Visiting the world’s biggest auto show

The Airbus A340 touched down at Heathrow at around 6:15am on a Sunday and within 45 minutes I was being whisked by Audi S3 to Silverstone, home of the British Racing Drivers Club and former home of the British Grand Prix.
The attraction was the European Le Mans Series final round, which attracts sports prototypes and GT racers, but sadly on this occasion, neither the diesel Audis nor the Peugeots were present.
Nonetheless, I was glad of the chance to spend time at a venue, which I had not visited since 1988. There sure has been a lot of development work within the circuit environs and in fact, to the circuit design itself, but in the time it takes for a 1000 kilometer race to fly by, there are plenty of opportunities to discover the tatty edges that apparently caused Bernie Ecclestone to remove the history-laden track from the F1 roster.
While a lot of paving work has been undertaken, there are still acres of rough surfaces to traverse and the grandstands are mostly temporary jobs, some of which are so far from the track that spectators would be well-advised to bring powerful telescopes with them!
In truth, it is not much different from parts of Spa Francorchamps, but the latter offers a majestic circuit and surroundings which the rather bleak and wind swept Silverstone circuit cannot hope to match.
There is no denying though, the appeal of the sweeping curves at Beckett’s, which are just meters from the pedestrian guard rail.
While you expect the out-and-out racing prototypes to be blisteringly quick through such curves, you would be dumbfounded to observe the grip generated by relatively mildly modifed road cars such as the Porsche 911 GT3 RSR and the Ferrari 430GT.
Frankfurt ahoy: The return journey to London through the lovely Thames Valley back roads saw me in “noddy” mode as the effects of a relatively sleepless night in the air took their toll.
In fact, there was nothing closer to my mind than dreamland when we got back to base. Next day, we were back at Heathrow again to board a Lufthansa A321 for Frankfurt. I secured two seats as far back as February for the princely sum, believe it or not, of £3 each, return!
It is impossible not to notice that seats in aircraft deployed on regional flights tend to be rather close together, but that was of little import as we touched down a mere 80 minutes later on a nasty, rainswept day.
Immigration was a breeze as you might expect on a windy day, and it was also not too hard to find the station hidden in the bowels of one of Europe’s busiest airports. A mere three Euros and 10 minutes later, we found ourselves at the Hauptbahnhof in central Frankfurt, and again thanks to very early bookings, our hotel was a mere 300 meters distant unlike two years ago when we were 20 kilometers away.
A brisk early Tuesday morning  walk of some 10 minutes saw us at the vast Frankfurt fairgrounds and at the back of an unnecessarily long queue to confirm press accreditation. 
For unknown reasons, the organisers had elected to reduce the number of check-in desks despite the fact that some 10 000 journalists (imagine this lot in Zimbabwe!) were present to view and report on the activities of no fewer than 781 exhibitors displaying exactly 100 world premieres alongside more familiar fare.  Incidentally, no fewer than 11 000 school children are scheduled to visit the expo.
This show is by some margin the world’s numero uno and the vast expanse of the display halls is testament to that.
A comfortable pair of shoes is a must and a measure of discipline needs to be exercised to cut down on the victual and liquid offerings present at the stands of the domestic producers in particular.
Given the prevailing state of the global economy, it could be said that a measure of confidence is returning to the motor industry, but it was evident that downstream suppliers were less abundant than in prior years.
If you were blindfolded and led into the huge Hall 3, you would be astonished when your vision was restored to find the entire and simply massive exhibition space occupied by products solely from the ever-burgeoning VW empire.
I simply loved the new R-Line versions of the Golf GTI and Scirocco Coup, which are equipped with a revised 2.0 litre Turbo motor producing 270 hp and enough thrust to despatch the 100 km/h dash in around 5,5 seconds. And the new Polo, while looking rather too much like its big brother Golf, sported a standard of interior fitments that belonged in the luxury class not too long ago.
Sadly, the half-expected RS3 and RS5 rocketships were not on the Audi stand, but the brand new 1.2 TFSI engine fitted to an A3 points the way to the increased employment of smaller engines, which produce more power and torque than “old-fashioned motors” of 50 percent greater capacity.  
There was also clear evidence of increased investment in hybrids and in reduced emissions from traditional power sources at whichever stand you cared to visit.