That's My Girl: My Car and Me
Over time, I have started to notice that our complex cultural foundation consequentially provides us all with curious personality traits. one of the most fascinating is our ability to animate the inanimate. Most of the time its when something goes wrong of course. The classic example comes when you stub your toe on your coffee table, and yet you put all fault on the coffee table as if it got up and moved in the way of your toe. If it was the case that the coffee table had animated abilities, I can imagine it flinging its arms (well, legs) in the air and violently protesting at our inability to accept personal fault for anything we do wrong.
Whether it is blaming a wooden table for your clumsy toe stubbing, or having a ‘conversation’ with your pet (seriously, cats cannot understand you, nor can they speak English), we often enter into some form of emotional relationship with the world around us, whether it is living or not. There is no more prevalent example than that of the automobile. At the end of the day, the car is nothing more than a selection of raw materials, cleverly blended together and combined to create an internal combustion engine attached to a passenger compartment atop a foundation of wheels. Surely a car is nothing more than a means to an end? They take us exactly where we want to go; none of this public transport malarkey. And yet, it is not that simple. Over time, something has happened; an evolution has risen from the darkness right under our noses.
Nissan’s Self-Cleaning Car
Nissan has already tried to bring us the self-driving car. Now the Japanese manufacturer is trialling another innovation that may spell the end of spending Saturday morning out there in the driveway with the chamois leather and buckets of soapy water. Yes, Nissan has unveiled the prototype self-cleaning car.
The self-cleaning property of these Nissans is thanks to the paint finish, so, in theory, it can be applied to any vehicle. Nissan’s paint boffins have worked with a company from Florida to develop the new paint, with the company from Florida having already put in the hard yards for developing self-cleaning this and that.
Milestone: 500 Posts on Private Fleet's blog.
Winter is officially here, so now is a great time to check your tyres, for both age and depth of tread. Age as rubber does dry out and become brittle over time if not looked after and depth because it’s those grooves in your tyres that pump out the wet stuff when the roads get rained on. Lesser grooves means more water under the tyres which can lead to aquaplaning and a potential crash.
Private Fleet is here to help you get as best a deal as possible on a new car but we’re also here to provide information, buying tips and share information. That information, in various ways, is also shared via Private Fleet’s blog and THIS is the 500th blog article!
Classic Cars: Holden Monaro.
There’s something about the shape of a classic two door car that attracts the eyes like little else; Jaguar found that with the E-Type, Ferrari with the GTO (and pretty much every one of their cars!) and Australia’s Holden did it with the Monaro.
July of 1968 saw the release of the first “two door pillarless coupe”, with the HK Kingswood losing two doors, gaining a redesigned roof and kickstarting a legend, with the release of the Monaro. There were three models; the base, the GTS and the GTS 327. The entry level model came with Holden’s trusty 161 cubic inch cylinder engines with the GTS offering the 3.0L or 186 c.i. with standard or 186S engines. Naturally enough, the GTS 327 came with the Chevrolet 327 V8, with 186kW or 250 brake horsepower. Engineers originally claimed the engine bay was too small to hold the American iron, fastracking development of an Australian designed and built V8, however a remeasuring found the Chev would slot in nicely. The HK Monaro also provided Holden with their first victory at the Bathurst 500 race, with Bruce McPhee and Barry Mulholland (piloting the car for just one of the one hundred and thirty race laps) backing up the pole position and fastest race lap. The HK was distinguishable by the narrow, American influenced tail lights and a short vertical/wide horizontal bar in the grille.
Level 2, 9 Help Street