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6th December 2005 - Event Report: Bologna Motorshow (for Flat 2 The Mat Magazine)

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Event: Bologna Motorshow, Italy

Dates: Friday 2nd to Sunday 11th December 2005

Founded in 1976 the Bologna Motorshow celebrated its 30th anniversary this year. Over the decades the event has grown into one of the worlds premiere Motorshows on a par with Geneva, Essen and Frankfurt. Last years show heralded well over a million visitors with 106 new cars on display and this year promised to be every bit as good.

To give you an idea of how big the show is the event management claim to employ almost 2,000 people in the organisation department and there are 462 exhibitors from 19 countries across the world. Covered display areas took up 140,000sqm of space and outdoor action took up 90,000sqm totalling a staggering 230,000sqm. With seating space for 55,000 people across the 10 outdoor tracks you should now be able to grasp how large the show is! Over nine days people from all over the world will attend the "Fiera" to see what inventions and ideas the car manufacturers have to offer. The red blooded Italians have a great deal of passion and enthusiasm for their cars and this was clear to see in the attendance and the organisation.

The Motorshow was proud to present world exclusives which included the Ferrari Fxx, the Fiat Panda SUV, the Fiat Sedici, the Hyundai Tucson, Volvo S40 D5, Volvo V50 D5 and the Vauxhall Meriva OPC 2006. A few more obscure car manufacturers such as Great Wall Motors, Ssangyong, Mahindra and Tata were on display to launch their new models. Unlike other motor shows the organisers placed all the manufacturers into various halls going by their nationality. Therefore the Italians marques (Fiat, Ferrari, Alfa Romeo and Maserati etc) would all be in the same hall together like the Japanese (Subaru and Mitsubishi etc) Other major manufacturers who played a part in the show included Alfa Romeo, Audi, Bentley, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Citroen, Corvette, Dodge, Honda, Hyundai, Isuzu, Jaguar. Kia, Lamborghini, Lexus, Mazda, Mercedes, Nissan, Opel, Porsche, Sabb, Seat, Skoda, Smart, Suzuki, Toyota and VW.

Outside the Lonsdale Arena proved to be the heart of the show. It is the only show I have ever seen where the organisers change the track during the event to suit the different activities going on there. Not only do they do it once but they change it twice to cater for three different activities! (Rally, race and freestyle) With diggers and cranes at the ready the super slick operation takes little time to transform from the Rally Super Special to the motorbike stunt show for example. 400 trucks deal with 20,000 tyres and 5,000 cubic metres of earth! Impressed? I certainly was. Big names of the car and motorbike world who made an appearance in the arena included Valentino Rossi, Gigi Galli, Marco Melandri, Max Biaggi, Troy Bayliss, Mark Higgins, Nicolas Bernardi, and Kenny Bartram. Nelson Piquet Junior, fresh from the Race of Champions in Paris, also made an appearance driving the powerful one seater Lola B02/50. A popular part of the live action is the motorbike freestyle team who perform some astonishing stunts and back flips amazingly high in the sky. Some results from the arena include the Superstars Classic Final which was won by A Battaglin in his Jaguar S Type R. The Historic Challenge Scuderia was won by D Guagliardo in his Porsche 911. He narrowly pipped S Riolo his similar Porsche by 0.5 of a second to take the win. As well as the main Lonsdale arena there were approximately nine other smaller arenas were manufacturers could show off their cars capabilities. Land Rover had set up a huge off road course for their vehicles to drive around. With steep climbs, rocky terrain and near impossible angles and slopes to navigate around this was a show well worth watching. At times you thought there was no way the car was going to navigate safely through its next task but sure enough it managed to without a problem.

Back inside the show the stunning Maybach Excelero could be found but, compared to its grandstand presentation at Essen, it look strangely out of place mixed in with other cars. It was simply to easy to miss and a car of this quality and beauty deserves to take centre stage at every motorshow! There was a motorsport zone with a selection of the latest F1 and WRC cars. One display had the 2006 Focus WRC and 2005 Peugeot 307cc WRC along with a Ferrari and Renault F1 car bringing together a rainbow of colours and making the stand really jump out.

The only down side to this show was the parking facilities. Many obscure parking areas were based so far away you needed to get a shuttle bus over to the event. With poor sign posting around the event to make you aware of these facilities this led to traffic congestion. At €23 it is also one of the most expensive events to get into. But that is just being very fussy. All is forgiven straight away when you can easily spend all day soaking up the electric atmosphere and getting lost in the labyrinth of show halls.

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