Smart Audio

Photo: Karl Hallik

I mentioned the Smart Car in the last post. There is only one thing it is useful for, in my opinion. Yes, all you Smart owners, turn your car into a jukebox! Notice the speakers in the door? Well they're in both doors, plus a heapload of subwoofers and amplifiers behind the seats. I'm not a tweaked audio freak, but I smiled seeing that Smart car put to good use.
The only OK Smart car is the roadster, because it just looks too funky. And they say it's wonderful to try on track (how hard can it be to handle a picnic basket anyway?).

Photo: virtualauto.it

Another new Subaru

Photo: Karl Hallik

Not quite what you'd expect, eh? Despite the looks it's probably not a contender to Subaru's JWRC programme. Why? Well, a whopping 1-litre engine does probably not compete with.. um.. anything. I understand Subaru comes from the East, where they're fond of little cardboard boxes on wheels, but why introduce it in the European market? People would rather have the boxer diesel engine than the Justy, if they want to be 'green'.
Take the Smart car for example. It's tiny. It's slow. You can fit two men and a case of beer there and that's it. And yet it takes up 5 litres of petrol per 100km, 8 if there are people on both seats. I've got a diesel Audi, it takes 5 litres to a 100 in town even with three people and their bags in. Go figure.

Subaru Lacetti/Chevrolet Impreza

As a special request I'd like to bring out a weird similarity. This will probably be my last post from the car show, since it's running out of date.
Photo: Karl Hallik

This is a Chevrolet Lacetti hatchback. It's quite old already, so to say. Yet it's quite nice and sporty. Perhaps they've benefitted from their WTCC experience (the rear wing of their WTCC car is seen in the background). Anyway, the point of the post is here:
Photo: Karl Hallik

This is the new Subaru Impreza. It came out about half a year after the Lacetti. Did they run out of ideas or something? Because.. well.. apart from the rear side window, they're quite similar. So, if I bought a Lacetti for half the price of a Subaru, painted it blue and installed gold rims, would you really be able to say I'm a Subaru wannabe?

PS, when Subaru came out with their hideous hatchback, people were thanking God Mitsubishi kept their EVO as a sedan. Two months later Mitsubishi 'proudly' announced the new EVO will be a hatchback. Good-bye pretty rally cars!

The Ford Kuga and the KIA Something

Photo: Karl Hallik

I'm quite excited about this car. Not only does it look good, but I suppose Ford has made some good use of their off-road experience and thus the car might just work off the black stuff. I suppose I should take it to the forest once they let people test drive it. But until I do, I quite like the car. Just hope the power cable underneath the front end is not associated to the car.

Photo: Karl Hallik

This car, on the other hand, I do not like. I know it's just a prototype, an idea model, but still. The front lights are from a Honda Accord, the led-lights come from the new Audi A4 and A5/S5, the bottom grill looks like it's nicked off the Audi Q7 and then badly deformed. The 'rear wing' contraption comes from a VW Touareg. If you enlarge the picture, you see the funniest ever tyre pattern. Such tyres would get stuck on a gravel road, let alone mud or anything of the sort.
And of course the cherry on the top - what's with the colour? Would you buy a candy green jeep?

A Vito!

Photo: Karl Hallik

This is the new Mercedes Vito. No, wait, it's the one on the left. No, maybe the one on the right.. or the black one at the back?

All in all there were 13 (I kid you not) Mercedes Vitos on display. Next to a selection of Porsche supercars and Peugeot design wonders. Mercedes small cars were in a different hall. This is probably the worst example of setting up a display.

But still, why 13 examples of the same car? Yeah, I get it, one has five seats and a huge boot, the other has three seats and an even larger boot, the third has a fridge for a boot.

One of them had a side door open. But we couldn't sit there, because the seats had been folded down and there was no way of getting them up. None of the gazillion knobs and levers worked, there were no instructions, and the salespeople were more interested in the pie stand in the corner. So all the people saw were 13 nearly identical vans and no-one to promote them. Go vans!

Instant wet dream classic

Photo:coolsupercars.com

A fellow blogger, Chris Hafner, let out a post about the original McLaren F1. My professor Scott Abel (the nemesis responsible for nearly every blog that starts in BFM) sent me the link to the post. I thought I'd send him a thank you E-mail, but it came out too long, so I thought I'd post it as well.

Hey, that's almost as good a race car as this: http://estcar.blogspot.com/2008/05/true-rally-car.html

Well, just kidding. The original McLarenF1 has been a wet dream for every petrolhead I suppose.
I'd like to point out tho, that this guy got one thing very very wrong. He said that it's surprising McLaren used power by BMW instead of they usual supplier, Mercedes. The car started in 1992.

Here are McLaren's engine suppliers throughout 1992-1995:
1992: Honda
1993: Ford
1994: Lamborghini (indeed, a V12, but chrysler was producing those at the time, so they were quite sluggish), later Peugeot
1995: Mercedes

So thank god, they took a BMW engine, otherwise you'd have a Honda-powered MC (good at 0-60, able to rev up to a millio rpm, yet slow as hell on higher speeds), a Ford or Chrysler/Lambo produced MC (a powerful engine capable of exhausting Saudi-Arabia with just a trip to the shop), or a Mercedes engine from the early to mid 1990s (there is a reason why 190E was the best they had to offer, and I'm not talking about the purple body).

Supercops

Photo: Postimees /van depicted not connected to the story/

I was driving towards school today, thinking whether or not I will be late. I was doing 55km/h as usually (city limit's at 50), and turned a corner to find myself behind a police van. I kept my distance from the bus at a constant ~30metres. Guess what happened. I found myself doing 65+, when we got to a 40km/h area, we slowed down to 55. The cops had no sirens or signal lights on. I was not late to school.

And these are the people who fine us for doing 55km/h on a bad day..

A true Rally car

Photo: Karl Hallik

Roll Cage - check
Bucket Seats - check
Rally Steering Wheel - check
Five Point Seat Belts - check
Cheap Plastic around the Steering column - check
Alternator Switch from a Belarus Tractor - check

What do you get?
Oh yes, the one, the only.. Dacia Logan Sports. No further comments. Didn't even take a picture from the outside somewhy. If you have any proof of this car in action, please contact me.

By the way, check out the roll cage. It ends before the dashboard, leaving the glove compartment and side ventilation outlets untouched. Go figure.

What the hell happened in Tallinn?

Photo: Tricia Ares


I was driving to a meeting in Kadriorg today. I was driving there from my house in Nõmme. It's about 20 kilometres there, but it tooks me exactly 80 minutes. 65 of which was spent on a strip of about 7 kilometres. I have not seen Tallinn so stuck since G.W. Bush blessed us with his presence and the Police turned the town centre into spookyville.

My friend spent exactly an hour going from Mustamäe to Kadriorg. It usually takes about 20-30 minutes during rush hour. I myself left home calculating that I should be able to spend ten minutes before the meeting chatting to people. Instead, I was 35 minutes late. What went wrong?

The new Cadillac Bulls...

Photo: Karl Hallik

This is definitely a bad name for a car. Yeah, sure, you can read it 'the Cadillac Bee-El-Es', but it's just so much easier to say 'the Cadillac Bulz', which can either resemble two round objects, or is short for some bovine excrement. A definite no-no in today's word of MSN-like abbreviations.

Otherwise all the Cadillacs looked about the same, huge hunks of metal, cheap plastic and the fuel consumption of a small European country. I worked on a TV project concerning some Escalades and they started to lose bits of trim after a few weeks of everyday use. No German build quality here.

Here starts the show

I know it is a bit late for it, but alas, even I am human. Anyway, I am going to give my totally subjective view on the Tallinn Motor Show that took place at the end of April.
I just got all my photos more or less organized, so I will post in a random order, pretty much the same order I walked through the show.

The show itself was pretty big, it was in four big halls plus outside, between the halls around the Saku Suurhall area. Most suppliers here were represented (rumours are every supplier except for Saksa Auto (VW)), but I did not keep track of that. Why didn't I? Well, if they weren't there, they will not be commented on in this blog, will they? It's their loss (or gain).

So, anyway, let's start with a little big something I found in the outside department.

Photo: Karl Hallik

This is the GAZ 33081 "SADKO". GAZ (Gorky Automobile Plant) used to bethe truck for a long time in the Soviet Union. The marvel about this here green meanie is that it looks like a hybrid of GAZ51 and GAZ53 (produced from 1946 to the 1990s), which means if you happen to total it, you can buy cheap spare parts from every junkyard, which has any of those previous models there.
It's got a 4,36 litre turbo diesel engine, which creates 100kW at some point in it's life. And it weighs up to 6300 kilos. Basically it does not even promise to be faster than the old ones.

Photo: Karl Hallik

This here is the new MAZ. I will not even bother with the model name or number for various reasons. One: It's probably a series of numbers, which will not tell the average person anything. Two: It's not really their car.

The new MAZ is made using almost everything they got from big MAN trucks. Even the name is almost the same. The powertrain and drivetrain (the engine, the gearbox, and every bit that brings the power from them to the road) are from MAN trucks. The people in Minsk (MAZ - Minsk Automobile Plant) did the cabin (which looks a lot like.. you got it, a MAN) and the body and frame of the car.
A trucker friend told me the frame is so weak, if you run the car fully loaded for a while, then dump the load, it will be screwed. Literally. The main frame bars running from front to back are so soft, the full load the specifications say it can carry, will deform them. Go figure why they make a truck like that.

I wonder why they did not have the infamous KAMAZ there, which used to be the best dump truck ever due to its size (it was short, yet high, so big loads and access to areas big truck couldn't get to). I mean, they even race the DAKAR Rally (won seven times). And as their site shows, they're still active. Here's a piece of nostalgia for all of you ex-Soviet people.

Photo: Wikipedia