AW: So Dan, you've flown 6,000 miles to be here.
DE: Yeah.
AW: I live in London.
Was it worth it?
DE: Oh, absolutely.
The first 1,300 miles were driving here
from the UK in McLarens.
AW: I remember, and I was on the red-eye.
DE: Yeah.
AW: But leaving the supercars aside,
and I know there's a new McLaren here,
high were your highlights?
DE: Well, I really like the Porsche Panamera's
Sport Turismo, but also the GT3 that
was sitting right next to it.
AW: With a stick shift now.
DE: Yeah.
Yeah, you can get it that way.
And I really-- I know the PDK is faster,
and Mark Webber's right, and he's
a Formula One driver, so he should know,
but I still want to shift manually.
AW: You know what?
I mean, half a second on a lap time, it's about having fun,
right, if you buy one of those?
DE: Absolutely, the involvement's just there.
And pushing a button's not the same.
AW: And I really like the Sport Turismo.
I mean, interesting concept bringing a Porsche wagon
to the US.
DE: Yeah.
AW: You know, it's a Panamera, which is a great car,
as we know, with a bit of extra practicality,
a bit of extra novelty.
I love it.
It's great.
DE: Yeah, and it looks better.
Because the Panamera shape never quite sat well with me,
and it just never looked quite graceful.
This one looks tough, and it looks muscular.
It looks purposeful.
This is what a Panamera should have always looked like,
I think.
AW: Another car which is going to appeal to the slightly
better well-off is the Range Rover Vilar,
which is down here behind us.
I went to launch week in London last week,
and it's interesting to see it on the show floor,
but I think that's a beautifully executed vehicle.
DE: Absolutely.
And there's a lot of people here crawling in and out of it
all day.
It really looks like it's making waves here.
And I think it's going to do well in Southern California
and the rest the United States.
AW: The interior is terrific.
The only problem I have with it, and I have big OCD problems,
is on all that touch-screen stuff
you're little fingerprints, especially when you've
got little sweaty fingers all over the dashboard.
DE: Yeah, piano black looks great when it's clean,
but then it just turns into a fingerprint magnet, so--
AW: But getting a bit more real world, what's
caught your eye that's perhaps, as we say in Europe,
more affordable?
DE: More affordable.
Well, you know, I've always been a sucker for the Subaru
Crosstrek, which you would know as the XV.
AW: Yeah.
DE: Because, you know, there's--
because I do a little bit of off-roading
and there's a Subaru that has a little bit extra ground
clearance, a little bit extra toughness, and still
is a great daily driver.
It always seemed a little bit gutless and a little plasticy
inside.
They've made it just a little bit bigger
and a little bit more powerful.
I haven't driven it.
I can't tell if that's going to be enough.
But it's certainly the right direction.
And I like the car to begin with.
AW: And that's the chassis will spawn
the next generation of the Aardvark and everything else.
So it bodes well.
Another car that I like, we can actually probably see behind us
over there, is the Volvo XC60.
Volvo's on a big role right now.
DE: Yeah.
AW: XC90's a great car.
That's more of a crossover but SUV like.
DE: Yeah.
AW: But it's a pretty thing.
DE: It is.
And they gave it the longer, lower, wider treatment
this year.
And that's just what it needed, because it was a little bit
small inside, a little bit small on the back seat,
up on tiptoes.
Now it's a lot more graceful.
And I think it's going to be better
for the mainstream audience.
And it's just the right size.
AW: And it was time, because the old was extremely--
DE: Yeah, nine-years-old or something like that.
AW: Yeah, a nice Ford Focus.
DE: So this looks like a good hitting of the reset button.
But
AW: The other thing is there's going
to be a plug-in hybrid T8, which is just going to be a monster.
DE: Yeah.
We don't know how many miles of range it's going to have yet,
but I know that the battery is between the seats
in the tunnel, so it's not going to affect
cargo capacity at all.
So at least it's got that going for it.
AW: Civic Type R.
DE: Oh.
AW: First time it's coming to the US.
DE: I know.
AW: It's been there in Europe for many years.
DE: We've been waiting for that forever.
I mean, all I've seen is people buying the red badges
and sticking them on whatever Civic they had.
And it's so poser.
But here we got one with 306 horsepower, which,
considering the standard Civic is like 180, I mean,
that's more than 100 horsepower more than the car
it's based on.
AW: But you know what?
The problem I have with it, it's still front-wheel drive.
DE: I know.
AW: You've got a Focus RS just over there,
I can see it from here, all-wheel drive,
amazing all-wheel drive system.
It's similar-- going to be similar money to the Civic.
You know, you can't beat physics of it.
DE: We'll have to see.
I mean, they've got a RevoKnuckle-type front
suspension and a Helical limited-slip differential.
AW: [INAUDIBLE] coming at it.
DE: Sorry.
It's got cool stuff.
AW: Yeah.
DE: In the front that might help put the power down
without all this torque steer.
AW: The old one was almost undriveable in the wet.
DE: Yeah.
AW: It was really-- it really wasn't a great car in the wet.
DE: So we'll see.
I mean, I haven't driven it yet, but I'm
slobbering over it right now.
AW: So tell us about--
I know you want to come back to the McLaren 720S, which
is hiding over there.
That's a challenging car.
I mean, it's dramatic.
But it's all about aero, isn't it?
DE: It is all about aero.
And I really like the sides and the back.
And I get to the front and I look at the headlights,
and, you know, McLaren's got this signature
boomerang-shaped headlight that always looked great,
and now they've kind of opened it up
with-- it looks a little bit too bug-eyed for me.
But it is functional.
And, you know, whenever I see a new design for the first time,
I always kind of go eww, and then a year later I like it.
So I'm going to give it some time to percolate and see.
But certainly the ingredients are there
for a great driving car.
And I can't see the headlights from this driver's seat
anyways, so--
AW: So Dan, we talked about all the highlights.
Anything that you thought, umm, not so sure?
DE: Well, yeah, I think the thing
comes to mind is the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross.
I mean, I like what they've done with the styling.
It's a more cohesive look than they've had before.
And it's the right size to compete in that segment.
They certainly needed to have it five years ago.
But certainly it looks better.
And it has the right sort of engine and transmission
combination that works well for the Honda CRV.
But I'm just not sure of some of the features and design
elements.
There's the thing you can see in the rear-view mirror that
divides the hatch into two pieces.
And then there's the touch-pad that controls the navi system.
So I don't know.
We'll have to see.
AW: It's almost trying too hard.
DE: Yeah, maybe.
AW: The other one I'm--
my opinion, and you might shriek in horror
at this, Honda Civic Type R. I mean,
I love the fact that Honda's building cars like this again.
Before, about 300 horsepower through the front wheels.
I drove the old one which wasn't available in the US.
And in the wet it was--
All the technology is about getting around
a physical problem of trying to put--
trying to steer and put that much horsepower
through the wheels.
DE: Well, we'll have to see.
I know we've never had it, so, you
know, it's one of these things where we just want to have it.
AW: Yeah.
The fan boys are going to love it.
DE: And it doesn't rain in Southern California
much, right?
So maybe we don't care.
AW: Yeah, it's not a car for Detroit.
So beyond that, as we sort of wrap up for the day
and everybody packs up around us,
if you were driving one car back tonight that you've seen here
at the show, what would it be?
What's your highlight?
DE: I'd go back to the Porsche stand
this morning, and the GT3.
I love that car.
I've driven the last generation one.
It made a real big impression on me.
And you know, the Autobahn's not too far away.
I'd love to go blast that thing around in Germany one last time
on the way back to the UK where I start.
AW: I'm with you, Dan.
I love the GT3.
I drove a GT3 RS recently and absolutely loved it.
Fabulous car.
But for me, tonight, when we're all
a bit kind of tired and sweaty, Panamera Sport Turismo,
it's going to drive like the standard Panamera,
but I love the style.
I love the practicality.
And for a car to just point down the auto route
and head back to the UK, fabulous.
DE: Can't argue with that.
AW: So that's our highlights, and maybe a few lowlights,
of the 2017 Geneva Auto Show.
But tell us, if you were driving from Geneva to London tonight,
what would you take?
Come on, engage with us.