10 Things To Look Forward To At The Geneva Motor Show

The International Geneva Motor Show - to give it its full name - is one of the most important events of the year for new cars. If you’re into your new car news, you want to be paying attention. But, when the 86th running of the show kicks off on 3 March - and in the days leading up to then - what cars should you be keeping an eye out for? These are our picks:

Jaguar F-Type SVR

Having already done a very good job of creating the utterly ludicrous Range Rover Sport SVR, Jaguar Land Rover’s new Special Vehicle Operations Division is on the verge of releasing its not-so-difficult second album: the F-Type SVR. Except we’ve seen it already, thanks to a leak last week. Oops.

Still, we’re looking forward to seeing it in the metal. This all-wheel drive monster is 25bhp more powerful than the current range-topper - the R - bringing the total violence from the 5.0-litre supercharged V8 to 576bhp. It’s lighter too, and littered with clever aero bits.

Apollo Arrow

Gumpert is dead. But don’t worry, out of the ashes of one of the most poorly-named car companies ever conceived has risen Apollo Automobil, and it’ll be bringing a brand new car codenamed ‘Arrow’ to Geneva. It’ll be revealed on 1 March - a couple of days before the show starts - and we can’t wait to see it.

Bugatti Chiron

The long-awaited Bugatti Veyron successor will say its tremendously unsubtle hello to the world at Geneva. How unsubtle? Well, The Chiron is understood to be packing an evolution of the Veyron’s 8.0-litre W16, this time pumping out a jolly useful 1500bhp or so. There’s been talk of a frankly bonkers 290mph top speed - as well as a 2.2-second 0-62mph time - and it’ll take styling cues from the Bugatti Vision Gran Turismo concept.

Porsche 911 R

No silly, not the car in the picture, that’s a 911 GT3. But the R is in essence a GT3, minus the rear wing and with three pedals and a stick shifter. Oh yes, after the manual-only Cayman GT4, it looks like Porsche is building another sports car aimed squarely at the purist petrolhead. Nothing’s official at the moment, but a Geneva reveal is expected.

Also on the Porsche front, we should get our first proper look at the updated Boxster and Cayman ranges, which will feature four-cylinder engines.

With the ageing Aston Martin DB9 starting to lag behind its rivals, the DB11 can’t come soon enough. It’ll almost certainly be powered by Gaydon’s all-new 5.2-litre twin-turbo V12, and will hopefully look just as gorgeous as the car it’s due to replace.

Pagani Huayra BC

A photo posted by (@carsandtrees) on Jan 23, 2016 at 5:11pm PST

While we’ve now well and truly lost count of the ridiculous number of Zonda special editions, the Huayra has remained a little left out. There’s been a few one-off cars - including Salomondrin’s 730 S - but not a whole lot else. The BC, however, goes some way to redressing the balance.

The car you see in the image above is allegedly it, and while very few details have been confirmed, the BC is thought to be a more track-oriented version of the ‘boggo’ Huayra, hence all the crazy wings and aero bits. Hopefully we’ll know a lot more by the time Geneva comes around.

Lamborghini Centenario

It’s been a little while since Lamborghini took one of its cars, turned up the crazy and inflated the price to ridiculous levels, but don’t worry - Sant’Agata Bolognese has something planned. It’s called the Centenario, so called as it celebrates the 100th birthday of Ferruccio Lamborghini. Like the Veneno (above) it’ll be based on the Aventador, and all 40 of the £1.64 million cars have already been sold.

Volvo V90

While the new S90 saloon is most certainly a handsome devil, it’s science fact that Volvos are cooler as estates. Fortunately, we don’t have long to wait for all the official details, with the V90 - which was prematurely revealed earlier this year - making its debut at Geneva.

A garage door

It’s probably a little too early to call this effort from Skoda the worst teaser of the year, but by the end of 2016, this will surely be a strong contender (next to the stinker Bugatti dropped a few weeks ago). The chatter surrounding it suggests it’s likely to be teasing a new Skoda SUV to sit above the Yeti. So not the sort of thing that normally gets us going, but worth mentioning for the sake of lambasting this awful teaser.

Coverage via the CT Android app

OK, so the last thing isn’t a car, but if you want to keep up to date on all Geneva news (including our own coverage, articles from your favourite auto publications and reports from our man on the ground Alex Kersten) and you have an Android phone, make sure you head over to the Google Play store and download the CT app now!