By Marty Padgett
March 13th, 2006
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If you’re
Shaquille O’Neal, your 34th birthday party doesn’t have to end up at Dave and Buster’s with a run-out game card and only enough tickets to get a couple of erasers and a WWJD bracelet. No, when you’re Shaq, you can ask GM to underwrite the whole affair — and don’t forget the six-month-old baby tiger, thanks very much. The party — last Friday, if you didn’t get your invite until today — also featured the new
2007 Escalade, lest you think it was being held strictly because GM CEO Rick Wagoner admires Shaq’s free-throw skills or that Shaq regularly hangs with regional marketing managers.
Tags: Enthusiasts, Reviews, Shoppers
By Marty Padgett
March 10th, 2006
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Charlotte may have won the NASCAR Hall of Fame, but here in Atlanta we still have this
huge fishtank thingy and more
Home Depots than you can empty a wallet at, and the
nation's first "sewer mayor." Take that, Humpy!
Dieter Zetsche is taking a stand against
bribery at DaimlerChrysler. So does that mean over at
Volkswagen, they're taking allegations of company-paid hookers lying down?
We're preparing to be utterly charmed by
Pixar's Cars movie. So much so, we're already writing the TCConfidential review. Really we're just rewriting our
Brokeback Mountain review, and replacing every instance of "gay cowboys" with the words "huggable animated cars."
So maybe you'd be surprised to hear that a Canadian Web site was pilfering TCC content - or maybe you wouldn't be, since the stories this unnamed thief stole were those of much-loved Doug Flint. Imitation is flattery, but lifting whole stories and changing one or two words quite another. We'll leave it at that.
Jed Connelly won't be making the switch from L.A. to Nashville with the rest of
Nissan. Was it something they said? Or maybe the thought of having to tell Wynonna Judd to keep the Harley racket down?
A growing number of roadside arrests now involve
prescription drug Ambien. Drivers have reported waking up with no knowledge of speeding, having been in accidents, or having purchased tickets to
Madea's Family Reunion.
And finally this week,
gas prices seem to be heading up again for various reasons - high demand, instability in the Middle East, and our favorite standby excuse, "It happens to everyone."
Tags: Industry, Enthusiasts, Reviews, Shoppers
By Marty Padgett
March 10th, 2006
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There’s little doubt the
Geneva Motor Show is in the premier league of auto expos, but it also has an appeal for some smaller car companies that you’ve probably never heard of. They pay at exactly the same rate as the big boys for stand space, it’s just that they take a smaller area. Oh, and they generally get put in the tiny Hall 3 where few people ever go.
Take Gumpert, for example. It’s a new company created by Roland Gumpert, who was until recently a high-ranking executive at
Audi but has decided to live the dream. He was using Geneva to unveil the $235,000 Apollo two-seater, a sort of
Lotus Elise on steroids and finished in an eye-wateringly bright shade orange. Interestingly, he made no secret of his displeasure at being in Hall 3. “The organisers said we would be near other supercar makers such as Pagani, but we’re not. We tried to change it but there was no chance. I’m not very happy but we have to make the best of it,” he told me. There’s a 4.2-liter bi-turbo V8 behind the Apollo’s two chairs, giving a top speed of 224 mph. It takes just three seconds to get to 60 mph. Apparently some old mates from
Audi had ventured below the stairs to see him and the car, and had been very supportive.
Loremo is another name you won’t be familiar with, and like me you probably wouldn’t be too sure how to actually get into the vehicle. It doesn’t have any doors. I got Uli Sommer, the head of research and development at the Munich firm, to show me how it was done. He stuck his hand into what looked like an air vent near the front wheel and that released the whole front end. Hinged near the bumper, it pivoted upwards taking the dashboard and steering wheel with it. He invited me to step over the front wheel, sit down and pull on the steering column to bring it all back down on top of me. Easy enough, and actually very clever. The reason for it is simple — having doors at the side of a car weakens the structural strength of it, so why not have them somewhere else? I could see his point, but getting my 6’-4” frame up and out again involved the sort of contortions usually practiced by circus freaks. He wants the car in production by 2009.
I asked Loremo’s spokeswoman Andrea Schaller why the company is spending big money coming to Geneva, only to be in Hall 3 away from all the razzamatazz. “We are here because there are lots of innovative cars here. We are the right car in the right space. We know the technology works, but the most interesting think is finding out what the public think.” she said.
Hall 3 was also playing host to one of the show’s more radically styled vehicles. The Acabion GTBO36 looks like a glider without wings and has tandem-style seating for two. It runs like a motorbike, and has a 1.3-liter
Suzuki bike engine, but has two stabilizers that drop down at low speed. Boss Peter Maskus knows comparatively few people will visit his stand. “Yes, it costs a lot to be here and we are some way from being about to put this vehicle into production, but it’s worth being here. How else are we supposed to be tell people about what we’re doing?” Surprisingly Maskus was quite happy with his location. “Maybe I don’t want to be out there,” he said, pointing back towards where
Nissan and the others are. “Maybe our little stand will be the center of the show next year and everyone will come to see us!” Honorable intentions, but I wouldn’t hold my breath
.--Richard Yarrow
Tags: Industry, Enthusiasts, Reviews, Shoppers
Posted in: 2008, Lotus, Elise
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