Glamour meets Eco at the film industry annual event
After last weekend's excess of motorsport and beer at the Nurburgring 24 hours I headed down to the 65th Cannes Film festival. Yes, I know it's a hard life, but there was a reason for this. Cannes is one of the largest trade shows for the film industry, and my Wife, who is a film producer, was helping to promote an independent movie she is working on. While she was busy in the International Film Village I took the opportunity to do some car spotting.
At the best of times, Cannes is a town to show off your wealth, and the film festival is no exception with many of the obvious supercars and limousines including a couple of examples of the new Ferrari 458 Spider. This year there was a certain eco theme too with even the African delegates in £3,000 suits using the 400 Hybrid version of the Mercedes S class rather than the 600 V12 gas guzzler. The most notable eco car was the Fisker Karma on permanent display outside the Carlton Hotel, with another example regularly cruising the Coisette. I've not seen a Karma in the flesh before and it is certainly a very attractive and imposing car. On looks alone is deserves to succeed regardless of the enviromental credentials from its range extender hybrid powerplant.
Renault, one of official car suppliers to the festival, were keen on showing off their EVs to with examples of the Fluence and the intriguing Twizy all sporting the offical markings of the festival. The Twizys, often driven by attractive young women I might add, were everywhere in Cannes, but as has already been reported elsewhere, it is the ideal holiday resort vehicle.
Audi had the monopoly on the official limousines of the show with fleets of A8s being used to ferry the A list celebrities around. These were backed up by quite a number of liveried up AMG Mercedes, including a number wrapped in gold chrome which were the talk of the town. I didn't manage to grab a picture of one of these but instead I did spot this matte orange G55. As it was on Kuwait registration plates I assume the owner probably wasn't too bothered about the parking ticket they had collected.
Not part of the official cars a Mercedes Mclaren SLR caught my attention parked rather haphazardly in the port car park. When new I didn't much care for the SLR, but as examples are now for sale for less than the price of its defacto replacement the SLS, it has become somewhat more appealing. As this one was on standard rims it even seemed fairly subtle.
A rather more up to date supercar was the white Lamborghini Aventador (apologies for the bad photo) parked on the key by the Super yachts. It's one of the most dramatic cars on the road but in Cannes it was getting very little attention.
All the supercars in Cannes get rather shown up by the yachts in the harbour, and it would take a full £125 million win on the Euro millions to realistically be able to afford to own and run this Mangusta 130.
Looking surprisingly understated was this Rolls Royce Ghost sitting on standard rims. To be honest the Ghost has mostly passed under my radar over the last couple of years. With 563bhp the Ghost is something of a sleeper performance saloon, and as they get older I wonder if they will be appreciated in the same way as a Bentley Turbo R is today. The Ghost is certainly better looking than it's Bentley rival the Mulsanne.
If the Ghost was a sleeper the same could not be said for this example of its big brother the Phantom. With two tone paint and rims that were at least 24" in diameter, this Phantom could do nothing but attract attention.
We actually stayed outside of Cannes in the pretty village of Mougins. It was here that I spotted the coolest car of the trip; a Mercedes 280SL Pagoda. They say that fashion changes but taste never goes out of style. The Pagoda has certainly never gone out of style and this British registered right hand drive example looked every inch the perfect car to cruise the Riviera.
