My pictures (+short report) from 2007 Helsinki Motor Show

[bmer]

The show was very nice although some car brands were missing (perhaps most notably BMW). I took about 180 pictures but obviously I'm not going to post all of them here. Resizing and uploading them takes time so I will have to update this thread during the next couple of days.

I have to say it was hard to take good shots as there was people constantly walking around the car, opening the doors and trunk and I got a bit frustrated at times. Because I had to take the pictures fast, many (or perhaps all ) of the shots are not completely horizontally straight and with many cars it was only possible to take pictures from an angle that didn't do justice for the car. They can be a bit blurry as well. With many models I decided to give up and didn't take a shot at all... I also didn't take pictures of cars that I didn't find interesting enough.

Anyway I hope there are at least some that you guys like. I'll post them in alphabetical order starting with Alfa.



Alfa Romeo had a very nice stand red obviously being the dominating color. They had Brera, Spider and 159 Sportwagon all powered by 3.2 JTS V6 and all of them 4WD.

Audi had a huge stand with many A4s, A5s, a Q7, an A8 2.8 e, an A3 1.9 TDIe and the R8. Easily one of the best stands. The A4 looks very nice IRL. I love the LEDs. Event though it's considerably bigger than the predecessor it didn't felt much larger. The A5 was very nice as well. One car had brown leather interior. Both A4 and A5 have rear lights that are look surprisingly small IRL but you soon get used to them.
On the stand they also had A8 2.8 FSI e, an economy model. Didn't spend very much time with it but the facelift changes looked great. And the interior is best in class IMO.
The highlight of the stand was of course the R8. It was light blue and surrounded by fences. I'm not sure if it was the best color for the R8 but the car looked absolutely stunning nevertheless! The LEDs are amazing, so bright!

There wasn't exactly a Bentley stand but a car magazine had a Continental GT Speed at their stand. It looked brilliant!

There was also this ContiGT that made the world speed record on ice.

 

[bmer]

There wasn't an actual Cadillac stand either but an importer had an Escalade on their small stand.

On the Citroen stand the most interesting car IMO was the C6. I only took a couple of shots sitting inside the car. To be honest, it didn't feel as luxurious as it should. The interior could have easily been from a car that costs a half the price so naturally I was disappointed.

The dream stand of the show was most likely Ferrari's. They had F 430, F 430 Spider and the F 430 Scuderia. The ultimate drool section of the show no doubt. As they were next to each other you could easily compare the Scuderia to the regular F 430 (from front and sides, not rear unfortunately). The Scuderia is more agressive looking and I prefer its sharp edges on the front air intakes to the more round ones in the F 430.

There was also this F 430 on the entrance of the show. It had Kimi Räikkönen's signature on the side.

There was a car that I really wanted to see on the Fiat stand and that's the new 500 of course. It was just as cute IRL as in the pictures and you could see the quality. Truly a real winner for Fiat!

On the Jaguar stand they had a white XKR Coupe, facelifted XJ and X-Type Estate (and maybe an S-Type, I'm not sure). The white XKR looked very good.

The Land Rover stand was right next to the Jaguar stand. They had all their model families (Range Rover, RR Sport, Discovery, Freelander and Defender).

Lexus' biggest stars were the LS600h L and the IS-F. I saw the LS for the second time (first time was in Japan) and it reminded me that the rear is not as bad IRL as it is in the pictures. Very nice but I'd take the LS 460 instead. The IS-F didn't actually look "ricey" at all although the weird exhaust pipe arrangement could be made better. It's a good-looking car honestly. I like the blue dials in the instrument panel.

I'll post more pictures tomorrow.

 

[Centurion]

Superb coverage man. Keep it coming.

 

[ree]

Thanks so much for these photos!!!

 

[Mr. M]

Excellent... You are a lucky man bmer.

 

[Bruce]

Real nice work Mikael.

Karma for the great report and pictures.

 

[Monster]

Awsome photos and review bmer, thanks heaps ! It is lucky you guys get to sit inside the new A4, and you are allowed to get up close and the Ferrari cars.

p.s no photos of BMW or did I miss it?

 

[cawimmer430]

Nice pics and write-ups. Can't wait to see the rest!

HURRY UP!!!

 

[bmer]

Awsome photos and review bmer, thanks heaps ! It is lucky you guys get to sit inside the new A4, and you are allowed to get up close and the Ferrari cars.

p.s no photos of BMW or did I miss it?

Thanks, monster! I loved your report from the Sydney show.
Yeah, I was surprised it was possible to get so close to a Ferrari too. Probably because of Kimi's title they were so kind this time.

BMW didn't participate in this year's show, unfortunately. They've done it before too. Can't really understand why...

Nice pics and write-ups. Can't wait to see the rest!

HURRY UP!!!

Thanks, Chris! Don't worry I'll post some more soon.

 

[bmer]

The Maserati stand was next to the Ferrari's. Very nice stand overall, I especially liked the Maserati sign (shown in first picture). They had the Quattroporte and the GranTurismo on stage. The GranTurismo is absolutely gorgeous! It looks agressive yet refined. I really like the design direction they've taken with the car.

The Mercedes stand was one of the bigger ones. Many models on display. CL was the most exclusive car. They also had the new C-Class Estate (C 320 CDI T), natural gas powered E-Class (E 200 NGT), CLS 350 CGI, CLK 320 CDI, C 220 CDI, S 320 CDI 4 Matic, GL 420 CDI, ML 320 CDI and maybe a couple of other models too. The CL looked wonderful, I've only seen one on the street. I've got to say the C-Class Estate looks much better IRL than in the pictures. It also has more head room in the rear than the Saloon. One small thing I found irritating in the C-Class was the way the rear armrests on the rear doors slope down towards the front. I noticed this as I compared the rear seat of the C-Class and the new A4. Unfortunately no AMG models but that was probably due to the theme of this year's show which was ecofriendliness.
The GL's light interior looked very high quality. They also had Smart on their stand.

Porsche and others coming tomorrow.

 

[ree]

Those Mercedes shots are awesome!! The black beauty CLS 350 CGI is just so beautiful and so is the "old" CLK 320 CDI!! It's still one of the best looking Coupé on the market.

 

[bmer]

Those Mercedes shots are awesome!! The black beauty CLS 350 CGI is just so beautiful and so is the "old" CLK 320 CDI!! It's still one of the best looking Coupé on the market.

Thank you, ree! I'm glad you liked them. The CLK is still very nice despite the fact that there are now some pretty hard competitors on the market (E92, A5).

 

[Amo]

Great set of photos there. Glad to here the IS-F looks good in real.

 

[bmer]

The undeniable star of the Porsche stand was the GT2. What a stunning piece of automotive engineering! The list price is 303.000 euros (333.000 euros starting at January) so it will remain a rare sight on the streets here. They also had a Turbo Cabriolet, Cayenne S and a Cayman on the stand. I think the white color fits the Cayenne very good. Sweet interior in the Turbo too.

I liked the colors they used in the Subaru stand (white and some blue). Looked very nice. The one car I went to check out was the WRX-STi. I didn't know it was actually the European premiere until after the show. I would've taken a lot more photos.

The Volkswagen stand was basically a Tiguan stand. They had many differently equipped Tiguans. It definately is one of the best looking vehicles in its class. I especially liked the blue one! Wouldn't take it over an A4 though. (wink, wink, Yannis)

There wasn't much new on the Volvo stand so I only took these two shots of the XC70.











Phew, it's pretty hard work resizing and uploading these pictures one by one! I still have some random shots from the show that I will post later today (incl. the only BMW pictures, an exotic + funny/weird things )

 

[SDNR]

Fabulous pictures ....I'm in love with the GT2

 

[bmer]

OK, here's probably the most exotic car in the show. The Gumpert Apollo. With 650 hp / 850 Nm (627 ft-lb) and top speed of 360 km/h (224 mph), it was easily the fastest car in the show as well. It does 0-100 km/h (0-62 mph) in 3,0 s!
I'm sorry I couldn't get any better shots of the car but during the whole day there wasn't a single moment without a massive crowd surrounding it.
I was surprised how compact it is, looked very cool anyway. It was awesome they could get such a car to the show.

There was also this natural gas -powered Hummer.

Like I already mentioned, BMW dropped out of this year's show. There were still two BMWs on a tuner's stand. In addition to the usual tuner stuff (rims, bumpers etc.) they also had custom made interiors in display. Z4 and M5 were used to present the interiors. Both cars had leather samples and brochures on their bonnet so I didn't take exterior pics. Here's the M5 interior:

Mazda had the new 6 on display. The stand was so narrow at this point and there was a lot of people around the cars so I couldn't get a good shot of the car. The car itself looked very good.

This Suzuki was the Women's car. Designed to please women's taste and meet their needs from a car. I think there had been some kind of competition in the internet where women could propose what they wanted the car to be like and the show car was based on these proposals. I would like to know what our female members think about the interior.

Here are a couple of views to the main hall.

Of course there was tuner stands too. Here is what I think the 2nd ugliest car in the show (the ugliest I didn't take a picture of but I think it was white with blue flames on the sides and a lot unimaginably ugly stuff on it).

Now I've posted all the car pictures I wanted to so tomorrow I'll post another kind of beauty that was present at the show.

 

[ree]

The black GT2 is hot and so is the white Cayenne (saw one today in Berlin - photos will follow the next week) - but the best car is the 911 Turbo here. It looks awesome!!!

 

[Centurion]

Sexy Porsche line up, all three cars look great in their colours. I'm loving the 997tt cabrio more and more, I can even go as far as saying that it looks better than the coupe. Nice that Porsche over there in Finland has some humor and seated a big bear in the 997TT.

 

[bmer]

I guess Porsche wanted to score some sympathy points since the new radically changed car taxation law strikes heavily on Porsche prices. The Turbo Cabrio will cost 36.500 euros more in the beginning of next year (biggest raise in price together with Cayenne Turbo).

 

[Bruce]

Ehh, you saw a Gumpert? I envy you...