The Edwards

First among these, alphabetically, was the bee pollen-colored, box-flared, snorting-schnozzed Audi Quattro Concept. This muscle missile, which packed a twin-turbocharged V-8 and electric motor good in total for 690 hp, was a future-projected updating of the rally-homologated ür-Quattro of the 1980s, the squared-off vehicle that launched Audi’s oddball performance reputation. Handsome and hunky, if slightly too literal in its adherence to brand heritage, we could easily see this sitting somewhere high up in Audi’s range of handsomely hunky vehicles, and simultaneously bringing back some of the four-ringers’ squandered weirdness

Straddling the number one spot, was the Volvo Coupe Concept, which also harkened back to a historical moment—that of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the 1980s. In this case, the Swedish oddballs were glancing over their brand identity shoulders at their first (and ostensibly only) sports car, the P1800, as well as their more formal Bertone-designed coupes, like the 262c and the 780. We see hints of the former in the slim-eyed headlamps and the rounded trailing edge of the rear fender, and vestiges of the latter in the chopped roof, which, like those boxy old two-doors, looks like a globally warmed chunk fell off a Nordic glacier and landed on its cranium. Under the concept’s bowed hood slept an imaginary supercharged and turbocharged four-cylinder engine which, when coupled with some vaporous electric motor, produced around 400 hypothetic hp. Volvo needs an excitement injection; this chimera could be it.

Back in reality, we had another pair of production-ready hybrids, both of which set intriguing precedents in their categories. But before we move on to those, we feel the need to note the Audi and the Volvo resembled, in a way that reflects the resurgent prescience of American design, the new Chevrolet Camaro. Which leads us to the somewhat confounding fact that Chevy revealed the 2014 Camaro — with a freshened and more enraged front fascia — in convertible form, at the Frankfurt show.

As for our favorites: After about 71 global concept reveals, BMW finally showed the production version of their super-hybrid, triple-motored, four-seat, pteronodoored i8 supercar, and, as we told you from the show floor, it looks like the future. And like $136,000 in fast, exotic, swoopy, efficient, and otherworldly money. Chalk that one up in the Bavarian win column