It was always the traditional cat and mouse game. New car models, before being revealed, were hunted by relentless spy photographers while they were being tested under camouflage.
It always was exciting for the car enthusiast trying to glean what the future holds, and for the car paparazzi that sold the photos for good money to car magazines.
Sometimes, it got to be too exciting, as the test engineers got into fights with photo spies that were getting too close, which happened just last year when the driver of a BMW 7-Series prototype wanted to exhibit his Taekwondo skills on the photographer.
But lately, something has changed and I am not sure it is for the best. Lots of prototypes, many more than ever, are driven from South Africa to Oman to the Nurburgring, all dressed in the obligatory psychedelic-patterned wrap.
However, in a few cases, the manufacturers are directing a slow-motion reveal, where the car is showing less and less disguise and either is driven deliberately in areas where spies are lying in wait, or the automakers unofficially are inviting photographers to take a few quick snapshots.
The reason? To create hype around a future launch, keep the brand on the cover of magazines and a hot topic on blogs and to persuade potential buyers to wait for the new model, rather than buy from a competing brand.
These may be excellent business reasons, but does the slow car striptease yield the desired result? This is not clear.
Take for instance the Porsche 918. For a couple of years before the launch of the production model, Porsche leaked hundreds of photos of prototypes driven all over the planet. It arranged for well-known journalists to drive and be driven in the car. It released multiple technical specification documents describing how exciting the 918 would be.
When the car finally was revealed, the public already was numb and tired, and the desired media big bang did not happen. This was in contrast with the launch of its competitors, the Ferrari LaFerrari and McLaren P1, where the car details surfaced only at launch time.
Even so, because the 918 is such an amazing car and feat of engineering, it ultimately got the right level of attention from buyers in the market.
The striptease fatigue is even tougher to overcome when the new model ends up being less than stellar. Yes, Jaguar XE, I am talking about you.
For months we were bombarded with pictures of cars wrapped in white and black, cars camouflaged with fake body panels, cars without body panels. Endless interviews with Jaguar executives bragging about the change the XE will bring to the compact sport sedan world, details of the aluminum frame, the new engines and even a computer rendering of the dash.
After all this hype, one would expect the unveiling to be a cosmic event. However, the XE turned out to be much more pedestrian than I anticipated, with little of the flair of the gorgeous F-Type
In fact, the XE looks very much like the redesigned Chrysler 200, a mass-produced car that costs a fraction of the Jag. My disappointment was compounded by the choreographed striptease and the huge expectations it set.
Covering the ground between these two is the AMG GT. Mercedes chose a long reveal for the car and, in my opinion, it didn’t pan out ideally. Photos proliferated of the car on the Nurburgring and in camouflage of different colors. There were early videos of prototypes racing and drifting, previews of the engine and the car interior and even of renderings for a racing video game.
It set the expectation for the arrival of revolutionary Porsche 911 Turbo rival, with esthetics and performance that would stun the world. But the car doesn’t appear to come close in performance specifications. While nice to look at, it was trumpeted as being the start of a new era for Mercedes design, but the AMG GT just doesn’t generate the same excitement as the SLS did in its time.
In the end, the hype had an adverse effect on my reaction to it. I was expecting much more.
So, at the risk of sounding nostalgic, I am longing for the days when prototypes were hiding from photo spies and not courting them, when the photo hunting game was not staged and the launch of a new car was exciting because of the car, not the hype. What do you think?
Theo Nissim is CEO at Silicon Valley-based software provider Gemini Solutions, and an avid auto enthusiast. Theo has owned many noisy and fast cars in his lifetime and has driven super, hyper and luxury automobiles all over the world on both tracks and roads.
