The Essen Motor Show Report
Let’s do the general review first. Whatever Essen Messe does motorwise, it turns out in a very professional way. Only a very few display, mostly by smaller dealers, are tight. Most other displays are very bright and broad. It is very advantageous that the arrangements of displays are mostly the same year by year. Having grown custom with Essen Motor Show makes it easy to find one’s way through the exhibition. However, this year it all seemed to be a bit more quit than in previous years. The number of visitors expected is around 360,000 per year, the first weekend saw 126,000 enthusiasts visiting the fair. We are very excited what will happen to the Essen displays, be it Techno Classica or Motor Show when the scheduled reconstruction will be finished after 2016. The basement of hall 1 will disappear.

Ferrari-wise the presence of cars declines obviously years by year. This year only 15 Ferraris have been on display. It may be owed to the fact that Ferraris are not really projects for conversions anymore. Crazy studies like Sbarro showed them frequently are rare these days. Mansory, Hamann and Novitec seem to have moved to the big international Motorshows in Paris, Frankfurt and Geneva and dealers who offer classic Ferraris tend more to Retromobile or Techno Classica.

The “opener” to “our” Essen Motor Show is regularly displayed by Hankook. No difference this year. A very new 458 Speciale, # 204304, in Bianco Auvs with many golden accents was shown in Hall 10. Hall 3 is territory for the OEMs, the DTM and some major part suppliers. This year a Formula 1 display was the eye catcher with the well-known replica of a 246 F1, wearing S/N 0006 R2 and Michael Schumacher’s F310 B (#172) have been the Ferrari exhibits. Two GT sport car had been squeezed into a small corner of Hall 3 at ST Sportwagen. Both cars, F430 GT2 (#2468) and 458 GT2 (#2836) obviously raced in the Dutch Supercar Challenge.

Hall 1 at Essen Motor Show is the collecting basin for dealers of “normal” road cars. Heijstee Classics of Naarden had three cars on display, two of them represent the only unidentified cars of the event – a Red Dino and a Daytona conversion that was done by Brandoli. The third car was a Dino as well (#04486). Heijstee’s stand was shared by another Michael Goudsmit display of another Dino (#07962). To make the “Dutch corner” complete, Potomac showed # 32647, a 308 GTB Steel, for sale.

Mühlsberghof GmbH offered F430 Spider # 145544, 4839GT with its typical red painted Cavallino on the front grill completed a classic display.

A longer conversation was started by a 360 Modena at “Supersportwagen selber fahren”. The crew at the stand quoted that the car received a complete –inside out and technical- Challenge Stradale conversion by the Factory.

The final Ferraris have been on display with Capristo’s who showed an Italia Spider (#193308) and a Speciale (#200044). Both cars have been modified to SCC 500 Capristos.

A Slide Show will be available tomorrow.