Geneva Motor Show 2016: the latest news and most insane cars

Jaguar is trying to help Olympic skier Graham Bell become the world's fastest man on skis, the company announced at the Geneva Motor Show. Bell hopes to reach speeds upwards of 180 miles per hour next year, which would break the world downhill speed skiing record by more than 20 miles per hour.

Bell won't just be using gravity to generate that speed, though. First, he plans to have an all-wheel-drive Jaguar XE tow him to 100 miles per hour, an art known as "skijoring." (Seriously.) Once he passes 100 miles per hour, small jets on his ski suit will ignite to take him the rest of the way to a world record. Yes — Bell wants to literally jet ski.

The Geneva Motor Show this year was a return to form for one of the most indulgently excessive exhibitions of human engineering. Cheap oil has made huge engines trendy again, and the luxury sports coupes that dominated the Detroit Auto Show have now been joined by future classics like the Aston Martin DB11 and Bugatti Chiron. Lamborghini also had a car to show off that featured its most powerful engine ever built, though the Centenario is exclusive even by Lambo standards, with all 40 having already been sold ahead of the event. Join us for a quick look back at the highlights of Geneva 2016 before you dig into our StoryStream containing The Verge's full coverage of the best and baddest automobiles at the show.

Let's be honest, the Geneva Motor Show is a beauty contest above all else. None of the cars here move, very few are ever allowed to even make a sound, and the majority of press coverage is built around their appearance. This is why every new car here has to look new, and it's also why companies with no immediate novelty to announce are introducing special editions or fresh design options. BMW has chosen this grand Geneva event to give us our first in-person look at the Protonic Red BMW i8, and it looks stunning.

This week I've been kicking the tires of the finest, most exclusive, and most exotic cars at the Geneva Motor Show, and I've spotted two emerging trends: cheap oil is bringing huge gas guzzlers back into fashion, and Google's Android Auto is falling behind Apple's CarPlay. Android Auto isn't a complete absentee from the show, of course, but the headline-grabbing cars, the cream of Geneva's crop, have all gravitated toward Apple's solution and ignored Google's alternative.

Since last year, Hyundai has been trickling out news about the Ioniq — the hybrid it hopes can dethrone the Toyota Prius.

Now we've seen it in person at the Geneva Motor Show. The car is unique in the industry because it uses three different powertrains on one platform: hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and full electric.

The €2.4 million Bugatti Chiron will make money for Bugatti, and thus, parent company Volkswagen, according to Bugatti President Wolfgang Dürheimer during an interview with The Verge at the Geneva Motor Show today.

"We did our homework in every dimension," says Dürheimer. "This car over its lifetime, with 500 cars and a base price of € 2.4 million, is adding into the bottom line result of Bugatti and we are making money with this project."

The blood-red Italian sports car in front, the super expensive one that goes really fast, is a Lamborghini. In spite of being Ferrari's signature color, red is also a standard option from Lamborghini, the other Italian super sports car manufacturer with a glorious history and a penchant for marvellous aesthetics. Having been torn between Ferrari and Lamborghini at last year's Geneva Motor Show, today I've found my perfect combination of the two in the Ferrari-red Lamborghini Huracán. It's everything good and gorgeous about sports cars.

The epic Centenario was, of course, Lamborghini's star of the show, but there's something to be said for a good, basic, bright red Lambo. Join me, if you will, in celebrating the crimson beauty of one of humankind's most indulgent creations.

The Mazda Miata is an awesome little sports car. Perhaps the only way to make it better is to send it off to the espresso-filled engineers at Abarth to juice all the go-faster bits.

The result is the Abarth 124 Spider, a 170-horsepower, rear-wheel drive drop-top that should deliver the best of Italian style with a Miata-sourced interior and chassis. It uses the fantastic little 1.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder from the Fiat 500 Abarth (and the standard Fiat 124 Spider that was announced last year) and, lest the driving purists bang down the gates of Abarth's Turin HQ, it's available with a six-speed manual.

The Maserati Quattroporte is a large sports saloon that can accommodate and transport four people in sumptuous luxury. To do that, it needs a big and powerful V8 engine. You know what doesn't need a 4.7-liter V8? A motorcycle. But for Ludovic Lazareth, designer of the Lazareth LM847, need is not an important consideration. His new four-wheeled bike is literally built around Maseratti's Quattroporte engine, and the only reason for it is that he just liked the look of the engine. Just because you can, thinks this brazen Frenchman, absolutely means you should.

You might remember that Forza Motorsport 6 was announced at a car show — NAIAS in Detroit last January — and now, Microsoft's Turn 10 Studios is doing it again: it just announced that there's a new Forza game in the works, and the hyper-limited Lamborghini Centenario, announced in Geneva this week, will be the cover car. But this time around, Turn 10 isn't saying what that new Forza game is; it's saving that particular bit of news for June's E3, the year's biggest game show.

Presumably, this won't be Forza Motorsport 6: Apex, because that's not big enough of a deal to tease like this. The most obvious guess is a new Forza Horizon, the open-world companion to the original Forza Motorsport series. The original Horizon debuted on Xbox 360 in 2012, while Forza Horizon 2 launched in 2014. Typically, Turn 10 (and the UK's Playground Games, which has worked on the Horizon series) have alternated between Horizon and Motorsport releases in the past few years — and with last fall's Forza 6 release, that means it's time for Horizon 3.

The Bentley Mulsanne is perhaps the most elegant way to be chauffeured around, insulated from the hoi polloi. There's plenty of legroom, massaging seats, and curtains to close out the world and get some privacy, or perhaps just a nap on your way to an important business meeting.

But the back of the Mulsanne only has two seats. What if you have more than two people to haul around? Bentley's bespoke Mulliner division has you covered.

Gumpert might not have been a company many people heard of, and its exotic cars were even rarer to see in person, but it offers a proud heritage of road-going race cars that the new Apollo is now building on. Revived from bankruptcy and rebranded to Apollo in 2015, the new company is staking its future on the Arrow hypercar that's been unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show this week. The Arrow is extreme both in performance and looks — as every hypercar must be — though it goes further than most with the number of fins, flares, and scoops in its exterior design. The wheel arches are more exaggerated than usual and the front comes to a sharp point, giving this car a profile that lives up to its name.

Oh, you shameless, unrepentant hedonists. Baubles of billionaires, playthings of playboys. You are the supercar, and in this age of environmental calamities and have-everythings and have-nots, you are indefensible.

Are you not our petrol-burning Kardashians? Should we be embarrassed by our obsession, our inability to look away? Should we try and quit you?

Are you in the market for a car that has charm, panache, old-school design, and zero emissions? Allow me to present the Morgan EV3. It's an all-electric version of the wonderful Morgan three-wheeler.

With a 20kWh lithium battery, the 64-horsepower, 1,100-pound trike can get from 0 to 60 in well under nine seconds, and can reach nearly 100 mph. In "eco" mode, Morgan says it's good for 150 miles, or 50 miles in the driver-focused "sport" mode — think faster acceleration, better throttle response, and much more fun.

You'd think after seeing the latest Bugatti, Lamborghini, and Koenigsegg have to offer I would be feeling jaded by this point, but Aston Martin's DB11 has me thrilled and excited all over again. Unlike the extraterrestrial supercars unveiled earlier in the morning, the DB11 is within reach for mortal Earthlings. It has four seats (albeit with negligible leg room at the back), a trunk that can fit two golf bags, and a comfortable interior decorated with a Bang and Olufsen audio system. Oh, and it looks absolutely stunning.

Dieselgate is still hurting Volkswagen, and as time goes on, the symptoms are getting stranger. A random guy wearing a Volkswagen uniform got on stage during the German auto giant's Geneva Motor Show press conference Tuesday, carrying a "cheat box" prop that he placed underneath the Up! compact that was in the middle of being presented. The exchange that followed between the man and Volkswagen's passenger car chief Juergen Stackmann — who was on stage at the time — is kind of amazing:

There are few car badges in the world with deeper history than Aston Martin's DB line, made most famous by James Bond's beautiful, tricked-out DB5 in 1964's Goldfinger. Now, there's an all-new DB ready for its debut: the DB11, complete with a 5.2-liter twin-turbocharged V-12 that's good for 600 horsepower. Unsurprisingly, it's enough motivation to make this the most powerful DB model Aston has ever produced.

The company's press release notes that the DB11 is "heralding a new design era for Aston Martin," and it's pretty difficult to argue — the unusual offset roof strakes, enormous side vents, and striking taillights contribute to a design that's unlike anything in recent Aston memory. The company's trademark grille carries over, but everything else about this car looks new and unique.

Probably the wildest thing about Bugatti's new 1,500hp super sports car is that it's not alone in being able to produce that much power. There's also the Koenigsegg Regera. This car was one of the stars of 2015's Geneva Motor Show and it returns today in an even more splendorous cherry red, with over 3,000 changes under its belt and a lighter and more efficient form.

2016 would have been the year of the 100th birthday of Lamborghini founder Ferruccio Lamborghini, and the storied Italian carmaker is celebrating the occasion with an extremely limited edition of 40 Centenario hypercars. This one-off design is built around a carbon fiber monocoque and Lamborghini's most powerful engine to date. It can produce 770hp, which seems almost quaint by the epic standards of the 1,500hp Bugatti Chiron and Koenigsegg Regera, but it propels the Centenario from 0 to 100km/h in just 2.8 seconds. That's fast by anyone's standards.

The Bugatti Chiron is ready to claim the title of world's fastest car, declared Bugatti President Wolfgang Durheimer at the unveiling of the car today at the Geneva Motor Show.

Though the Chiron is electronically limited to 261 mph in road mode, with all the restrictions lifted the car should go considerably faster — though Bugatti won't share what it thinks that highest speed will be.

A Rolls-Royce can be customized — made bespoke, in RR-speak — in a nearly infinite number of ways.

From custom paint and leather colors to the starlight headliner (which can be built to illuminate the night sky of a particular day and time), nearly anything is possible. But sometimes even the standard blank slate isn't enough for Rolls-Royce's most demanding customers.

Remember the Phaeton? In many markets, Volkswagen's big, ultra-luxe flagship sedan is still sold — but sales in the US ended years ago. Now, there's a Phaeton successor, sort of. Except you can't have it, unless you happen to be in China.

Meet the Phideon, which will be built in China through VW's local partner, SAIC. It's described as a four-door coupe — a paradoxical term used to describe an ever-growing number of cars like the Mercedes CLS, BMW 4 Series and 6 Series Gran Coupes, and the Audi A7. Basically, that just means it's a sedan with a slightly swoopier look than your typical four-door.

There are many absurd facts about the Bugatti Chiron that was just introduced today ahead of the Geneva Motor Show. Its top speed is electronically limited — limited! — to 261 miles per hour. It can reach 125 miles per hour in 6.5 seconds, which may very well be faster than the time it takes your personal vehicle to reach half that. And the base price is an astounding €2.4 million ($2.6 million), which you can presumably run up with options and customization. Nothing about this rare machine (just 500 will be made) is for the faint of heart.

We've already given you all the details about this ridiculous machine — but Bugatti, in its infinite generosity, has provided a huge and extremely awesome set of photos to go along with it. We thought you might enjoy some of them.

As if 1,500 horsepower, a $2.6 million price tag, and two metric tons of carbon fiber, aluminum, titanium, glass, and leather weren't enough to set the Bugatti Chiron apart, this new supercar also comes with speaker tweeters made out of diamonds. Each of the four tweeters in the car features a one-carat diamond membrane for what's supposed to be unsurpassed precision and aural fidelity. The company recruited by Bugatti to provide these ultra exclusive speakers is Accuton, and it has a helpful explainer of the benefits of using diamond as a material for reproducing high-frequency sound.

It's an established fact that traditional loudspeaker cones suffer from distortion when pushed to their limits, which has led companies to experimenting with either exotic materials or entirely different technologies, such as with planar magnetic headphones. But diamonds? What were the alternatives considered when designing these tweeters, unobtainium and kryptonite?