New Car Contest
Here is a quiz with some prizes for you. We’ve got 25 bottles of Nu Finish car polish to give away.
To get your prize just look at the ten cars below and identify them for us. If you get eight of more correct, and you’re one of the first 25 winners, a bottle of Nu Finish will be on its way to you. But these cars won’t be familiar to you, as they are all due to be launched in 2012. However, we’ve given you a clue for each one to make your task a little easier.
Country Driving Tips: How To Drive Near Horses
Over the summer, a lot of us head out into the wide open spaces for a holiday. Country driving is a lot different from city driving, with the empty roads and higher speeds being just one of the things. Or should that be “mostly empty roads”? There are other drivers out there on the roads who are driving just as fast as you are, and there are other hazards that you just don’t get in town, and most of these hazards have four feet.
Horses are one such rural hazard and they are legitimate road users, so if you see a horse and rider on the tarmac ahead of you, you can’t get indignant and wonder why they aren’t off the road. As is the case for bicycles, you have to share the road with horses.
Nostalgia Time
Modern cars have come a long, long way from what they used to be. When I first was given the steering wheel (which was down our rather long driveway when I was about ten years old and we had a Mitsubishi Sigma Galant station wagon), thing like airbags, GPS and pyrotechnic seatbelts weren’t even dreamed of. And there certainly is no substitute for modern safety features – people can walk away from a serious crash with just a few bumps and scratches (and a rather bad case of the jitters, admittedly), whereas the same crash in an older car would have involved serious injury and possibly fatality. Dual-zone climate control means that there’s no more fights about “I’m too hot” and “I’m too cold”, and pollen filters make car trips more bearable for those who suffer from hay fever.
But there’s something to be said about older cars, and most drivers over a certain age (and a few under that age) get a bit wistful when they see an older car, and more than a few of us still own older vehicles. But just what is it about older vehicles that we like?
• Nostalgia: if you have a lot of happy memories associated with a certain make or model, you are likely to want to own one.
• Simplicity: Some drivers who have been on the road a long time find the multitude of gadgets and electronic bells and whistles in modern cars to be a bit overwhelming – or even unnecessary. Another aspect of simplicity that appeals to some car enthusiasts, especially those who like to do a bit of tinkering in the garage, is that older cars that don’t have everything done by electronics and electrics can have some repairs and tweaks done by a keen amateur – anyone with a good set of tools can replace a wind-up window, but you have to really know what you’re doing if you try to fix an automatic window.
• Fun: This is one that appeals to passengers rather than drivers, but older vehicles (especially utes and four wheel drives) tended to have ghastly suspension but bouncy springs. The seats weren’t very adjustable and they certainly didn’t have any lumbar support other than a pillow, but they were like a trampoline when you went over a speed hump.
• Charm: The original Mini Cooper was drawn by hand. Later, cars tended to be designed by computers, taking aerodynamics into account. Most modern vehicles do have aesthetics applied to them by a real human, but very few capture the bug-eyed cuteness of the VW Beetle, the Mini or the Fiat 500, which is why new versions of these have been release that combine the best of the old with the best of the new.
Drivers can have other reasons for owning an older vehicle. Some people are holding onto one because they believe that it will become a classic one day: after all, the Model T Ford was once as common as muck, but is now a rare and coveted vehicle. Others stay with an older vehicle because they don’t give a damn about fashion and status, and can’t be bothered upgrading. To each their own!
Saab Saga Draws To A Close
The on again/off again demise of iconic Swedish car maker Saab now seems certain to end in tears for 3,700 workers.
News from Europe overnight tells us that a District Court in Sweden has received papers from Saab filing for bankruptcy. If you remember Saab was first in trouble when its owner, General Motors wanted to close it down following the GFC. But protests were aired and a saviour found in the form of (then named) Spyker for $400 million last year. But then they ran into trouble and wanted to sell the company to the Chinese. But General Motors put their foot down and refused to sanction the deal on the grounds of giving away their intellectual property. So there it stood until yeaterday, where it now appears certain that Saab are gone.
Level 2, 9 Help Street