August 2010

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So as you probably know by now if you read my waffling, I live and breathe cars and slowly they are, or rather bits of them, are making their way into my house to be used as bits of furniture. My housemate is currently building a coffee table out of a Caddy tailgate and we already have a small table made out of a Capri 4 spoke wheel, I also have all manor of random parts around but they aren’t so much furniture and more just stuff that isn’t in the garage… I will have to get some pictures up at some point.

Anyway I’m not the first person to do this, everyone knows about the Top Gear set and of course I have talked about it before with the post “The Finest Sofas Money Can Buy” but now it would seem you can have the ultimate motorists holiday in Stuttgart if you go and stay in the amazing 4 star V8 Hotel.

v8 hotel outside 519x419 The V8 Hotel   Stuttgart

Now that's a car park!

To put it simply this looks like one of the coolest hotels in the world, actually one of the coolest PLACES in the world! (Ok some of the rooms may be a bit cheesy but I like cheese, its the perfect accompaniment to toast)

v8 hotel mercedes car wash room 519x394 The V8 Hotel   Stuttgart

Cheesy?

It has 34 rooms with varying styles going from normal to grown up kids playground (what adult wouldn’t want to sleep in a race car bed?) The furniture in all the rooms looks absolutely amazing and brilliantly done and from the costs of some of the pieces in my other blog post probably wasn’t cheap for them to get hold of or make!

v8 hotel sensible room 519x395 The V8 Hotel   Stuttgart

v8 hotel safari tuning 519x395 The V8 Hotel   Stuttgart

v8 hotel oval bank picture 519x395 The V8 Hotel   Stuttgart

One of the more sensible rooms, even non car lovers would agree this is nice!

v8 hotel morris minor room 519x376 The V8 Hotel   Stuttgart

One of the more extreme rooms! Even has comedy fake legs under the Minor front end

v8 hotel loop the loop bed 519x395 The V8 Hotel   Stuttgart

I'm not sure how this is car related but my god it is awesome!

I think they missed a trick in the hallway/entrance though, the V8 engine table is superb but the sofas are a bit normal! They need to be the back of a BMW 2002….

v8 hotel entrance foyer 519x395 The V8 Hotel   Stuttgart

The drive in lobby is good...

The land of all things extreme and rich, Abu Dhabi has decided that it would like its own theme park. Being Abu Dhabi though, this could not be any normal theme park with a few roller coasters and some food courts, oooh no! This is the United Arab Emirates, home to man made islands and the Burj Khalifa, and they are both in Dubai, which Abu Dhabi recently just bailed out with uber amounts of money! So obviously they needed to do something pretty spectacular to make every other theme park look positively shoddy in comparison.

They are not disappointing! How does a 200,000m² under cover Ferrari themed park sound?

Apparently they want to get it ready to open before the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix this year so hopefully they haven’t contracted it to the same people who made the new Wembley…

The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix is on the 12th of November and with the F1 being as exciting as it has been this year it should be a good race so a trip to see the newly opened Ferrari World theme park and then watch the Abu Dhabi GP is high on my wishlist for this year. Flights to Abu Dhabi could probably be had quite cheap if booked early enough so who wants to come with me? You’re paying…

Just FYI those interested here is how the Driver Championship stands at the moment for the F1 (top drivers)

1 Lewis Hamilton - British – McLaren-Mercedes - 182
2 Mark Webber - Australian – RBR-Renault - 179
3 Sebastian Vettel - German – RBR-Renault - 151
4 Jenson Button - British -  McLaren-Mercedes  - 147
5 Fernando Alonso - Spanish - Ferrari - 141
6 Felipe Massa - Brazilian - Ferrari - 109
7 Robert Kubica - Polish – Renault - 104
8 Nico Rosberg - German - Mercedes GP - 102

Blog Love!

Just thought I would spread some blog love around, these are either the blogs you will have come across before or blogs you really should have come across before!

First up is pretty much one of the biggest car blogs on the net Speedhunters! Updated all the time with some of the most high quality features you will see online and always getting the most stunning pictures it is definitely one to check regularly.

BonnevilleROD 8010 519x346 Blog Love!

Next up is one for all the kids who only care about fitment and lows, Stanceworks! It can be a bit scene sometimes and its mostly BMW/VW stuff but if you want to see some perfect stance then you need to go no further.

stanceworks bmw e36 519x346 Blog Love!

One of my favourite small blogs at the moment is Mechanical Mammoth. The guy running it seems to have my exact tastes and has a very special talent for finding the most awesome cars and bikes on the net.

ford pick up on air 519x377 Blog Love!

And lastly for now Bubblevisor. Mostly bike related it has awesome bobbers and choppers all over the place and tons of old skool pictures from ‘back in the day’

Vogue April 15 1967 Dragsters bubblevisor 519x723 Blog Love!

Enjoy!

It’s one of the perpetual things going through the minds of car fans whenever they see a film with car stunts or an episode of Top Gear, the constant battle you have with yourself when saying ‘wow that was cool’ and ‘what a shame that car is now dead’.

I love watching cars in films but inevitably one of the awesome cars will get wrecked and a little bit of me will die inside, I can’t help it, even when I know its just a stunt car that is already ruined beyond belief or a fake prop car that has no internals and is just a shell, there is always a a part of me that will cringe a little.

I’m not one of the people who will get all angry about it and write in to complain about it and for the sake of some kind of warped entertainment I do enjoy watching massive crashes (the car chase scene is Blues Brothers is one of the best bits of film ever) but I am just saying there is a little part of me that feels sad and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

So I was in two minds as to whether a new art exhibition by a chap called Jonathan Schipper was cool or just a waste of some awesome cars. The sculpture is a machine that pushes two cars together very slowly with a lot of force over several days and this simulates a head on collision. The cars are moved so slow that it is invisible to see but they end up crushed at the front and about 3 foot in the air. The artist has said he has done it several times all over a different length of time with the quickest being three and a half days and the slowest being six whole weeks!

jonathan schipper death of american muscle 519x162 Slow Motion Car Crash   Art?

jonathan schipper death of american muscle 1 519x344 Slow Motion Car Crash   Art?

It is very cool to see it happen in the time lapse videos and its interesting to see how easily different bits crumple and where they crumple but I think I am looking at it from a techy POV and not an artistic one, this is what his website says about it from an artists point of view;

When we see an automobile destroyed, in a way we are looking at our own inevitable death. This moment is, because of it’s inherent speed, almost invisible. We have slowed the event via film and video but only from a cameras perspective. We never get to see the transformation of living breathing car too wreck in its entirety, in detail. This piece offers the viewer the ability to examine in three dimensions the collision of these cars. A moment that might take a fraction of a second in an actual collision will be expanded to take days.

Whether you think that is artistic genius or nonsense is up to you but I have to admit it does look really quite cool. Everything was painstakingly worked out so that the cars would be pushed together at the same force as a head on collision at 30 mph and at the very least it gives you an insight to exactly how your car will perform in a crash if you own either a ’92 Camaro or a ’88 Monte Carlo and you drive into someone.

jonathan schipper death of american muscle 2 519x344 Slow Motion Car Crash   Art?

As much as I didn’t like seeing the cars get destroyed there is also a part of me that wants to see it on a much bigger scale with vans or trucks being used, hell why not even get two massive articulated lorries and do it! The force you would need would be enormous!

jonathan schipper death of american muscle 3 519x344 Slow Motion Car Crash   Art?

To see the videos visit his site here

Now let me go and weep a little bit for the destroyed muscle cars.

This is one of the coolest theme builds I think I have ever seen, the little bits that make up this car are nothing short of amazing. Check out the full story on the Hot Rod site.

hrdp 1007 01 o+1927 ford model t+chop top 519x389 Model T Awesomes Of The Day

hrdp 1007 03 o+1927 ford model t+with rear window chopped 3 inches down 519x389 Model T Awesomes Of The Day

hrdp 1007 05 o+top view of the+1927 ford model t 519x692 Model T Awesomes Of The Day

hrdp 1007 04 o+mercruiser version+of a chevy 2 engine 519x389 Model T Awesomes Of The Day

hrdp 1007 08 o+model a steering wheel+wrapped in heavy salt waterwater fishing line 519x389 Model T Awesomes Of The Day

If you are a fan of the world of retro, more than just cars and enjoy retro gaming, music and even Japanese culture you should check out the pretty new Status:Error blog. I shall be posting on there every now and again but it has a cool team posting lots of ace stuff quite regularly so its definitely one to bookmark!

I just did my first post on there introducing myself and my Ford and I’ll probably do another post more music related later on.

So go check it out and enjoy!

While I’m at it with the linking have you checked out the Loxlee Loves Engines Tumblr recently?…

It is an age old form of art that has been giving joy to motorists following vans for thousands of years and has turned phrases such as “I wish my wife was this dirty” into masterpieces that need to get  shown around town centres on the back of builders used vans. But now one man has taken it to a whole new level with some of the most ridiculously detailed drawings in dirt you will ever see.

Scott Wade lives down a long dirt road that absolutely coats all passing cars in a fine dust and I would imagine after he got bored of writing slogans and drawing rude things on cars near him he decided to see just how well he could actually draw.

The answer seems to be very well indeed! Check out some of his awesome work on his site ‘Dirty Car Art‘, below are some of my favourites!

albert einstein drawn in dirt 519x388 Dirty Car Art

hank williams drawn in dirt 519x345 Dirty Car Art

toobin drawn in dirt by scott wade 519x247 Dirty Car Art

him and her drawn in dirt 519x329 Dirty Car Art

kim and kelly news reporters drawn in dirt 519x389 Dirty Car Art

Now you may have realised I like the Datsun Z car’s quite a lot, I know nothing of them other than every time I see one they are AMAZING!

This little beauty just came up on my Loxlee Loves Engines Tumblr dashboard and I nearly broke my jaw as it fell onto the desk.

Lets all just take a moment to appreciate the ridiculous amounts of awesome on this car.

Datsun Z 519x348 Datsun Awesomes Of The Day

Remember to check out the LLE Tumblr for more pictures as ace as this.

pixel Datsun Awesomes Of The Day

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