Funky Chinese patois
You can’t make stuff this good up:
“Let the hackle zipper cut in the drailing wheel, then draught at full tilt to upgrade, let the drailing wheel tunning hight speed, at this time set the product to evenness floor to go speed run.”
Also notice, under the name of the toy: “Playing must on the smoothness floor.”
But don’t worry, the toy itself is great. After all, it’s part of a “toys series with a strong sense for playing.”
Ahhh … language. Babelfish has got to be better than whoever mangled this translation.
I want an Austin Mini desk
Yes, this is to-die-for cool.
Yum!
(Saw it first at boingboing.)
Phaeton phantasmagorical
Saw this on Boingboing just a few minutes ago: a photo tour of Volkswagen’s Phaeton factory in Dresden, Germany.
Unbelievable. This is no factory, it’s a work of engineering and aesthetic art. I’d work in it any day.
Glass, steel, laminated wood flooring: it’s a modernist dream factory made real.
. . .
. . .
Of course, I think the car is a gas guzzling brute, even if it is somewhat better than a lot of SUVs, and incredibly, amazingly, wonderfully beautiful. However, it can be purchased in a much more efficient V6 turbo diesel TDi version.
SUVs running on empty
Well, I’ve said it before, and so have others, but the data is starting to come in that the car-buying public is starting to drastically change its habits.
3 cheers for high gas prices!
Naturally, most of the North American (I mean, American) car manufacturers are caught totally flat-footed … with way too many guzzling gas suckers in their vehicle line-ups and way too few fuel-sipping (and funky and cool and beautiful and pleasurable to drive) smaller automobiles.
They’re addicted to the high-priced, high-margin trucks and SUVs … Ford was supposedly making $10,000 on each new Explorer that rolled off the assembly lines.
Who could have predicted gas prices would go this high? Anyone with a brain and a sense of reality. The storms of ‘05 may have brought it on a little swifter, and the war in Iraq has not helped a dime’s worth (quite the reverse), but the reality is that oil is finite, capacity is limited, and demand has been increasing at insane rates.
The annoying thing for those of us who drive fuel-efficient vehicles is that all the SUV drivers out there aren’t only paying more at the pump themselves, but by using 2 or 3 times as much fuel as they should be, they’re sucking up supply at accelerated rates, and driving up the price for all of us.
Well, well.
Hopefully now we’ll see some return to more creative vehicles and creative marketing strategies. All we’ve seen from Detroit in the past few years is more horsepower, more power, bigger engine, 0-60 times, etc. etc. But take a look at the New Beetle campaigns. Or the Mini marketing.
It’s creative, new, innovative, exciting. And it doesn’t mention horsepower, engine size, speed, or any of the other particulars that American manufacturers seem to find absolutely essential.
Can America turn it around? Can Ford become the #2 automobile manufacturer in the world again? Can GM stave off the current #2, Toyota? I hope so. I’d hate to see it all shift to Asia and Europe.
But it won’t happen without a sea change in American manufacturer’s attitudes. They have to get it, before they’ll get the business.
And so far, they’ve shown few signs of impending cluefullness.
Gates: Start with computers, please
Apparently, Bill Gates is working on building cars that can’t crash.
Please stick to computers, Bill. Please.
Or, if you just can’t, at least start with computers.
Minis Safer than Trucks; Stupid People Buy SUVs
Nothing like a controversial title to start off an article about vehicles, huh?
It’s a silly title, but, according to an article from the New Yorker, it’s strangely accurate.
I hate my crappy Cavalier
I’ve been renting a 2005 Cavalier for the past 4-5 days, and I am not impressed. In fact, I am seriously unimpressed.
Why? Read on …
The Schizophrenic Austin Mini Aesthetic: Retro outside; Jetson’s Inside
Can someone please tell me what’s up with the Austin Mini?
I love the exterior of the Mini with it’s vaguely retro multi-color styling. I hate the interior of the Mini with it’s Jetson’s bulbous plastic futuristic styling.
-
-
About
Sparkplug 9 is John Koetsier's blog on life, the universe, and everything,
but mostly the stuff you see big in the tags to the left.
Welcome, enjoy, buy the T-shirt, take a picture, tell your friends. -
Virtual me
-
Blogroll