International motor shows are a time of immense excitement for the hardcore petrol heads of this world and attending them for yourself is the only way to soak up the frantic buzz.
Press conferences and unveilings happen within minutes of one another. No sooner have you seen a new wacky concept from one brand and you hear the booming dance music cranked up at the other end of the vast hall as the next car maker wheels out its latest wares.
There is of course the usual bun fight when it comes to jockeying for the best vantage point and let's not even get started on the other worldly levels of frustration induced by the lack of anything that could dare to call itself Wi-Fi. That aside, the buzz is often contagious, which is good because for me, motor shows can often be a source of disappointment.
The reason is that, throughout the year, we're often shown carefully cropped images of interesting and exciting concept cars that we're told will closely resemble a soon-to-be-announced production model. When Honda finally revealed its new Civic Type R, the cynic inside me was validated. Having seen the concept in Paris last year, I was genuinely very excited about it; it looked mental and promised some whopping performance. Leaving the performance aside for now, seeing the production car in Geneva was nothing short of disappointment. Those beautifully bulging lines and arches I saw in Paris were replaced by an angular looking body kit that looked like someone had made it in a shed, shortly before ram-raiding their local Halfords. It appeared to be wearing tiny wheels from a regular Civic model too. It all just looked wrong. Knowing Honda I'm sure it will be very good performer (so long as its F1 guys weren't involved...), but even the bold gauntlet-laying Nürburgring time was cast into doubt by a poor editing job that appeared to show two laps spliced together. Look it up on YouTube.
This is, however, just one example in a long line of cars that have shown great promise only to lead to disappointment. Car makers are hindered slightly by increasingly stringent safety regulations, especially where pedestrians are concerned, which has a limiting factor on design. That, however, doesn't mean they can't be bold. Lexus has shown with its new RX that big SUVs can still wear unique designs rather than the seemingly default boxy silhouette.
Reports that MINI is set to give the production green light to the sublime MINI Superleggera Vision concept, shown at last year's Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este, fill me with equal parts joy and fear as to it being ruined. Nobody wanted the MINI Roadster, remember, so if, and when, this does come into production form, my inner cynic is ready to be validated again. Hopefully I'll be proven wrong this time.
It's not all doom and gloom though. Every so often, a car maker pulls something simply bat-shit crazy out of the bag and says it is putting it into production. Look no further than the new Ford GT - a design so extreme that having seen it in the metal for myself, I don't think there's actually any way of toning it down. Bravo Ford, bravo.