There may only be a few thousand residents, but when the majority are multi-millionaires it's hardly surprising that Monaco boasts its own car show. Kyle Fortunereports.
I DON'T NEED to see the sign on the front of the (frankly bizarre) glass frontage of the Grimaldi Forum to know I've arrived at the Top Marques Monaco show.
I can hear that I've reached the right place. The unmistakeable metallic shriek of a V10 announces this is the location, a bright orange Gemballa Mirage GT firing up and giving a wealthy potential owner a quick squirt around Monaco's tortuously twisty and hugely congested streets. I do hope the driver has got a strong left leg for that notoriously tricky clutch.
No such transport for me today; I got here by bus, the number 110 taking perhaps the most indirect route possible from the airport. Tempting though it is, I'll not be sitting in any bright orange Gemballas either, my next orange carriage being the 9.45pm Easyjet flight home.
The Top Marques Supercar Show in Monaco is rapidly becoming the exhibition of choice for supercar nuts, it being a cinch to get to and from - especially with cheap flights to Nice - and that, err, direct bus route.
The opportunity to drool over some otherwise untouchable machinery is simply too good to miss for many, particularly as here you really can get up close and personal with the sort of automotive artistry that's usually restricted to high-end magazines and computer screens.
Take the Pagani Zonda. No amount of motoring page scouring or clicking to enlarge pictures on the web can truly prepare you for just how sensational it looks inside and out. I visited Bugatti's headquarters a few years ago and talked carbon-fibre with their people.
They admitted that Mr Pagani is the absolute master of the carbon weave - he saves his finest work for his Zonda. It shows: the F Roadster on display is one of the most sensational cars I've ever seen. It is automotive construction as art and I could spend hours pouring over the details, but there's a room full of supercars to explore.
The thing is, as keen as I am to look at the cars, there are all sorts of diversions at the show. There's a fantastically over-engineered and brilliantly amusing mechanical corkscrew being shown by One of One Hundred, a company that takes artists' ideas and shows them to the people who can afford to indulge in them.
There are property exhibits and the odd boat builder too, while there's also a small area set aside for an exhibition of expensive watches. I can't help but take a look at the latter, though I lose all my casual reserve when the price of one timepiece I'm discussing is mentioned: €195,000. Back to the cars then.
You can see every car on display in the Grimaldi Forum's hall just by standing in the middle of the building. If you ran around it you'd cover the entire space in a minute or so.
There's lots of stuff your average supercar fan will recognise (that Pagani for example), a few Ferraris - which don't really cut the mustard here; a couple of Lamborghinis - ditto - and then the really weird stuff.
The tuners are here en masse, so there's the aforementioned Gemballa, showing matte black versions of its Porsche Carrera GT-based Mirage GT and a Cayenne-derived monstrosity. Money certainly doesn't always equate to taste.
That's just as ably demonstrated by the Carlsson-tuned Mercedes-Benzes; quite why anyone would want a two-tone CL is quite beyond me, but then I'm not a gazillionaire looking for individuality.
Ignore some of the more bizarre tuner kit, and there are some genuinely interesting cars. Gumpert's Apollo is here; sure, it's hardly a pretty thing but it's rather beautiful in its own brutal sense of purpose - it's very much about going very fast and be damned with aesthetics. Not that high speed necessarily has to equate to ugliness either, the Koenigsegg Edition model comfortably reaching more than 200mph.
It's a car that's not only stunning to look at but claims to be green, too. It runs on bio-ethanol you see, which does give it some green status, but really, it's a bit tenuous.
If you're after a green super or sportscar then the Monaco show really is the place to be. After all, if you can't get your super yacht, jet or helicopter to run environmentally then some tokenism with your road transport might be just the thing.
And there's a fair amount of choice. Venturi displayed its electric Fetish, a car so cool that last time I was here Roger Moore rocked up in one to open the show.
Tesla is also exhibiting in Monaco, the will-it-won't-it electric sports car that's become the darling of Hollywood finally making it to Europe. How much for a battery powered open-topped car running on a Lotus chassis? €99,000 to you. Mere pocket change for a Monaco resident.
Fisker has its Karma luxury plug-in hybrid on display too, this sensational looking machine demonstrating that being green really can be beautiful. Fast too, with 100km/h possible in just six seconds.
BMW has its hydrogen "Clean Energy" cars on its stand, though it's difficult to get excited about a stickered-up BMW when there's so much more to explore.
It's the tiny independents and dreamers that really make the Monaco show. Some are doomed to failure, while others seem to be able to survive by carving out a small niche to appeal to a tiny number of buyers wanting something a bit different.
The Dutch K1 Roadster is such a car, the beautifully finished open-topped sportscar (actually built in Bratislava) powered by a 3.0-litre V6 from Ford.
It's a good looking thing, which is far better finished than many of the other machines looking for homes here.
British firm Breckland also has a surprise on its stand. A specialist in producing small volume sports cars - it being involved in building the mighty Mosler - it's showing its new Beira. It's based on GM's Opel Speedster platform, but unique bodywork and an LS2 V8 engine with around 400bhp promising to make it more fun than any Opel Speedster could ever be.
Breckland's spokesman talks of sensible pricing and a small customer base looking for a TVR replacement. Looking at the neatly finished car on the stand, they might just be on to something.
But the car that I've fallen in love with is the work of Spada Vetture Sport. Its Codatronca TS is a weird fusion of Kamm-tailed 1960s racer and the Batmobile.
Like so many of the small volume makers here it's running a GM V8, in this case pushing out around 630bhp. I couldn't care what's under the bonnet though, as with the Codatronca TS it's all about how it looks.
Inside and out it's utterly sensational, the interior beautifully crafted and featuring some amusing touches like a fighter plane-style firing switch in the roof to rouse its V8.
The Codatronca is the work of a four-strong design team, of which half is made up of father and son combo Ercole and Paolo Spada - Ercole formerly a chief designer at Zagato and BMW, Paolo a former designer for Smart and Honda.
I want one badly, but then I also wouldn't mind a helicopter and a super yacht. That watch would also be nice. It seems I'm the biggest dreamer here, but I'm clearly in the minority.
The Monaco Top Marques show attracts real buyers. That makes it special, and bizarrely, accessible. Friendly even. Just don't go telling everyone about it, as if too many of the hoi polloi start attending it then that might change. And I enjoy my annual trip there, even if I have to get the bus.