Car+Driver Feature Something I Own One Of.

Is it a Renault Alaskan?

No. While a tough Renault pick-up is slightly intriguing, it wouldn't inspire me to buy one.  I don't think they are on sale yet anyway.

So, is it the Mercedes GLC43?

Nope, I can honestly say I have no interest in that whatsoever.

No, what it is that I own one of, is a Commodore 64 - like this one:

 

Only less grubby.  But I have the cassette player rather than the more sophisticated Disk Drive that this one boasts.  Car+Driver feature it in this story about a Polish car workshop where they claim it is still being used to assist in balancing driveshafts.

I would like to believe that it is a true story and that it is a recent photo - the mobile phone in the picture looks quite old but if they are still using a Commodore 64, why would they bother with a 21st Century phone?

Plus the glasses look like an old-person's spectacles.

I enlarged the picture and put some of the screen text into Google Translate - it came up with the following phrases:

• keep the number of influential blanking vibrations
• measurements of the masses without trial
• The test mass plane

So I reckon it is legit.

Not that I even know the basics about aligning Polish driveshafts.

But I could help them with the BASIC.

April Fuel

Found myself reading this Car+Driver article today about this man:

His name is Nygârd Lünd.He is a giant, Norwegian-born, billionaire who grows apricots and orchids and wants to re-invent the car.

Or would be if he existed.

It is a brilliantly written article, definitely worth a click.  I didn't initially think it was an April Fool joke because, well - it isn't April yet.

But the clues are there.

Like, "From the April 2016 issue" and, when discussing the neighbourhood where all the research goes on, “It doesn’t even show up on Google Maps.”

And the fact that as you read on, it becomes less and less plausible.

This guy is supposed to have developed a fuel derived from using apricots in elctrolysis to generate power.

An "Apricot Fuel" as it were.

Prior Warning

I read Matt Prior's latest article today.

No, not Matt Prior the mentor and very good friend of Kevin Pietersen:





I'm talking Matt Prior the Autocar writer:

He is basically talking here about how it is important that car reviewers don't get freebies or payments or little extra jobs from car manufacturers.  It looks like a dig at other car magazines - he specifically points to "one US car magazine is actually presenting a TV car advert" - I'm guessing he is talking about Car+Driver who do sometimes feature car ads - but only to comment on the ad or show a particularly good one but I've never seen one and thought that they were endorsing the car in question.

I got the feeing that Mr.P is trying to say how wonderful Autocar is compared with the competition.  Understandable given that he works for them.  I hope it isn't an indication that the magazine is struggling though.  If they are, I am not exactly helping because I only read their articles online.  The only Car mag I purchase is Top Gear and I don't pay full price for that thanks to my Tesco Clubcard points.

I then looked back at some other Matt Prior articles.  Back in February, he was saying "why the Autocar road test is so important."  He is extolling the wonderfulness of his magazine for finding a potentially fatal braking problem with the Suzuki Celerio they were testing.  It caused the car to be taken off sale while it was sorted out.

At this point I should point out that Celerio is a stupid name for a car.  It sounds too much like celery or celeriac - which I believe is related to the turnip.

The other Prior article which caught my eye was this one.  Probably because of the picture they chose to illustrate it:

 

Ironically enough,  it is a short article about the use of glamourous women at The Geneva Motor Show (and all other motor shows) that Matty P had recently attended.  He plays the feminist card - and gets a lively little debate going in his comments section.

At this point, I decided to see if I could find any suitably sexist material in Autocar.  I can't speak for the physical magazine (because I haven't bought one in many years) but online they look very clean.  Best I could find was from 1973:

 

So then I decided to look up the 2015 Geneva Motor Show in Google Images - and I found hardly any glamourous females adorning the cars.  The few women that did show up there had two things in common:  "Autoevolution" written across the photo; and virtually no way of identifying the car.

I think I'll use this photo when I advertise this posting on my Facebook page.

Autoevolution, incidentally is autoevolution.com, a Bulgarian based car site that I delve into from time to time - they tend to have lots of stories, sometimes interesting, sometimes trashy.  I can guess which way their Geneva 2015 coverage went.

Are they competition for Autocar?

I hope not - but I suspect so.  Let's see if Matt Prior can knock them for six.