St.David's Day has been Postponed

But only by a day.  It's happening tomorrow now due to today being Leap Year Day.

It gives me an extra 24 hours to find a daffodil.

It is also a chance for certain people who look 80 to celebrate their 20th birthdays.  The only famous person I can find (who is still alive) who is celebrating a birthday today is the 13 year old ex-Coronation Street actress Wendi Peters:

She'll be able to apply for a driving licence in 16 years time.

This is only the second time I've posted on February 29th - the other one was this one in 2016.

It's not like St.David's Day was ever going to be cancelled - unlike lots of other things right now - like today's Tranmere Rovers v Fleetwood Town - waterlogged pitch.

Also cancelled this year is the Geneva Motor Show.  This has nothing to do with calendar anomalies or with the current freak weather events but is as a direct result of Coronavirus.  Or more precisely, Covid-19 which just beat Diseasy McDiseaseface in the public vote to name this particular strain of Coronavirus - that being a generic brand that has been around for half a century.  I tackled Coronavirus last weekend.

Autocar are showing us, in true Jim Bowen Bullseye style what we could have won seen.  The article is here.

A lot of Chinese manufacturers were hoping to show off their goods and a lot of non-Chinese people were worried about meeting them.

One such manufacturer has the confusing name of AIways which, apart from being bad usage of English capitalisation, in a lot of fonts looks like the word "Always" - in fact, I had to change the font of it to make this sentence readable in Blogger.

The car itself is yet another SUV - and of course electric:

We really, REALLY, don't need another one - especially one that people will read as a female sanitary product.

Let's just cancel SUVs - it might just cut down the number of events cancelled due to freaky weather events.

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.

A Nissan that Resonates

And I'm not talking about the exhaust of a GT-R.

I'm not normally into brown cars but this looks quite good.

These pictures are a peek ahead from Autoguide at a Nissan Concept car for the Geneva motor Show which starts next month.

It does seem to be sticking to Nissan's current philosophy of producing a range of 4x4s or things that look like they ought to be 4x4s.

 

Autoguide reckon this will become the new Murano.

 

It's quirky enough.

 

I liked the look of the old Murano but saw very few on the roads. 

Hopefully, the exterior of the concept will be carried over to the production model.

 

Apparently, Murano is a bit of Venice.  I suppose it is as good a name as any.

 

And better than "Nissan Resonance" which is the name of the concept...

 

...and that explains my post title.

Thank you.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly...and The Beautiful and the Blobby

All, and when I say "All", I Mean "ALL" of the car press today are going on about the 2013 Geneva Motor Show.  The show opens on Thursday in, of all places, Geneva.

But they've let the press in already.

Very much as I'd love to be there with them, I cannot be for various reasons including work commitments, family commitments, finances, logistics and the fact that I'm not a real journalist.

So I have to pick apart what they are all reporting.

Let's start with the good. That would be The Mitsubishi CE-MiEV.

This is the much-better follow-up to the i-MiEV.  Autocar cover it here.  It is an electric car with better range and recharging times than the i-MiEV but still not as good as the Silex Power Chreos.

 

Most importantly, though, it doesn't look stupid like the i-MiEV - actually, I think it looks a lot like a Prius.  But not as good looking as Mitsubishi's other offering at the show, the GR-HEV:

A futuristic- looking  hybrid pick-up with a one-tonne payload.

 

OK, so that's the "good", evironmentally friendly and all that, now for the "bad".  I don't mean "bad" as in "not good", I mean "bad" in the Michael Jackson way.

 

Now, I don't mean "Michael Jackson way" as in the dodgy allegations that saw him in Court, I mean the "Michael Jackson way" as in the 1987 album he called "Bad".

 

Now that's clarified, I expected the "baddest" car at Geneva to be the McLaren P1 but it seems to have had the headlines taken off it by the Rolls-Royce Wraith. 

Here's one of Autoguide's stories on it. It is described as the most powerful Rolls ever. I'd say it would be a bit of a Bentley-worrier. They claim it's in a different price-bracket but I think it's a lot more attractive and should appeal to the Cheshire set - it's only the suicide-doors that I don't like. It also has a neat headlining inside which looks like a starry sky at night. It has been done before but will give that "out in a cabriolet on a warm Summer's evening" feeling that everyone loves so much.

 

Don't they?

 

Oh well, even so, it does look appealing.

 

Which brings me neatly round to...

 

...THE UGLY!

Not sure what the man in the photo is doing.  That thing is a Toyota i-Road.  It's an electric three-wheeler, two-seater much in the vein of the Renault Twizy.  And the glass doors means it shares a problem with the Twizy in that people will be able to see you driving it.  I've read a few reviews of the Twizy being tested in the UK and each time the reviewer has commented about derogatory remarks being shouted at him.  Now I can't possibly condone such action. 

 

But I can well understand it.

 

Now to "the beautiful".  When I read this article in caradvice.com.au about the ItalDesign Giugiaro Parcour concept, I immediately thought of  the Silex Power Chreos in as much as it is a pretty, computer-generated car:

However, if this is vapour-ware, it is very solid because here are some people having a good, close look at it...

I think it is gorgeous and very reminiscent of the supercars of my childhood in the '70s.

 

That was a time when ItalDesign were doing their only other work that I am aware of - ie, the squaring off of the Morris Marina to produce the Morris Ital:

Also, the peak time for Ford to be producing the Escort.  I keep thinking they've started again because I keep seeing stories about this car at Geneva:

It's the Ford EcoSport - which looks like "Escort" when you're flicking through car stories.  This car looks nothing like an Escort, though. It looks like a tall Ford Kuga - the Ford Kuga it will be replacing as opposed to the bigger "World Car" Ford Kuga that seems to have replaced the outgoing Ford Kuga here in The UK.  Confusing eh?

 

So, in summary, that's the 2013 Geneva Motor Show.  You don't need to go now.

Take Your Penguin To Work

This drawing (for it is only a concept) of a very short underground train carriage is a Rinspeed Micromax.

You will observe that it has plenty of room for a driver, three passengers sort of standing up, a baby-buggy/wheelchair/shopping cart and a penguin. Not sure why you would want to take a penguin but that definitely looks like Pingu in the front there.

This concept will be appearing at The 2013 Geneva Motor Show and the story is covered by most of the online motoring press including AutoGuide and caradvice.com.au who advise you to "Stand up and strap in" - kinky!

Needless to say in a modern-day Car Show concept - it is all electric and, given it's obvious commutey taxi-cab urban madate, that is the sensible powertrain to be using.

For those not familiar with Rinspeed - they are not a Belgian Dishwasher manufacturer - they are a Swiss vehicle design-and-manufacture outfit. They have produced many vehicles usually taking a familiar product of a mainstream manufacturer and upgrading it - or coming up with a completely new take. Here is one of my favourites:

Pity it's called the ZaZen - daft name.

To learn more, check out their Website or look at their Google Images.

and if you don't want to pick up a penguin...

...you could always grab a Taxi...