2018 Geneva Motor Show preview: One of the best shows in years

Khodrocar - The Geneva Motor Show is a big deal. It's the first major European show on the calendar each year, so we always expect to see a healthy turnout of new and interesting production cars and concepts. That said, 2018 promises to be a banner year even by Geneva standards.

We'll have plenty of boots on the ground to cover all of the hot Geneva news. Live coverage starts Monday evening with some offsite events, with the show's press days kicking off on Tuesday. Here's what to look for.

We're expecting to finally lay eyes on the next-generation BMW Z4 at the show this year. This car is part of an agreement between the Bavarian brand and Toyota to co-develop sports cars -- you'll see it on the Toyota stand as some sort of Supra-shaped wonder. The Z4 is most likely to come with the standard array of BMW powertrain options in four and six-cylinder flavors and we're also expecting the car to have a cloth top instead of the current Z's folding hardtop. We also know that the X4 will be making its debut in Geneva, adding to BMW's lineup of sport utility coupes.

Hyundai has a lot going on at Geneva this year with the debut of its all-new Santa Fe crossover, which packs a surprisingly aggressive design with some new powertrain options, including a diesel and a hybrid. The Hyundai Nexo fuel cell vehicle (that we drove to CES earlier this year) will be making its European debut as well.

We're also looking forward to seeing a battery-electric version of Hyundai's new Kona crossover. The electric Kona will supposedly do 300 miles on a single charge, but we don't know how that figure was calculated. 

Kia is giving its European-designed and manufactured Ceed (née cee'd, with an apostrophe for some reason) a world debut at Geneva. The Ceed is huge for the company and makes up a sizeable chunk of its sales outside the US. We're also expecting to see the new K900, which we no longer get in the US, apart from its chassis, which underpins the Stinger.

Lexus is debuting a new crossover. Surprised? You shouldn't be. The UX is based on a concept we saw at Paris in 2016 and likely will share Toyota's TNGA platform, on which everything from the Prius to the new Avalon is built. Toyota has kept drivetrain choices secret for now but we'd put our money on there being four-cylinder gasoline and hybrid electric models in there somewhere.

Mercedes is pulling out all the stops this year. In addition to mercilessly teasing us with photos of its forthcoming AMG GT Coupe (which has four doors, despite the coupe designation), it promises to unveil its very first series-production battery electric vehicle.

We're also going to get to feast our peepers on the first AMG version of the hot new G-Class that debuted in Detroit in January. The new G63 will have AMG's now-ubiquitous twin-turbo V8 that will, in this trim, produce 577 horsepower and be bolted to a nine-speed automatic transmission.

The bread-and-butter C-Class is getting a facelift and the C43 version gets a mild 23 horsepower bump along with a bigger COMAND screen. We're also looking forward to a new Maybach S-Class that once again looks more like its own sub brand and not just an S650 with extra badges.

Lastly, we get to see the production version of the new A-Class which we'll be getting -- as a sedan.

SUPRA! Well, probably. We're definitely getting a racing prototype version of something Supra-esque, though Toyota has kept mum beyond that. The expected car is being built in partnership with BMW and will be a Toyota in name only, with BMW running gear throughout. The Toyota version will be a hardtop while the BMW version is a convertible. 

Source: CNET