Alongside those will be an exciting mix of concept vehicles, some previewing a near-future production car and others pure flights of fancy, outlets for the carmakers’ designers’ creativity.
One of the most alluring we’ve seen so far is this, the Opel STX concept.
Cool car, but what’s with the name?
STX is short for Sports Tourer eXperimental (blame Opel for that one, not us), making it clear that we’re to see this show car as an exploration of the design direction estate cars could take under Opel stewardship.
Sports Tourer is the brand’s marketing name for such cars – e.g. the current Asta Sports Tourer.
It doesn’t look much like an Astra estate…
Come back to us in a couple of decades and see if that statement still rings true, as Opel says the STX shows the marque’s new design direction and, while we don’t expect a production version of this vehicle to appear in your local Opel showroom any time soon, some of its details might, as alluded to in the press release, where Opel admitted that the STX “already contains elements of future Opel models.”
Is the Opel ‘Vizor’ front a thing of the past?
Not quite, though the STX previews a dramatic evolution of the smooth front-end appearance used on current Opels.
Gone is the full-width black strip, in its place a simpler design that allows the lighting to appear through slots of varying width in a single smooth surface spanning the front of the car.
At its centre is a large, illuminated Opel logo while thin vertical lines of light above and below it continue the compass-like motif of existing models.
The lower half points to a bicolour aerodynamic splitter, accented in blue, while the upper line is truncated by the striking sculpting of the bonnet. This carries Opel’s characteristic crease along its length, though the front plunges dramatically.
Either side of that are bulging wheelarches, housing large 22-inch, three-spoke alloy wheels, with dinky little cameras in place of door mirrors behind and indeed no visible door handles anywhere on the car.
A blue-and-black finish is applied to the side sills, too, while the rear arches protrude even more obviously than the fronts.
The side glass is barely interrupted by the door openings and it continues into the chunky C-pillar at the back of the car and over the V-shaped roof, echoing the style of the front lights, where sections of glass can be seen through slots in the bodywork.
That roof gently falls towards the back of the car, giving the STX more of a coupe look than that of a traditional estate. There you’ll find a single curve defining the whole back of the vehicle, surely taking inspiration from cars such as the Ferrari 250 GT SWB ‘Breadvan’ of the 1960s.
Opel will tell you it’s about making space for luggage within while enhancing the aerodynamics in the name of both efficiency and stability at high speeds.
Scroll through the gallery and you’ll discover one of the STX’s secrets, as the rear diffusor moves, as do large vertical elements hidden either side of the back bumper – just like those on the latest Porsche Cayenne Electric.
The Opel compass motif is repeated back there, too, with thin red lines at the top and bottom of the car and a full-width lightbar with the Opel wordmark at its centre.
Tasty, does it have the performance to match?
Opel hasn’t said much about that as, let’s face it, it’s largely theoretical. Apparently, it has an “innovative electrical architecture” including all-wheel drive, but the only stat we have is its top speed – 200km/h.
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