159 posts tagged “car”

I think Vox might be back. I clicked ‘Create’ and the compose box came up instantly.
   How’s this for a sparring match? The Renault Sport Mégane versus the Ford Focus RS. The Renault has a 50 bhp deficit but still manages to keep up on the corners. No surprises which car I was rooting for.

Remember how I complained about some idiot in a Volkswagen Touareg tailgating me in the ice last weekend?
   Man, I feel heaps better after watching this:

(Probably better to watch it with the sound off.)

I was, of course, referring to Simon Templar, or at least the TV incarnation of him as played by Roger Moore. For today I spotted the following down the road from the office:

It’s a beautifully maintained Volvo 1800S from 1967 (and yes, I could tell without looking at the registration certificate).
   A few hours before there was this beautiful 1959 MGA hardtop on the other side of Latimer Park:    Earlier today, I also spotted a Karmann Ghia Typ 3 and yesterday, a 1972 Volkswagen Typ 4.
   Christchurch seems to be the home of many a classic car—two months ago, I came across a beautiful old Ford Falcon Wagon. These Cantabrians seem to love their classics.

It was an interesting experience driving home yesterday. I thought I would go via Napier on State Highway 5, since I have never been to the sunny coastal town. I never made it, because the route to the sunny coastal town was like this:

   State Highway 1 (Desert Road) was also closed, which originally made the detour on SH5 a clever plan—not so when it snows in the supposedly warm springtime here.
   Napier has a reputation for having great weather but my one and only memory of getting there will be this! However, I can no longer say I have not seen snow up close any more.
   And how.
   Knowing that the Desert Road was closed off, I took State Highway 41 west, where I was greeted with similar scenes. A very helpful motorist in a pick-up truck led the way down to the Taumaranui intersection, otherwise I would have been stranded at the top of the mountain. As I had discovered earlier on 5, the BMW is terrible on sludge and I had next to no traction in attempting to make a U-turn.
   It didn’t end there. I got as far as the National Park area and stopped for dinner. As I headed down on State Highway 4 (which was also shut for a time as I waited, while Wedding Crashers came on the BMW’s TV tuner), it turned out that SH48 was closed—it would have been much faster going to Wellington from there. I was advised to continue on SH4, which, incidentally, has no lighting. I dodged quite a few slips and if it were not for the three-dimensional sat nav, I would probably not have attempted the drive, as it was tricky for a first-timer.
   I got as far as Wanganui, because I was running low on petrol and a lot of stations were shut at that hour, or on pre-pay. I spent the night in a hotel where a lone cockroach walked atop my blankets—I will not name the place because I cannot say for sure whether this little creature walked in while the door was open as I shifted in my luggage. I am no entomologist. But I have advised the place that they need to take whatever steps are necessary to clean the room.
   Wanganui is an interesting town: the sat nav told me that there were hotels called the Four Seasons (which was really a motel that has nothing to do with the Four Seasons that I know) and the Quality Inn (which has nothing to do with Quality Inn). Sorry, I won’t confirm if either of these was where I stayed. Neither is breaking the law here as far as the names are concerned: as far as I can make out, the old Quality Inns are now the Quality Hotels, and Four Seasons does not operate here.
   So a six-and-a-half-hour drive turned into one lasting about 25 hours, but I had a whale of a time.
   And finding a way to State Highway 2 would not have helped. The police shut that off because a killer was at large yesterday (yes, just one—and in a generally peaceful country, that’s sufficiently for our police to act).
   Oh, and to the asshole in the Touareg who overtook me on SH4 (reg. DZC ***): tailgating in the snow is a really bad idea, dick. I don’t care if you do have four-wheel drive.

Current transport: BMW Z4. At least it’s more butch than the prissy Z3 (too “Pierce Brosnan”) but one cannot help feeling one is compensating. Long hood, short deck.

Thanks to Coby at Mercedes-Benz for my transport last week: a new E350 Coupé with Distronic (the cruise control system that slows down if the traffic in front slows). Lucire review to follow. It looks much better in the metal than in the photos (where it looks fussy and rear-heavy). In fact, of all the coupés I have driven, I really began to feel “at home” with this one.

When I was at school, one of my classmates was Simon Beattie, whose Dad was the Governor-General. He told us that there was a Rolls-Royce Phantom for official usage. I remembered seeing the Daimler Limousine that Government House had as well. Both were lovely, coachbuilt cars on separate chassis.
   In the 1990s, my Alma Mater was visited by the then-Governor-General, who arrived in a Daimler, but not the limousine. It was the Jaguar XJ-shaped one, but it had the fluted grille.
   Imagine my surprise when I saw this last week:

A regular Jaguar XJ. No fluted radiator grille. Talk about getting downgraded.
   The official BMW 730s that the MPs have look more imposing. And at least they are the long-wheelbase models.
   The republican movement here must love this: HM the Queen’s representative, who used to ride around in a car befitting the monarch, now rides around in a car befitting Arfur Daley.
   Or worse, John Prescott.

Lady, you’re lucky I won’t be narcing on you because I can’t see your number plate in this shot.
   But just a word of advice about driving in New Zealand. Green means go. Starting to move your car after green turns to yellow is not correct at the intersection of Wakefield and Cuba, especially when you are the first car in the queue. Going through a red light on Cuba is also not correct.
   This message has been brought to you by the concerned citizens of Wellington.

Looks like I finally got in to compose on Vox after an hour. I’ve tried proxy servers, and the site is slow through there, too.
   The latest series, starting next week, of Alarm für Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei looks really good. First up is a compilation of TV promos on RTL:

If anything, this post was an attempt to figure out whether Vox had been fixed or not. The ‘Compose’ screen came up pretty quickly this attempt, though an earlier attempt resulted in a blank screen after a minute.
   Here are some rare cars from Autocade, anyway, since I’m not going to waste the opportunity to blog something. When I started Autocade, I expected some old cars that were around before my lifetime; what I didn’t expect was actually covering a good number of them. Here are some for those pub quiz nights.

Italia 2000 Coupé. 1959–62 (prod. 297 approx.). 2-door coupé. F/R, 1991 cm³ (4 cyl. OHV). Hand-made, rebodied Triumph TR3, with attractive Michelotti-designed bodies by Vignale, shown at Torino in 1958. Made under contract to Ruffino SpA. Never officially a Standard–Triumph model, particularly after Leyland Motors’ takeover and the company’s withdrawal of support. Often referred to as Triumph Italia. Very expensive when new, and not popular; underpowered considering the price, though reasonably competent.

AMC Marlin. 1967 (prod. 2,545). 2-door coupé. F/R, 232 in³ (6 cyl. OHV), 290, 343 in³ (V8 OHV). Marlin shifts to the full-size AMC Ambassador (1967–8) platform, but production dropped further due to poor sales. Deleted after one year. Price up from 1966 as Marlin became a full-size car, with more luxury appointments.

Ford Anglia Torino. 1964–8 (prod. over 10,007). 2-door saloon. F/R, 997 cm³ (4 cyl. OHV). Rebodied Anglia, with body made by OSI of Italy. Created for markets which might have found the original 105E to be too unconventionally styled, but export plans were never realized and the car remains very rare. Doors and front windscreen shared with English Anglia, but other panels new. Michelotti design: attractive to some, ugly to Angliaphiles. Two one-litre engines: standard tune with 41 hp and Torino S with 52 hp from 1965.

Volvo P1900. 1956–7 (prod. 67). 2-door convertible. F/R, 1414 cm³ (4 cyl. OHV). Flimsy fibreglass convertible from Volvo, with uprated engine shared with export model of PV444, developing 70 hp. Inspired by American roadsters of the 1950s, but killed off after new Volvo boss, Gunnar Engellau, felt the quality was under par.