- Report from major motor shows in New York, Shanghai, and London
- Swathe of new Chinese EVs revealed
- Exciting new models teased by Genesis
- New BYD Sealion 6 and Seal 6 sure to attract Brit lease customers
New York, Newham, Shanghai – it feels like the writing on the side of Del Trotter’s three-wheeled van in Only Fools and Horses, but this has been my past couple of weeks traipsing around some of the world’s biggest (and smallest) motor shows.
First it was the New York International Motor Show, now in its 125th year, where I helped present the annual World Car Awards before heading to the show halls to see what was new.
And the answer was: not much! Star of the New York show was the new Subaru Trailseeker (above), a return to rugged estate cars for the Japanese brand, but with a familiar look. Yes, the Trailseeker – or whatever it ends up being called when it arrives here – is basically an estate version of the Subaru Solterra. And the Solterra itself was at the show sporting a fresh-ish new look.
Of course, the Solterra is the sister car to the Toyota bZ4X, so don’t be surprised if an estate version of the Toyota breaks cover sometime soon.
Genesis proved once again that it’s become the master of the concept car with the X Gran Equator Concept (pictured above), another large SUV concept following on from last year’s Neolun. We know the Neolun will be going into production, probably in 2027, so there’s hope that the Equator (named after a horse, apparently) might also make it into production using some of the Neolun’s bits and pieces. To be frank, it would be nice to see any new production car from Genesis – it seems to promise so much but deliver so little.
(Genesis Neolun pictured above)
Jetting back from New York, it was immediately a swift circle of the M25 to London Excel in Newham – you can probably spot it on the title sequence for Eastenders.
Inside one of Excel’s vast halls was the little Everything Electric show, where – admittedly rather jet-lagged – I sat on a panel to discuss which brands would be the winners and the losers in the electric car surge.
Unsurprisingly there was a bit of a theme at Everything Electric with a lot of the Chinese brands on display: MG, BYD and Changan – which was showing its Deepal S07 all-electric SUV in the UK for the first time. Volvo, which is Chinese owned these days, was just about the only ‘legacy’ car brand there.
(Changan Deepal S07)
The Tesla Cybertruck was also in attendance for selfie-seekers, plus – as with all modern motor shows these days – you could test drive a load of EVs around East London.
The final trip of the motor show season – which used to include the gone but not forgotten Geneva motor show – was the enormous Shanghai show. China is as bonkers as it is brilliant, seemingly throwing resources at anything to overcome a complete lack of organisation.
Unsurprisingly, the Shanghai show was bigger than you could possibly imagine with brands that you haven’t yet heard of.
The Shanghai National Centre for Exhibitions and Conventions is a thing in itself. Look from overhead (and you can see it from space it’s so big) and it looks like a flower with four leaves spreading out from a central base. In fact, there are eight gigantic halls with two floors each. And they were filled with cars, accessories and much more – my sole day there just wasn’t enough.
So, which cars impressed me most? Among all the new brands, it was an old British brand with a Chinese flavour that stole the show. MG is going great guns here in the UK and its Cyber X concept looked fantastic.
Unsurprisingly it’s an all-electric SUV, but it heralded the return of pop-up headlights! Okay, so they’re not the sort I was amazed by as a kid, but little lids are lifted at both front corners of the bonnet to reveal slim, LED headlights – and I was a teenager again.
The car itself looks pretty cool, too – boxy in a Land Rover Defender sort of way, but when it goes into production (as I hope it will) it won’t have a Land Rover Defender sort of price!
Nio continues to impress me, too. Not for its battery swap tech, but the cars look great, the ET9 can dance on its air suspension and Nio really engages with its owners. In fact, it was Nio owners who were manning the stands.
(Nio ET9 above)
Nio is planning other brands for Europe, too, with the Firefly – the cutest small car at the show with a hint of Honda-E about it – a car that I reckon would go down brilliantly with Brit buyers.
Zeekr is another brand I’m growing to like and I actually drove some of its models out in China – they drive really well. I suspect Zeekr is more likely to arrive in the UK before Nio, maybe not with the giant 9X SUV, but the smaller 7X and 7GT are seriously good-looking cars (designed in Sweden), packed with tech and I enjoye driving them.
Lynk & Co is a Chinese company that’s been promising to come to the UK for the past ten years – and it’s still saying it’ll get here eventually. I hope it does as its Lynk & Co 02 model is based on the Volvo EX30 and feels just as good to drive.
Jaecoo and Omoda are already established here in the UK and revealed the Range Rover Evoque-like Jaecoo 5 and bigger Omoda 7 models; both expected to continue the brands’ familiar 'more for less' mantra.
(Leapmotor B10 above)
Leapmotor is already in the UK, too, selling through Stellantis brand dealers. It’s B10 small SUV is going to try and take on the newly crowned World Car of the Year, the Kia EV3, but again with more kit and at a lower price.
A Chinese show wouldn’t be complete without a massive BYD stand, showing not only BYD but also Denza (Denza Z pictured below) and Yangwang models, the latter two aiming to compete with Porsche and Ferrari – good luck with that.
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But it was the Sealion 6 and Seal 6 models that will likely come to the UK with BYD’s excellent DM-i plug-in hybrid tech that I reckon British buyers will like, especially if they offer the sort of value the Seal U DM-i model already does.
One thing that did hit me in Shanghai was that China is already consolidating its new car brands. There’s a fail-fast mentality over there that means if a car brand doesn’t do the business, it’s swiftly canned. And we’ve already seen and heard of many cars that were supposed to be heading to the UK but never made it.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the Chinese onslaught will slow down, though – expect more new names to pop up in your inbox over the coming years.
As for motor shows, what’s next? The closest the UK gets to a motor show is the Goodwood Festival of Speed, itself dominated last year by Chinese brands. Expect more of the same in the Sussex countryside this July.
** Steve Fowler is one of the UK’s best-known automotive journalists and currently EV Editor of The Independent and a regular contributor to The Guardian. He’s the only person to have edited three of the UK’s biggest car titles – Auto Express, Autocar and What Car? – and has interviewed the biggest names in the car world from Tesla’s Elon Musk to Ford’s Jim Farley. Steve has also presented documentaries for BBC Radio Four and is used as a resident ‘car guru’ on TV and Radio. He’s a World Car of the Year juror and a judge on both Germany’s and India’s Car of the Year Awards. Read more of Steve's work at stevefowler.co.uk.
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