Venucia R30

While crossovers have become the most popular car category of the past few years, the latest trend among the automakers – not their models – is to create new subdivisions. Not so many towards the luxury side because that market praises different kinds of values, but low-cost ones. Most companies got impressed with how Dacia managed to grow in the latest years, and this is why you’ll see more of those in the near future. But if you think the reborn Datsun was only Nissan’s first step in this path, this article’s vehicle will prove you wrong.

Denza EV

Do you remember the saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”? The car world has given several examples of it in the past decades, and not as euphemistically as one might think – they can go from new models cutting costs by using much older platforms to the Chinese copies, not to mention niche cars which turned into category founders (like Mercedes-Benz CLS). So what could be a better example of that than a “luxury minivan” which was based on the previous-generation B-Class and will be sold exclusively in China?

Chevrolet Cruze 2 China

While design languages basically refer to making the entire lineup look alike, the concept of design traditions stands for a more vertical approach: they are particular cues which a single car carries over its generations, like Citroën C3’s arched roof or Volkswagen Golf’s wide C-pillar. Most automakers invest on establishing the latter ones because it helps to sculpt the car’s individual identity, which usually leads to a nice public reception. But what if the automaker decides to drop that path and update some vehicles with a whole new style?

Mini Paceman 2015

There are times when following trends can be as tricky as attempting to create them. Most automakers prefer to wait for innovative models to actually succeed and then release competitors of their own. But being that many is precisely what creates the problem with a path which looked so easy and safe to follow: since almost everyone prefers to “wait and imitate”, the only way for these cars to prosper is being better than those which came before it. But it’s not hard to conclude that not all of them get a successful interpretation of that.

Ford Escort China

Isn’t it annoying when a movie gets an unnecessary sequel? There are times when extending the use of a successful nameplate is very interesting, indeed, but each case needs to be analyzed by itself. Since some stories were already ended in the original film, and others were designed precisely not to have an explicit end, insisting on producing follow-ups results on simply attaching a famous name to a whole different thing. And what does any of this have to do with this article’s car? Think of it as a four-wheeled version of Basic Instinct… 2.

Toyota Levin

Events like international car shows are important in many ways, but two of them are particularly interesting. The most obvious is being an opportunity for showing what has this industry done in the recent months and, specially, what can be expected from it in the next few years. The other is that everything from the previous phrase is done both for the global industry and for the regional branch whose country is hosting the event. The reason why this article’s car has taken so much attention in Beijing is an example of how different those two can be.

Peugeot 408 2

Automotive and fashion worlds are used to coincide in a considerable number of characteristics. One of them is having very short “attention spans”, when it comes to new things: getting attention is almost as easy as losing it shortly after. Minivans, for instance, took the spotlights from the station wagons in the 1990s and now have lost them to crossovers. It is a cruel rule, indeed, but it’s interesting to observe that there’s a particular category which has always been a very strong exception to it. Peugeot’s Chinese release is its latest representative.

Volkswagen Touareg 2015

Touareg's very first generation intended to compete with names like BMW X5 or Mercedes-Benz GL, not to mention siblings Audi Q7 and Porsche Cayenne. It had what it takes in pretty much everything that was required, such as overall quality, powertrain, refinement… everything but one of the most important qualities of any successful luxury car: a prestigious automaker. Time, therefore, ended teaching Volkswagen that its very first SUV’s commercial success was lying on nothing but lower expectations. This facelift is the latest proof of how right that was.

Citroën DS 6WR

Have you noticed that most luxury automakers name their concoctions with alphanumeric codes? Acura, Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Lexus, Lincoln, Mercedes-Benz… And even those which stick to pronounceable words haven’t changed their portfolio in years (or did you stop seeing Cherokee, Corolla or Golf?). All this converges to the unspoken rule that if you can’t pull off a “perfect” word, it’s much better to not even try. When we remember what PSA has started to fight for in the past few years, it’s very easy to conclude what would be the best solution for it.

Lexus NX

Lexus’ plans for being as respected as German and English automakers among premium buyers will take some time to show clear signs of success or failure, but there would be no doubts about these results if they only regarded the efforts it’s been putting into this. Its latest crossover, for instance, had to be way more eye-catching than pretty much everything Toyota has showed in the past few years, but also avoid looking like a security robot from Robocop – like its own conceptual version did. This article will show you what the Japanese came up with.

Beijing Auto Show 2014

You’re about to read another special article of this blog. This one is dedicated to the latest edition of the Chinese event, which is also called Auto China and will be open for the public from April 21st to April 29th. This article will be regularly updated with short introductions about some of the cars exposed there organized by automaker, along with links for those which received their own full articles at this blog. All the involved articles will include the “Beijing 2014” tag.