FRANKFURT MOTOR SHOW: The misses

Not every car unveiled at Frankfurt was a paragon of design or performance… There were (nearly) as many misses as hits… Here’s the cars, we reckon were far from stars…

BMW Concept X7 iPerformance
Every now and then a brand (usually Chinese) gives us a good giggle by shamelessly ripping off an established car-maker's popular design.

Now it seems BMW is following in the tyre tracks of its eastern rivals by getting into the parody business and creating a poor imitation of not one of its rivals, but itself.

If that sounds confusing, witness the astonishing Concept X7 iPerformance -- an appalling execution of BMW's current design language that's so bad it looks more like a Beijing bodge-job.

Worse still, unlike a fake Chinese Roller or Porsche, the XXL BMW is no laughing matter and is one of those rare cars that actually looks worse in the flesh than it does in pictures.

It's understandable that the Bavarian design team were aiming for something 'imposing' think: Range Rover) but there's a fine line between imposing and vulgar. With the X7 BMW has strayed firmly into the latter.

BMW design boss Adrian van Hooydonk has elegantly incorporated the modern, reinterpreted take on the car-maker's legendary 'kidney grill' on numerous designs (most recently on the elegant Z4 to some success but here it verges on the ridiculous.

It wouldn't be so bad if the X7 wasn't so huge but measuring in at half a metre longer than an X5, the BMW uber-SUV is a colossal mistake.

It's almost certain, but we hope it will be destined for production, we hope van Hooydonk has already ordered a complete redesign. Right now, the X7 is the ugliest BMW since the Bangle'd 7 Series.

Mercedes-Benz Concept EQA
Daimler used the 2017 Frankfurt motor show to make the exiting announcement it had begun its $15b investment to launch ten ground-breaking battery powered vehicles by 2022.

That's an awful lot of cash and, for the GDP of Senegal, you might expect Mercedes-Benz to celebrate by unleashing a stunning piece of automotive art. But it hasn't, it's brought out the bland.

We shouldn't be surprised. The two-door electric hatch, after all, follows on from the equally unambitious, Generation EQ.

It's not that the EQA is a rolling horror show (it features clean lines, plenty of pleasing curves and a novel pulsing screen where you'd normally find a petrol and diesel car's grille) but it's all so conventional.

The designers haven't tried to reinvent the automobile or take advantage of the more flexible nature a pure-electric powertrain affords. In fact, if you told us that this was simply the all-new replacement for a typical petrol or diesel-powered A Class we'd believe you.

For all the billion-dollar bravado, we expected and hoped for more.

Receiving nothing more than a lacklustre reworking of the current car, the 2018 Prado gets a more sculpted bonnet, new fenders and a couple of new headlamps and that's your lot. In the car industry terms, the facelift probably amounted to the loose change Toyota found down the back of its couch.

The gawky proportions carry over unchanged. It's not that it's been a botch-job, some will even appreciate the link with the (older still) 200 Series LandCruiser it's just all a bit disappointing. Don't we deserve more than a cynical facelift?

Borward Isabella
Borgward's revival hasn't exactly made much of an impact in the hearts and minds of Australian car enthusiasts. It doesn't help the Sino-German brand still hasn't made a right-hand drive model…

But even if it did, do we really need another bland, generic SUV?

Last year though, things got more interesting when the reborn brand poached MINI's former design boss Anders Warming from right under the nose of the BMW Group. The Danish designer was rated highly by his former employer (think current 5 and 6 Series and last Z4) so with the move, many within the industry tipped Warming to inject some style so desperately needed by Borgward.

They were wrong.

Borrowing its name from the handsome small Borgward of the 1950s, the Isabella coupe concept is claimed to be a pure styling model, a hint of what's to come. But confusing aero elements, weird shapes and a pair of hopeless sliding doors (and even the Alpine A110 nose) meant the result was one of the least cohesive designs of the show.

There's zero chance of the crazy coupe ever heading for production. Just as well because if it did, Borgward would certainly have to kiss goodbye to its ambitious plans to deliver 800,000 cars by 2020 (and be selling 1.6m annually by 2025).

Instead of making us excited about its new direction, the Isabella concept made us worried for the reborn brand -- and Warming.

Thunder Power SUV
Italian studio Zagato is world renowned for jaw-dropping creations. Therefore, it was an obvious choice of designer for Taiwanese start-up, Thunder Power, when readying a rival to the Tesla Model S.

Note that we wrote "jaw-dropping" and not necessarily "beautiful"… Because as well as rolling out breathtakingly gorgeous creations like the 1930s Alfa Romeo 8C, the Milan-based styling house has also designed cars like the SZ, a car so ugly it was affectionately named 'Il Mostro' (the monster).

Unfortunately for Thunder Power, Zagato must have had a monstrous off day back in 2015 when it penned the Sedan, as it bordered on being a styling atrocity. Fast forward to 2017 and, instead of ditching the horrific swoopy styling, the brand has not only embraced Zagato’s oval-obsession but spun-off an SUV.

Said to have been inspired by a pebble (of all things), Thunder Power’s SUV isn't quite as offensive as the Sedan, but that's not saying much.

Perhaps most amazingly, the Sedan has been confirmed to go on sale in 2019, while the SUV will arrive a year later in 2020.