Nice - Not Nice.

Autoguide to day have this story about Hyundai's Elentra advertising campaign.  In particular, their Super Bowl ad featuring Johnny Galecki from the brilliant Big Bang Theory or, if you are very old, Roseanne.

The theme of the campaign is nice (like the Elantra) and not nice (like slipping on a banana skin).

Here's the main ad:

Quite amusing.

This BBC story, meanwhile, is about a nice advert.

At least I think it is very nice.

It features a very nice Bobby Ewing-era Merc SL and a very attractive woman on a bike.

And this picture:

Which seems a bit cruel to the very attractive woman on the bike.

 

But five people with incredibly dull lives thought the advert was not nice.

 

They complained to the Advertising Standards Authority and caused the advert to be banned because the very attractive woman on a bike isn't wearing a helmet.

 

A helmet isn't a legal requirement and would have messed up the hair of the very attractive woman on a bike.

 

And the ad isn't even aimed at cyclists, it's aimed at motorists warning them to give cyclists like the very attractive woman on a bike plenty of room.

 

As well as thinking those five people and the Advertising Standards Authority are not nice, I also think this caradvice.com.au story is not nice.  Basically, it is saying that BMW are working on an app to pump adverts into your car or, as they put it, “develop solutions for context-adaptive, personalised filtering of large volumes of real-time offers generated by location-based service providers”.

 

I see that article as an advert to not buy a BMW.

 

Not nice.

I Dis-associate Myself From These Remarks

Metro, the free newspaper you find in train stations, published an online review today of "Russia on Four Wheels".

Metro, the brilliant car-blogger, considered doing an online review of the very same programme having watched the second (and concluding) episode that was broadcast last night.

I, being the latter Metro, now have to review the other Metro's review.

It was crap.

Click here to see it.

It is written by their "TV and Dance critic", Keith Watson. It lasts for six sentences, two of them about homosexuality and completely misses what the majority of the show was all about.  I would not wish to be associated with such a poor (and pointless) review.

I bet Keith Watson didn't even know that it followed on from "India on Four Wheels" and "China on Four Wheels."  These shows have Anita Rani and Justin Rowlatt travelling about large countries meeting locals, learning about how these countries are changing and what impact the motoring industry is having and what impact these changing are having on the motoring industry itself.

The BBC describe "Russia on Four Wheels" thusly.

Anita Rani is very engaging despite often being in a state of excited bewilderment.

Justin Rowlatt reminds me of an older Jonny Smith.

Anita is always given the best car and the most upmarket situations to report on - in this case a Dartz Kombat T98 which she drove to try on fur coats and eat caviar.

Justin always gets the rough end of the deal.  He was given a Communist era UAZ 469 to drive and went to visit a former Gulag prison camp - for me the best bit of the show.

I also loved listening out for the incidental music accompanying the show - it was inspired as long as you tuned in to it.

Hopefully they will make more of these shows - not sure where though - possibly the Middle-East. The BBC aren't allowed in Iran though and Anita wouldn't be allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia unless she joined the US Army.

Anyway, if they do, I recommend Keith Watson sticks with The One Show.

Seeing Things...

...like a mirage.

A really ugly little car with teeny tiny rear wheels, a 1.2 engine, and the blandest interior that could have come from the blandest 1990s Japanese design studio.  It could make One Direction look interesting.

Canadian motoring site autos.ca have the story today that Mitsubishi are threatening to unleash this on the Canadian motoring public.

 

I warned back in June 2012 that we could get The Mirage here in the UK.

 

And we did - the hatchback version.

 

Fortunately, I don't think anyone's bought one.

 

This monstrosity here, though, is the saloon - or "sedan" as North Americans like to call them.

 

Autoguide had the story a couple of days ago.  Comments were invited...

Three people have commented on it - two favourably, one not so.  The two favourable comments have been voted up while the one sensible negative comment has been voted down.

 

I think I must be seeing things.

Had too much to drink and fancy an Italian?

This woman did.

Her name is Rhian Jeremiah and several news sites have the story today of her conviction for criminal damage to a car and for assaulting two police officers who came out to arrest her.

And what was her criminal damage?

Biting into a Fiat 500.

Here is the Mirror account of the story.

Magistrates heard Jeremiah had been drinking at a memorial night for her late boyfriend Simon Jones who drowned off the coast of Aberystwyth, west Wales.

What a fine tribute.

Look! No Hands!

There were a couple of stories on the BBC News site today that caught my eye.

 

The first involves driving along hard-shoulders.

 

The short video tells us how certain motorways around Birmingham have the option of letting people use the hard-shoulder for driving down during busy times with the option of the shoulder reverting to usual shouldering duties if someone needs it.  I have driven on that very motorway myself under those same circumstances.

 

Very clever.

 

The video then goes on to tell us that The Highways Agency want to shut off 300 miles of hard-shoulder altogether to ease congestion.

 

It doesn't mention what happens in the event of a breakdown on one of these stretches.

 

Very un-clever.

 

Especially when you look back to this BBC video story from the Summer.

 

The second BBC story today involves this twerp:

He was caught by a "safety camera" - I put that in quotes because we all know it's a speed camera - driving his Volkswagen at 62mph with his hands on his head.  He was banned for a year and fined nearly £700.

 

Good.

 

Lord knows how long he'd been going like that, he's certainly doing it for the full length of the video.

 

This guy, also in a Volkswagen has got a mate with him and is doing the same thing: 

I suppose he does have an excuse, though, in that his is a self-driving Volkswagen.