The season premiere was last night at 9 PM central. Lemme tell you, those people are friggin crazy! There was ice cracks an inch or so wide, the unnerving sound of ice stress-cracking under the load of the semis, and talk of waves underneath the ice generated by the pressure of the trucks’ weight. No way you’d catch me doing that, but I’m sure the money’s pretty good.
Pretty cool show, and even cooler that Bill called out how cool the ice truckers were a couple months ago.
Seems like car and truck commercials generate one of three feelings for me: 1.) Laughter, 2.) Apathy (if apathy can be a feeling, which is really its own discussion), and 3.) Disgust.
The Chevy truck commercials with John Mellencamp singing “This is our country” never failed to bring out a solid number 3. I wonder if that dude lost a divorce settlement or something. I’ve never heard him sound more soulless. It’s like he’s trying to sound like something else.
This is arrrrr kuuuun tray
Add the crappy song to a pandering, quasi-political, film-school-wannabe, piece of junk like the stuff below, and voila! America’s crappiest commercial ever. Don’t take my word for it. Take a look below and form your own opinion.
This is the sort of thing you find when you browse around the Auto & Vehicles category on YouTube late at night.
Since it’s Japanese, here’s the idea: Have a pitching machine set to throw a baseball at 100 kilometers per hour (a little over 62 MPH) mounted in the back of a truck going 100 KPH in the other direction. You can guess what happens, but it’s still an interesting visualization.
Today we’re counting down the 5 coolest music videos for gearheads. Take a few minutes, check out the videos, and feel free to agree or disagree in the comments.
5.) Gretchen Wilson - Redneck Woman
Any girl who goes out muddin’ behind the wheel of a beat-to-hell Chevy 4×4 has got to make this list.
4.) Nelly - Ride Wit Me
Any gearhead reading this blog should immediately recognize the movie on which the premise of this video is based. Smokey and the Bandit, duh. Genius.
3.) Metallica - Fuel
The words on the screen sort of reminds you of the cult classic movie Hot Rods to Hell
2.) Ice Cube - Today was a Good Day
This actually isn’t Ice Cube’s most lowrider-laden video. I think that honor goes to Chrome and Paint, which was actually shot at the 2006 SEMA show in Las Vegas. Awesome. The thing about this video has to do with the song as much as the video. Lots of people have great memories of cruising around listening to this song, and the video captures that perfectly. If the neighborhood in this video looks familiar, you must be a fellow Grand Theft Auto San Andreas player.
1.) ZZ Top - Legs
Oh yeah. What kind of a list would this be without a ZZ Top Eliminator video in the #1 spot? Almost all the singles from ZZ Top’s Eliminator album feature noted car guy Billy Gibbons’ 32 Ford coupe with the ZZ graphics and of course, the ZZ keys. These videos are great - and they usually seem to revolve around slutty looking 80s chicks helping people hook up with each other. This makes sense because who else besides a trio of slutty chicks would be better to help you meet that perfect someone? Add in some pulsing guitar rock and it’s all gravy. These videos are entertaining, the car is incredibly cool and is a very big part of the videos, and the music’s pretty kickin’ too.
The car in the videos from ZZ Top’s Eliminator album was a character all by itself. ZZ Top rode this gimmick for a whole album’s worth of videos, and even tried to take it to the next level for the videos to their next album - Afterburner. As you can see if you can stand to watch the video for “Sleeping Bag”, it didn’t go over as well as I imagine they’d hoped.
In case you missed it, a picture of the Mach 5 - Speed Racer’s awesome race car - have been released for the upcoming live action Speed Racer movie, which is due out next summer. Here’s a little taste:
Lemme tell ya, that looks great. Looks a lot like the one from the cartoon. If you look closely, the Mach 5 appears to be a Corvette C3 underneath. Not too bad. Corvette C3s are like sports car chicken - they kind of look like everything. You can make Speed Racer’s Mach 5 from one, and Sonny Crockett’s Ferrari Daytona on the Miami Vice series was also a Corvette C3 underneath.
Along with the job well done on the Mach 5, the casting department is doing pretty good with Speed and Trixie, too. Here are some side-by-side shots of the characters on the cartoon, and the actors who’ve been cast to play them in the movie.
As a car guy, car commercials tend to catch my eye. Well, sometimes they do. Sometimes a commercial is made and released into the wild that makes everyone notice, not just car guys. The following commercials are a few of my favorites, in no particular order.
After the Dude, you bought a girl car? post last week, I got a few comments from people who were surprised that the Chevy HHR didn’t make the list. Do you think automakers design a car and instantly know what kind of person is most likely going to buy it? Makes you wonder when you see this commercial, which always makes me laugh. When you see the tagline at the end, are they saying that girls should get one because guys can’t keep their hands off it? That’s like saying the HHR is like the roofies of current production automobiles. Anyway, here’s the commercial:
A few years back, BMW created a site called BMW Films and had a few very well known movie directors (Guy Ritchie, Ang Lee, John Woo, etc) make eight incredibly good mini-movies that doubled as car commercials. The mini-films had recognizable actors (Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, Stellan Skarsgard, Lois Smith, Madonna, etc.) and were longer than the thirty second spots that were common on television. What BMW did by putting this much time and effort into car commercials was to get consumers to actually seek out BMW commercials; as opposed to simply being exposed to them. The result was a landmark campaign that ran for four years that has been imitated with less success by competitors. The following is my favorite in the series:
I have to confess: I love lowriders. I would love to have one of these awesome hopping Impalas. This commercial is one of two I remembered from Chevrolet. The other one was for the Silverado SS, and at least I found the music for that one Return of the Tres - Delinquent Habits (if you wanna see/hear this awesome song, go to the link, click on Videos, the Return of the Tres - you won’t regret it). Unfortunately, I couldn’t find both commercials. If anyone finds the other one, I’d love to have it or a link to it. The music on this one is “I’ll be Around” by The Spinners. Good stuff.
Unfortunately, the newer Impala they’re trying to sell in this commercial looks really out of place. By showing this commercial and the culture that sprung up around the older Chevrolets, it makes everyone very much aware of the gap between those much revered older Chevys and the newer ones.
I just saw a re-run of MTV’s Pimp My Ride. Let me tell you, I’m pretty impressed.
I used to love this show, but then I got a little tired of these guys seeing how many monitors they could fit in a car. This episode, however, was a bit different. Instead of just dubs and 20 million video monitors, there was dubs, 20 million video monitors, and an 800 horsepower engine with 1400 lb-ft of torque that gets 25 MPG in a 1965 Impala SS. This engine pushed the heavy Impala to a 0-60 time of around 3.5 seconds. That’s gol-darned fast, son.
The kicker? All this was done using zero fossil fuels.
These amazing numbers were reached by using a turbocharged Chevy Duramax diesel engine with a few standard diesel go-fast goodies backed by an Allison tranny and a Currie rear end. All this was done specifically for the Impala to use 100% biodiesel (B100) as it’s fuel. All of this was done by MTV as part of their Break the Addiction campaign for Earth Day. In addition to Xzibit, Mad Mike, and Beau; the unveiling was done by California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger at Galpin Auto Sports (G.A.S.).
Check out the episodes on MTV.com, where there’s a nice drag race between the Impala and a Lamborghini Gallardo. Be sure to keep an eye on Gov. Schwarzenegger when they explain the upholstery to him.
I got a very interesting email from a lady named Jenna Bowles at The Futures Channel, a company that makes “micro-documentaries” geared toward students. The films all provide answers to the biggest question I had as a young gearhead sitting in algebra/geometry/physics class:
“When will I ever use this?”
Their latest micro-documentary titled Creating Cars (click to watch the video) takes them to meet members of the design team at Ford’s Advanced Design Center in Irvine, California. Hmm, does that design shop sound familiar? They’ve produced some of the more exciting concepts in recent history, including the Forty Nine concept, the Cobra concept (that was on the TV show Rides), and the now-in-production GT.
Let’s take a quick break to salivate:
What’s say we read an excerpt of their press release:
Their work is confidential. The technology is cutting edge. The competition is fierce. The secret? Ford Motor Company’s concept cars.
At Ford’s Advanced Design Studio in Irvine, California, designers and engineers are developing new car designs that won’t be seen on the road for another ten years or longer. “We work as far into the future as our imaginations can take us,” said Fairuz Jane Arabo, a color and materials designer for Ford.
After spending years designing and building their concept cars, Ford, along with the other major car manufacturers, debut their latest concept cars at annual auto shows around the world for their competitors and the public to see. In “Creating Cars,” a web documentary released today, The Futures Channel gives viewers access to the Advanced Product Creation Group at Ford to find out what goes into their innovative, futuristic concept cars.
Using technology to show impressionable minds what the future could hold for them, if they stay motivated and focused. This is a company after my own heart.
OK, settle in. This is gonna be a long post, especially if you watch all the movies.
After running across a YouTube clip from The Driver, I decided that my first actual post on this blog should be a subject that touches the heart of almost every car guy or girl: car chases. I have no idea why movies today don’t have good car chase scenes. I think a lot of the problem is that modern CGI technology gives moviemakers an easy way to fake the incredible stunts that helped make older movies with car chases so great. Call it The Matrix Effect.
Anyway, here are Autoblogger.net’s top five best car chases of all time, in reverse order:
Summary:
This is one of the coolest car chases in a movie that not a lot of folks have seen. The ending was especially good on this one, and car chase endings are a sticky point for me.
Memories:
Does anyone else my age (mid 30s) have memories of riding around in those giant land yachts from the early 70s with gobs of torque and big cubic inch engines? Those things practically floated on air, and the door handles nearly scraped when going around a curve because the suspension was so soft. I think those cars were purposefully engineered to put kids asleep in the back seat.
Notes:
An interesting thing to keep an eye on here is the driver of the land yacht. You’ll be seeing him again in this list. The bad guy in the passenger seat of the land yacht is obviously a rookie at getting chased. He pretty much wigs out the whole time, flailing his arms, holding on to the grab handle, and generally looking like a big wuss. Come on, bad guy. In the words of Tom Landry, act like you’ve been there before!
Summary:
One of the most classic catastrophic car chases in movie history. I think this movie wiped out every mid 70s Dodge Monaco in Illinois. It touches a pet peeve of mine for realism for the Bluesmobile being a “magic car”, but in the end it makes up for it by dropping a Ford Pinto station wagon (containing Illinois Nazis) from a height so tall the filmmakers had to get FAA certification. Looking back, it was the only humane thing to do to the Pinto.
Memories:
“It’s got a cop motor, a 440 cubic inch plant, it’s got cop tires, cop suspensions, cop shocks. It’s a model made before catalytic converters so it’ll run good on regular gas. What do you say, is it the new Bluesmobile or what?”
Notes:
At the time of its release, this movie held the world record for number of cars crashed. In a 1998 interview for Universal, John Landis credited mob help for getting permission from the Cook County Board of Commissioners for this (alluding to the Board being mob-controlled at that time). The political outrage for the damage caused by this car chase actually caused the mayor of Chicago to lose a bid for re-election.
Some people use their automobiles only to get from Point A to Point B. You know there's more than that. You get mad when someone makes a remark about your car that's less than flattering. You get riled when a cool car is destroyed in a straight-to-video movie. You realize when a new car doesn't deserve it's name of a great car of the past. When you see someone driving a boring vehicle, you feel sorry for them. You know it's not the destination that counts - it's the journey.
Welcome home gearheads. Welcome home, car freaks. Welcome to the site that fuels your automotive obsession - AutomotiveBlogger.net
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