Paris International Auto Show 2014: CNET's editors choose their favorites

[MUSIC] Hi everybody. Welcome to Paris, France. My name is Tim Stevens. Hi, I'm Antuan Goodwin. And I'm Wayne Cunningham. And we are standing in the Peugeot booth, which is appropriately right next to the Citroen booth, which is next to the Renault booth, which is next to the Ford. booth And Nissan and Volvo and everybody else is here So a mix of cultures in the wonderful Paris auto show which is kind of winding down. We've been touring the show floor for the past day and a half and we thought we'd take a little time to talk about our favorites, the beautiful cars we've seen the beautiful concepts, some of the new technologies that we've seen. Antoine why don't we kick things off with you? What would you say would be your highlight car of this 2014 show? hm. Well you guys know that I'm a huge Miata fanboy. So the fact that the fourth generation Miata was here got me excited. But there's not a lot of details about that car. Yeah we learned a little bit. Right? Little bit but more questions than answers at this point. So the car that I'm most excited about the show is actually. The Honda Civic Type-R concept. That's actually reignited my inner Honda fan boy. I was a Honda fan boy before I was a Miata fan boy. They've been kind of dropping the ball lately with the Civic. Yeah, this car is pretty awesome. It's got the wide-bodied kit. It's based on the Civic hatchback that they have over here in Europe. And it's got a turbo charged IV-tech engine that puts out about 278 horse power. Wow. It's got front-wheel drive like every other Civic. But this is also the first Civic Type-R that I've ever seen. Oh, that has an adaptive suspension. So you'll be able to set this thing up to be track ready. You'll hit one big read R button on the dashboard and that's gonna set your engine off, it's gonna put your suspension at its stiffest and just have you ready to hit the track. And they wanna be the world's fastest. Front wheel drive car around the [UNKNOWN]. They got a pretty good shot I think. Do they talk about differential technology at all? They didn't talk about any differential technology, but I'd imagine that there'd be some sort of limited flip. And wouldn't be the first time that they've used that on a type-R. And any, any hope of a production version that's kinda happening? Well this is, you know, there's. How Honda does is they start showing these more and more thinly veiled concepts. And you know this is pretty close, I think as far as like the engine and suspension technology goes, to being ready to go. The actual design of it though, is still very conceptivy, they got these really sort of LED sort of headlights. Probably too wide body for the road, but I think it's getting there, and I think we'll see sometime, something post-production maybe next year. Awesome. That'll be great for, for Honda fans, I know there are still quite a few left out there. Yeah, I'll just be really sad when it doesn't come to America. [LAUGH] Wayne, what do you think? What's your favorite of the show. Well, [UNKNOWN]. [LAUGH] Okay. How much do they run in overdrive. Depends on what they're in. In one case, they're in a Volvo XC90, which could be pretty powerful, pretty fast. Because it's got a specially formulated horsepower drive frame with a plug-in hybrid system. This is their new T8 twin engine system in the new XC90. But the system connects. Head uniform. It's pretty cool. It's actually a nine-inch portrait style touchscreen. You don't really see these in cars too often. Yeah, just Tesla's really the only other notable one I can think of. Tested the model last night. I got to, you know, use the demo unit here. It was responsive. It works fast. It seems intuitive. You got four tiles across the, the main home screen, which shows you navigation. And audio and stereo, stuff like that, and the phone, it seemed to work pretty well and there's also, Honda actually debuted a new Honda Connect head unit, only in, Europe for now. It's actually based on an Android operating system and there's a tegra three, Nvidia tegra three chip underneath, so pretty robust hardware. And that looks like it'd have a lot of potential as well, because with the [UNKNOWN] operating system you can install a bunch of apps on there. Yeah. Now Honda is going to curate those apps so you can't, you know, put pointy birds or whatever the latest game is on there, but Pointy pigs, I think. Yeah, you get that kind of stuff. But actually for cars, what really kinda won me over is the Citroen DS 3 series. I know that's actually a car that's been out for a while. [INAUDIBLE] kind of highlighting their DS brand, which they're breaking out as a separate brand, with a new concept car here and some, some interesting DS, there's actually one of the DS3 rally cars here, DS Divine concept, they call it, is based on the DS3. A really cool looking little type hatchback with kind of a diamond pattern all over the place. Mm. [INAUDIBLE]. Like hidden in the headlights and the tail lights and the back end. And actually the back end has jus a really cool like uber treatment that looks a little bit like dinosaur too. Yeah it is a very interesting car with a kind of aggressive masculine diamond leuvers in the back but yet a interior that's festooned with gemstones it's a bit of an odd mix. Yes it's very curvaceous on the inside. Lot's of fabrics that are kind of wrapped around and not a lot of hard edges. On the inside, but it's kind of interesting to see them kind of blend something so curvy and so sharp at the same time. All right, so we've got [INAUDIBLE] we've got Honda Civic Type R, now what's your favorite? I'm going to go with probably the longest named concept car at the show, the Lamborghini Asterion. LPI 910-4 did I get that right? You got it right. All right. This is the Lamborghini 910 horse power hybrid car with a V-10 in the back, electric motors up front. All wheel drive of course as you would expect from a Lamborghini which is. All well and good but I really like the styling it makes me think of the Mirra and I've been wanting them to bring the Mirra back for a long time. Now it's not exactly a throwback design but it's a little bit more classical styling than their kind of hard edged aggro cars they've been making of late. I don't really know what's going on with [UNKNOWN]. I looked at the pictures of that car and for example on the floor here. Now the curves just do not go with that recent Lamborghini styling. No, I know exactly where they got the look of this car from and it's the Lamborghini Urus concept that debuted in Beijing a couple years ago, their SUV. Mm. If you take that concept and smush it down to,like, a Saloon, that's pretty much what this car is with a hyper power. It is. And they, they've said that, they're gonna make it a more casual driving car. Mm-hm. So, not quite so extreme. Taller seating position. Yeah. A lot more luxury inside. It is. It's, lovely looking car. I do hope they make it. I certainly won't be able to afford it if they ever do. They, they didn't really give any indications of whether or not they will, you know, fingers crossed. I don't know. In terms of the, the scale of probably gonna make it to totally not gonna make it I. Put it somewhere in the middle. I'd say the last care that, well, the second to last car they debuted here in France was the Vivino. And they only made three of those. So they've gotta make at least one or two of them. So, yeah, they're gonna make it. This is a sort of a GT style car. And that's not really something they have in the line up right now. That's true. It's a hole that they could definitely fill. Yeah, before they even put an SUV out. Right. Another car to come by the new Mercedes AMG-GT. It's kind of a soft replacement for the SLS, which is now after a million special editions not longer in production. Mm-hm. Rather more affordable, but still not affordable enough. They did put a price of 124,900 Euros. Which is, not cheap. But it is significantly cheaper than the SLS wa, used to be. Different power train. Interesting. A, a V8 with dual turbochargers mounted within the V which is a curious thing. Usually, you know, you try to move the turbos away, to, to maximize cooling and that sort of thing. Their putting them right in the middle. They say that the heat is actually good for the turbos. Which I think is an interesting move. Yeah, when they mentioned this car, when they announced it a couple of weeks ago before showing it here at the show, you know, they pointed out that, that, this is the first time they use that high inside V. And the internet quickly jumped down our throats and say, wait a minute, BMW's been doing this with their twin turbos for a long time. And they have. I agree. It's not really a new technology, but it is a little bit. Newer. Interesting for their package. [INAUDIBLE] Mm-hm. And since see, Mercedes going with a dual [INAUDIBLE] set up at all, I mean, we've seen bigger, bigger, bigger engines and super chargers and things like that, and now we get dual turbo V8, I think it's gonna be, it's gonna be fun to drive I hope. I think it's a good looking car but I think without the gull wings of the SLS it loses a little bit of. Yeah. The exorcism/. And it does look a lot like a nine, 11. From the rear, it looks exactly like a 911. I mean, a lot of people are gonna be cross-shopping it with a 911 too, it is, obviously starts at a higher price, but if you're looking at maybe, like a Turbo S, or something like that, but you don't want a low drive, I think people will be cross-shopping the two. So, I'll be curious to see what the sales figures look like. Well, 124 is almost affordable compared to the previous SLS, Right. Certainly there's. A lot of people in that band, you might see these cars around actually on the street, whereas an SLS, seeing one on the street is like a once in a lifetime experience. Yeah, I'm already on the waiting list for this one. You are? [LAUGH] l And the Lamborghini too? Wow, Antoine, man. Any other cars that caught your eye before we wrap things up here [CROSSTALK] I just gotta mention the Jaguar XE was pretty interesting as far as the car that you'll probably see a lot of them around. This looks like the competitor to BMW's. It would be a 3 Series Audi midsize sedan, I, I think it will be an entry point for Jaguar for a lot of people. Not a super exciting car except for the fact that it does look like a pretty nice Jag. Yeah if that's the space that Jaguar really needs to be in. They were actually on a pretty good sort of like. Push as far as like getting some really interesting cars out to the market so being able to get people in at a lower price-point defiantly gonna kinda push up their cache up a little Alright, I think that will wrap things up for us here on the show floor of the Paris Auto Show. Hope you've enjoyed our coverage. Thanks again for watching. [MUSIC]