JJ ROG 81: Offbeat News

Showing posts with label Offbeat News. Show all posts

President Obama’s Cadillac gets Trapped on a Ramp in Ireland

The heavily armored Cadillac that U.S. President Obama relies on for short-distance travel caused an embarrassing moment during his trip in Dublin, Ireland, today when it got jammed on a ramp after exiting the U.S. Embassy's complex. The first cars from the presidential motorcade passed without problems through the gates of the Embassy, but a BMW 7-Series preceding the Cadillac slightly touched the asphalt.

The Presidential Cadillac, nicknamed ‘The Beast’, came next and hit the ground much harder and was immobilized. "There was a loud kind of bang, metal-on-metal, grinding, crunching noise and the car was stuck," an RTE reporter told the AFP.

As the adage goes, there is no such thing as bad publicity and it is better to be reviled and even mocked at than to be ignored. In the case of Larry Roesch Volkswagon (that’s how the name of the German automaker is spelled on the dealer’s Youtube account), making the automotive ridiculist was intentional to grab some media and customer attention. And since we’re here talking about it, you could say that their goal has been achieved…

The VW dealer has published a series of intentionally cheap and corny commercials starring one of the company’s salesmen, Nick Pontarelli. In two of the videos, Pontarelli abuses a Volkswagen Golf GTI and a Jetta by forcefully shutting and climbing onto the doors to prove the cars' ‘German’ strength and quality. His final statement is “try that with a Hyundai or a Honda”. Watch the clips after the break.

Today's video find contains three things: a police vehicle, a dangerous individual and a high-speed run that could answer the question what would Grand Theft Auto look in real life. It all started on Friday, March 13 when 38-year-old Arthur Lee Thompson allegedly attempted to steal a computer from a Walmart store in Summerville, South Carolina. According to the report, when faced by the store manager, he purportedly punched him in the mouth and took off in a green Jeep Grand Cherokee.

The police were called in to investigate and it didn’t take long for an officer to locate Thompson and pull him over. From there on, the entire incident was caught on film by the police cruiser’s inboard camera.

Back in 2009, an FBI agent made headlines after crashing a rare $750,000 Ferrari F50 that had been stored in a government impound lot. The story has it that the Italian supercar was stolen from a Pennsylvania dealer in late 2003, and while the insurance company paid off on the loss, the F50 was eventually found in August of 2008 in Kentucky. The V12-powered model from Maranello was then impounded and kept in Lexington, Kentucky, as part of an active criminal investigation. And here’s where the story gets interesting.

In May of 2009, FBI agent Fred Kingston invited Assistant U.S. Attorney J. Hamilton Thompson for a “short ride” in the 1995 Ferrari F50, of which 349 were ever made with only 50 coming to the States. Unfortunately, the joy ride was cut short after the driver lost control of the Italian supercar.

The BMW Group’s Mini division continues to support the Life Ball gala, Europe’s largest annual charity event in the fight against HIV and AIDS, by commissioning designers to fashion up its cars and then offer them up for auction. For this year’s event in Vienna, Austria, brothers Dean and Dan Caten, who are better known as the Canadian designer duo DSQUARED², crafted the Red Mudder based on the three-door Mini Cooper S.

Along with Peugeot’s award winning 205 (remember the Rallye and the GTi?), the Fiat Uno is considered one of the finest superminis to come out of Europe in the 1980s. And the fact that both models remained in the market with small changes for more than a decade is a testament to that. The Uno’s clean and modern lines were the work of Giorgetto Giugiaro's ItalDesign, which has now passed into the hands of the ever-growing Volkswagen Group.

The Uno Turbo with its 1.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine developing 105HP at launch and 118HP in the refreshed model was the flagship version of the range. And as with any other hot hatch, the Uno Turbo was subjected to numerous modifications, be that in design or performance. That said, we’re accustomed to seeing the Uno Turbo in strange outfits, but what we have here is beyond words…

There are very few cars in this world that can stir our imagination just by looking at them parked on the road, and this is one of them. We’re talking about the top dog in Aston Martin’s current lineup, the One-77 supercar, which was filmed here on the streets of London as it was being started up and ready to launch, by a Youtube user. It’s always great to see a rare supercar being used on the road instead of spending its life in a garage as a centerpiece.

What we learn from specialized publications is that all cars have their flaws, no matter how expensive they are. So could there be such a thing as a perfect car? Autocar believes it so, with the British magazine going as far as creating renderings and specifying a driver’s ideal set of wheel. Editor-at-large Steve Sutcliffe's vision of the perfect sports car goes like this: an open-top two-seater with a mid-engine layout, rear-wheel-drive, less than 1,000 kg (2,204 lbs) and with a price of £35,000 ($56,800).

“As the world of cars gets ever more complex and produces machines that are increasingly sophisticated in their design and engineering, there’s still a desire for something at the other end of the scale. A sports car that’s simple to understand and interact with. And, most of all, dead good fun to drive,” says Sutcliffe.

Saab is in trouble. With mounting debts and limited capital investment, the Swedish company is a prime candidate to go the way of the dinosaurs. The troubled automaker has not built a single vehicle since the 1st of April, and a much touted deal with China’s Hawtai Motor Group has fallen through. They did however sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with another Chinese company called Pang Da Automobile Trade Co. Ltd, earlier this week, but we will have to wait and see if the deal goes through.

In light of this, I’ve thought up four plausible (though unlikely) scenarios for Saab. These range from the hugely cynical all the way to the brazenly optimistic. After all, isn’t it better than Saab has some future rather than no future at all? Without further ado, here are your options:

The hows and whens of this accident involving a double-decker lorry full of cars that fell on its side dropping the top row of vehicles on the road remains unknown as the video footage your about to see was filmed during the recovery process.

A service truck along with its crew hooked up the 18-wheeler and tried to get it back on its feet. Well, let’s just say the procedure didn’t go as planned as they managed to flip the truck for a second time thus completing the damages on the rest of the vehicles on the bottom row… Video follow after the break.

As car owners, most of us have had bad experiences with auto service stations, either official or independent. Of course, carmakers don't like competition from independent units, so here's what Honda of Malaysia thinks of these stations. In a commercial for the local market, Honda mocks an independent garage called “HONDI” which, as you may have already assumed, offers bad service for big bucks.

A beautiful young woman, owner of a Honda Civic, is shown taking her car to the Hondi service center, where all sorts of strange things happen, with the personnel doing a crappy job while singing their own version of the famous “YMCA” song. If only service stations were such a blast... Follow the jump to watch the ad.

Leaving the revolutionary but with a small footprint A2 from the late 1990s aside, Audi never really delved directly into the minivan market preferring instead the more lucrative premium crossover segment. And this despite the fact that the VW Group has presented several people carriers over the years. However, when there’s a will, there’s a way, as this creation proves.

Race car drivers are a funny bunch. In this video, we see Brazilian Formula 1 driver and the nephew of the late three-time Formula One world champ Ayrton Senna, Bruno Senna, behind the wheel of the new Renault R30 at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. “Oh,” you say in your most jaded tone, “How interesting.” Well it is interesting, as Senna is driving this 2,400 cc (146.5 cu in) single-handed while filming the action with a camera phone. Read more »

Some Like it Very Hot: Fiat’s New Campaign for 500 by Gucci

Russian model Natalya Sergeyevna Polevshchikova, more commonly known as Natasha Poly, is the new face (and legs…) of Fiat’s advertising campaign for the limited edition 500 by Gucci. The blonde temptress from the land of hot spies, beautiful ballets and Vodka, is dressed in a one-of-a-kind black leather ensemble and is all over the 500’s ultra compact body [sic...].

The campaign was imagined by Gucci Creative Director Frida Giannini, who was also responsible for the design of the special edition 500. Fiat said the single and double-page advertisements will appear in publications throughout the year.

Audi of America has launched a new advertising campaign that will most likely generate a similar response from the competition in the premium segment. Under the tagline “Car Carrier”, the two Audi commercials feature a BMW owner that goes nuts when he sees a truck full of brand new automotive metal from Ingolstadt.

Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not a huge fan of beatboxing. It’s something me and my friends were big into in junior high, but I’ve since outgrown it. Others have not. In a recent TV spot promoting the latest-generation Volkswagen Polo GTI, the Singapore arm of global marketing agency Tribal DDB brought in local beatboxing talent Dharni Ng to lay down some slick beats.

The result is...interesting, I guess. I’m not really in much of a position to judge beatboxing, so it’s hard to tell if this is good or merely average. You can check out the full ad below and an additional clip of Ng “rehearsing” while being driven about in the Veedub. Oh, and don’t forget to leave a comment in the section below.

Automakers' design departments have started to explore new areas beyond automobile styling, with the first two examples that come to mind being Porsche and BMW. Following in the footsteps of its local rivals is Daimler and its “Mercedes-Benz Style” venture that has just released its first project after announcing the launch of the division a year ago.

We're talking about the Eurocopter EC145, a business helicopter with an interior crafted by Mercedes-Benz’s newly formed styling division. Designed at the company's studio in Como, Italy, the interior of the EC145 “Mercedes-Benz Style” helicopter is inspired by the Stuttgart-based automaker’s executive saloons.

Internet and software bigwig Google has begun lobbying the state of Nevada to legalize driverless cars. The move comes on the heels of some very promising results in California, where Google had mapped out the terrain and sent a couple of its autonomous Toyota Priuses (Prii? Priora?) on an epic jaunt from Mountain View to Santa Monica.

The California-based company is keen to point out the claimed benefits of self-driving cars over their human-driven counterparts including better safety, improved fuel efficient and greater environmental friendliness.

If you wondering why we have been dragging our feet on the news front these past few weeks, it’s because we were busy with the HTML5’s and CSS’s of our brand new template. True, the feel and the design have remained more or less the same with some subtle changes in the aesthetics and the size of our site, which is slightly more compact, but almost everything underneath is new.

Think of antonio melandries Version 5.0 as something like a new Porsche; while the looks remain the same (to the previous Version 4.3), everything else is new or revamped. In our case, this should translate to a better experience on most modern browsers and more importantly, faster speeds regardless the connection.

Lately, it seems that pushing an out-of-juice electric car is quickly becoming a trademark of Britain’s popular Top Gear TV series. After the Tesla Motors row, it seems another EV will be featured in the show while being pushed. This time it's the Nissan Leaf, whose batteries ran dry while being driven by Jeremy Clarkson.

Fortunately, one of the many witnesses of the event caught Clarkson and James May trying to find an outlet to plug for the Leaf on camera. The two TV hosts were filming a test drive with the Nissan Leaf and the Peugeot iOn for the next episode of the show. After looking for outlets in the park, the crew eventually plugged the Leaf in at the UK's University of Lincoln.

JJ ROG 81

President Obama’s Cadillac gets Trapped on a Ramp in Ireland

VW Salesman Likes to Bang and Jump on Doors

Real Life Grand Theft Auto with Man Stealing Police Car and Crashing it into a Truck

Feds Won’t Pay the Bill for a Ferrari F50 Wrecked by an FBI Agent

Rough & Tough MINI DSQUARED² Glides Down the Catwalk in Vienna

Audi-fied Fiat Uno Turbo is a Hideous Eyesore

Aston Martin’s One-77 Supercar Filmed on the Streets of London

Autocar Magazine Envisions the Perfect Driver's Car with the BS1 (No Pun Intended…)

What Lies Ahead in Saab’s Future?

Double Fail: Service Crew Flips Double-Decker Truck Full of Cars

Hilarious Honda Malaysia Ad Mocks Independent Service Centers

A bit of Abracadabra turns a Seat into an Audi Alhambra

Bruno Senna Drivers An F1 Car...One Handed!

Some Like it Very Hot: Fiat’s New Campaign for 500 by Gucci

Audi Challenges BMW, Mercedes and Lexus with new Ad Campaign

Beatboxing with the Polo GTI: New TV Spot from Singapore

Eurocopter’s C145 Helicopter gets a Mercedes-Flavored Interior

Viva Las Vegas: Google Lobbies to Legalize Self-Driving Cars in Nevada

antonio melandries Version 5.0 has Arrived: Tell us What You Think about our Latest Redesign

Top Gear vs. Electric Cars Part Two: Nissan Leaf Runs of out Electric Juice…

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