Alonline » motoring

3,000bhp Chevy

Al — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:08:56 +0000

Take an old American car, completely rebuild it with a space-frame chassis and then fir a 3,000bhp Merlin engine from a Spitfire. Do this and you have a nice car, but when you spend that extra time in getting the bodywork and artwork just right then you end up with an amazing car. I’d love to see a video of this car in real action, but this video shows how well prepared it is.

V12 Powered Chevy

Offroad madness

Al — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:27:05 +0000

Not a lot to say about this other than it involves a lot of offroad vehicles: bikes, buggies, jeeps and trucks; racing and leaping around dirt tracks. I’d like to know whether this inspired Motorstorm for the PS3, or whether they played the game and thought “Hell yeah! We can do that!”

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Brutal anti-drink-driving video

Al — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 02:30:31 +0000

This is harsh, and although in French I’m sure you’ll be able to follow it.

Veyron smashed by younger brother

Al — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 00:45:10 +0000

Ouch! That’s got to hurt! The owner of a brand new Bugatti Veyron let his younger brother take it out for a spin – which he did literally. He managed to crash at 100mph on a 40mph section of road, write off the Veyron and a van driven by a pregnant women (who was fortunately OK), and end up stuck in some trees. Now that’s got to hurt for the guy who crashed the Veyron, but can you imagine how the owning brother must feel when £830,000 of car, which was only delivered last week, is totally wrecked?

Insurance assessors have not yet decided whether the car will be a write off – but even if it’s not it will cost a lot of money to repair. Now imagine that the younger brother only had 3rd party insurance, because he was driving a car he was not directly insured on…that could end up costing one of the brothers the entire cost of rebuilding the car. Now, given that Volkswagen are apparently losing £3.5million on every car they sell, the rebuild costs are going to be very, very expensive. Also, since they are only building a limited number of Veyrons there’s not likely to be that many spare parts knocking around.

If I was the younger brother I would be thinking about leaving the country right now. As he’s likely to be facing some serious charges for dangerous driving (100mph in a 40mph area), likely to lose his license, likely to be jeered by anyone who knows what an idiot he has been, likely to be lynched by any serious car enthusiasts and will definitely not be popular with the rest of his family. Maybe he can go canoeing and just disappear.

3 good bike stunts

Al — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 23:13:44 +0000

The first stunt on this video is not that exciting really, the second makes you wonder how people practice doing backflips with ATV’s, and the third is rather cool.

Impossible Is Nothing. Gravity On Wheels – Watch more amazing videos here

Colin McRae dead in helicopter crash

Al — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 01:16:41 +0000

It looks as though Colin McRae has just been killed in a helicopter crash near his home in Lanarkshire. Colin was piloting the helicopter when it crashed, and had 3 passengers on board – 2 of them children. If this is true then it’s devastating news for his wife and daughter, plus the family of his friend and friend’s son who were also on board. It’s likely we’ll never know the details of this crash, but I’m sorry to hear this as I’ve met Colin once, and he was a nice guy.

The ultimate motorhome

Al — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 23:04:21 +0000

When I win the lottery I will seriously consider one of these. I’d really like to go travelling around Europe, and one of these, complete with Mercedes SLK or similar, would be an ideal way of doing that traveling. There’s no need to plan hotels ahead of time, you can just drive until you find a campsite, or even park up in a layby for the night. With a motorhome like this, any layby instantly becomes a 4* resting place.

The perfect parking meter?

Al — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 23:50:41 +0000

Living within 5 minutes walk of the town centre, I hardly ever have to pay for parking. But sometimes I need to drive into town to carry a large or heavy item home, and then I might need to pay. I don’t have a problem with paying to park, although paying over £1 for an hour seems a little steep to me, but I hate that feeling of low-grade worry you get when you know you’re approaching the limit of your parking, you’re not quite ready to go back to the car yet, and you’re unsure whether you should head back to the car to avoid getting fined, or whether you can risk an extra 15 minutes to finish your trip.

This new parking meter cures that problem, and a few others too, as it offers the option of automatically renewing your payment without you having to rush back to the meter. It also allows a period of grace, during which you can return to the meter and pay for the period you have missed and the remaining period of your parking; and just in case you forget the time the meter will remind you that your time is up.

Sounds like an excellent idea to me – I wonder if councils will be prepared to lose the parking fines they now collect, in return for better payments from parking meter customers. I’d guess they might actually stand to increase their revenue, as they wouldn’t need so many traffic wardens, but I guess that will be up to the council to decide.

Bugatti Veyron – Pegaso edition

Al — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 00:08:44 +0000

If you have a ridiculous amount of money, then there is always temptation to use that money for ridiculous ends. In this instance a Russian oil baron decided that the ultimate supercar, the Bugatti Veyron, was not ultimate enough, and decided to have it modified so that it now produces 1200BHP – which is rather a lot. It’s hard to say whether this car is now worth any more, or less, than it’s initial price of $1.2million, however it is certainly unique.

Mission Zero: an expensive advert

Al — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:11:15 +0000

Uma Thurman appears everywhere these days; which is no bad thing as she is still utterly gorgeous. Here she is in what must be a very expensive advert, as it’s virtually an action sequence from a film (although not a great film). At the end I was unsure quite what it had to do with Pirelli P-Zeroes, as this would have been a better advert for Lamborghini. Still, it’s worth a watch just for Uma.