A tour of a roadshow

As you would expect the premium manufacturers like Mercedes and Volvo are here offering their new cars for sale. And new posh makers such as Infiniti are in evidence too with their thinly disguised Lexus. Prices in excess of £40K are the norm around here.

MotorExpo is therefore gently grotesque, though it's easy to be seduced by the eye-candy sitting pretty in the shopping mall foyers. The new Alfa Romeo 8C Spyder is a very good looking car, though somehow it looks underpowered, even standing still.

It's nice to see a Tesla Roadster in the flesh too, somehow a less flyweight-looking Elise with that nice new electric car technology sitting under the bonnet.

The friendly lady who we didn't tell we were from buyacar when we tested the Mitsubishi iMiEV last week is there in the foyer too, requiring an awkward acknowledgement and a sharpish exit from the building.

Somehow I find myself gravitating to the BMWs littered around the grassy area outside, chatting to a girl from BMW about the new 5-Series saloon.

What I say to her is, I'm always surprised with Beemers these days quite how big they've got. Even the new 5-Series looks like a limousine (it turns it actually rides on the same platform as the 7-Series so is remarkably long).

I say, For me the ideal BMW is the E30 M3 model, light and driver-focussed, lots of punch without the hyperbole.

Is this current obesity your company pandering to the US market?

The girl from BMW doesn't know. She can only suggest that, as consumers, we require ever increasing space these days.

Maybe people need this to compensate for the lack of space we have around the house, on the tube. And people don't seem to realise that the more space they have in their car the less space they have on the road.

Looking around the stall, it's a fair reflection of the way the market works today, that BMW are covering all their bases.

The girl from BMW tells me about the new 3-Series EcoDynamics, a car with all the features you'd expect of an electric car but without any of the electrics. Weird. One wonders why you?d fit regenerative braking technology to a car without a driving battery to recharge.

The car will sell however, will appeal because it offers the headline features of green cars which appeals to the consumer, regardless of the true green efficacy in question.

Green cars are basically going to sell in the end because they are cheaper cars, more fuel efficient cars and are cheaper to run, They will also have higher residuals and are looked on kindly by the government who tax you less.

We can see green vehicles and their minority inclusion as a part of a continuing trend towards bigger vehicles as a cynical effort on the part of manufacturers to tap into a green consumer consciousness. Indeed, as the woman from BMW indicated, manufacturers just respond to what the market demands rather than there being any ideological policy at work behind the design strategy.

But in the heart of London's financial district, a car that makes economic sense is surely the car to have. Amongst the overblown cars here it?s the smaller ones which have that air of respectability about them. But it?s still the monsters which draw the crowds and the schoolboys and the bankers they turn into.