BMW CONCEPT CS

Shanghai is showing early signs of becoming a robust market for BMW, as brand-new 7-series models already litter the city’s streets. This goes some way toward explaining why the Germans chose China to unveil their Concept CS, a sedan that’s tipped to be the company’s next flagship model.

The CS is an indulgent thing, being at once longer and wider than the 7-series, while only seating four. The show car’s interior is equally voluptuous, boasting interesting uses of curves, joints, and seams, including gorgeous hooded gauges and novel adjustable “collars” on the seatbacks that remind us of tailored shirts.

While BMW hasn’t committed to building the CS, the car is likely to make it into showrooms riding the underpinnings of the next 7-series, which should help maximize economies of scale for the luxury powerhouse.

Speaking of power—a production CS would almost certainly feature a variant of BMW’s corporate 5.0-liter V-10, ensuring brisk performance and justifying a pricing premium over the already plutocratic 7-series.

Given Mercedes-Benz’s vivacious CLS has been well received (and required relatively little financial outlay to build), along with the threat of upcoming quattroporte coupes like the Porsche Panamera and Aston Martin Rapide, it’s only a matter of time before BMW gets serious about this burgeoning niche.

BUICK RIVIERA CONCEPT

Despite a raft of new products, Buick remains something of a sick man in the General Motors North American portfolio. But over in China, the brand is a hot property: Buick’s Chinese sales already outstrip those of its U.S. counterpart.

Thus, Shanghai proved a logical backdrop for the debut of Buick’s Riviera Concept, itself a product of the Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center (PATAC), a China-based design and engineering joint venture between GM and its partner Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation.

The shapely, carbon fiber-bodied gullwing is the first vehicle to bear the Riviera moniker in eight years. Appropriately, it pays homage to great Rivs of the past, most notably in its subtle “boat-tail” rump and double-sweep spear body-side motif.

James Shyr, PATAC design director, notes, “Designing this car made us realize how small the world could be. It’s not East. It’s not West. It’s not the United States or China. It’s Buick.”

Perhaps. But it’s an open question as to whether GM will continue to field Buick over the long-term or segue into a foreign market-only proposition (like Opel) in the not too distant future. Could a bold new Riviera help stem the tide?

AUDI CROSS COUPE QUATTRO CONCEPT

Poor AMC. The long-defunct U.S. automaker just couldn’t hold out long enough to see the market catch up with its Eagle Wagon 4x4, surely the spiritual predecessor to Audi’s Cross Coupe Quattro Concept seen here.

This attractive new all-wheel-drive SUV is actually not a coupe at all, though it does have a rakish backlight that gives it a racier profile. In person, the concept looks like a shrunken and slightly more dynamic Q7—and though its horse-collar grille remains off-putting, it’s an execution we can live with.

Powered by a 2.0-liter four-cylinder TDI engine (giving 200 horsepower and 295 pound-feet of torque), the compact off-roader claims to be reasonably frugal and green, as well. Not only that, the CCQ is chock-full of electronic trickery, including tri-mode drive settings (dynamic, sport, and efficiency) that adjust shift points, adaptive shock absorbers, steering effort, and so on.

The CCQ augurs a small Audi SUV (Q5?) that’s already well along in development, though pricey features like the concept’s ceramic brakes and adaptive shock absorbers are unlikely to see production, as is the steeply sloped backlight.

HUANGHAI AUTO NCV

It’s been said before that the concept of “intellectual property” remains something of a nonstarter in modern Chinese culture—and that’s not only when it comes to the pirated video games, DVDs, handbags, and wristwatches that can be bought from the country’s ubiquitous street vendors. Pilfering aesthetic elements wholesale from other vehicles is hardly news—Chery got itself in hot water with GM for creating a near facsimile of its Chevrolet Spark minicar, and there are dozens of Chinese models that take liberties cribbing features like taillamps and grilles with virtual impunity.

But Huanghai Auto appears to have moved the game on, fusing two “borrowed” designs into one—the Pontiac Torrent and Lexus RX350. With precious little in the way of information available (press kits in any language were something of a rarity in Shanghai), we had difficulty sorting out just what this vehicle is called, but we believe this four-wheeled pastiche (which isn’t altogether unattractive) is named NCV.

According to what we could suss out, the NCV is powered by an engine that provides only 103 horsepower and 125 pound-feet of torque, so the resemblance to both the Pontiac and Lexus looks to be only skin-deep.