though these meshes are very fine, the A110 is packed as tight as an egg, and it would still reduce the cross-sectional area of the inlet duct, potentially sapping power at high altitudes. Not a problem at launch, where the A110 would have ‘only’ 248 ponies, but of course we already knew that pokier, 300bhp versions would follow on, so we really did not want to strangle it from day one.
Because the 4C was a bum steer, it wasn't used for A110 dynamic benchmarks, but still helped the A110 team with one small detail
I should point out that the A110 has a proper, non-flammable air filter element. Plus, the air intake is not in a naturally low-pressure zone like in a front-engined car: it’s in an area where it is aerodynamically highly unlikely to ingest a cigarette butt. So we were almost certainly worrying about nothing. But that little word ‘almost’ is, like karma, a bitch. What to do?
Now, it’s always useful in these situations to know what the ‘state of the art’ is – in other words, to know what your competitors do. And among the comparable cars was the Alfa Romeo 4C. Now, the Alfa had a similar (theoretical) problem. In fact, its air intakes, in the leading edges of the car’s haunches, were much more likely to vacuum up a badly timed butt flung from a car alongside. It would be handy to know if the 4C had an anti-ciggie mesh, wouldn’t it?
Unfortunately, by now we’d moved on from our 4C benchmark car, having realised that it was…well, not a very good benchmark. Fortunately, I was off to the Geneva show, so the team tasked their boss with carrying out a very specific benchmarking task.
Come the day of the show, I duly made my way over to the Alfa Romeo stand, tucked in a quiet corner of one of the halls. By now the 4C was a bit long in the tooth, and was dying in the market, so the stand was a bit sad. It had just a couple of cars on display, and was, in a very Alfa Romeo way back then, seemingly stuck in the 1980s in supposing that the products’ deficiencies could be offset by the length of the hostesses’ hemlines and height of their heels. Hmm.
Dedicated professional that I am, I set to. There was a red (what else?) coupé wedged nicely in the corner. No-one around. I crouched down and put my hand up the air intake. No grille. I shoved my hand in further, like someone fishing for that last broken Pringle. Nowt. Maybe it was even further up the intake duct? I had been meeting a few suppliers and had made a bit of a sartorial effort, so I was fully suited and booted. I popped my head up to make sure that no-one was paying any attention, then took off my suit jacket, my watch, rolled up my shirt-sleeve and laid my jacket on the (slightly grubby) carpet. I then knelt down next to the 4C, and did my very best James Herriot – left arm up all the way into the 4C’s private parts, feeling for a plastic or metal grille of some sort… Hell, no dice! Okay, one more pushhhhhhhh…
‘Monsieur? Puis-je vous aider avec quelque chose?’
The polite but unmistakably frosty voice floated down from above. I awkwardly turned my head – jammed against the Alfa’s curvy flanks – to see a neat pair of unnecessarily uncomfortable high heels: the stand hostess had caught me in the act. Now it was my turn to spring to my feet, roll down my sleeve and try to shrug it off. No, no, I said – it was just too complicated to explain – thanked her, and nodded to the stand manager who was giving me the evils as I left, red in the head and disheveled of suit.
To this day, I still don’t know if the 4C has an anti-cig grille. All I know is that A110 does – we found a way to shoehorn one in before the launch.
Geneva show? I’ll miss you…
