Sens-ational drive

Pay a visit to next month's Geneva motor show and the chances are that despite the best efforts of automotive heavyweights such as BMW and Mercedes, it will be a tiny Swiss design house that's causing the biggest stir.

For the past 10 years Zurich-based Rinspeed has been stealing the show with one far-out concept after another. In 2001 it presented Advantige Rone, the world's first sports car to be powered by kitchen and garden waste. Then a year later the company introduced Presto, a vehicle that shrinks by almost 1m to get into parking spaces.

This was followed by the Bedouin, which at the flick of a switch converts from pick-up truck to station wagon, and then last year by Splash, an amphibious car that uses hydraulically powered folding hydrofoils to skim over water at speeds of up to 50mph.

Little wonder then that expectations are running high for Geneva 2005, and Rinspeed's charismatic founder and chief executive Frank Rinderknecht doesn't intend to disappoint.