My time in the SS

I thought I'd scribble some words about my Camaro that I had owned for about a year.
A nice chap bought a very nice G-Wagon AMG from me and left this dusty Camaro in the park with the promise to collect it later that night, a few days go by, and the Camaro still remained in our car park. I called him and asked him when he'd like to take it as we need the space. He pretty much told me that he didn't want the car anymore and would I like it.

The price was extremely fair and it was enough that I couldn't refuse it, even though I had not intended to buy a Camaro or anything like that to be honest. I had always dismissed 'yank tanks' because of the horror stories that you hear as a European about the built quality.

I started using it almost immediately and quickly started to see why the Camaro is actually rated rather highly and puts in half reasonable lap times on a track. The engine is great, a typically American V8 enormous in capacity and spewing out torques with every burbley revolution. The handling was even half decent, quite well balance and with plenty of grip. It was an SS model with the LSD so it could always get the power down to the tarmac or destroy both tyres at an equal rate depending on how you look at it. Build quality was good, actually better than good but not on par with the offerings from Germany but then again it's a Chevrolet Camaro not a BMW M3 and the price reflects this, in terms of value for money it's excellent.

I had many amusing drives out to Fujairah and RAK in it, one memorable drive was to Jebel Jais with a group of friends and I had manage to do a couple of perfect drifts around the hairpin bends which was fantastic fun. Another time on the Kalba roads I gave the car a good work out and it is surprising just how fast it is on sweeping and undulating roads keeping up with what you'd perceive to be much quicker cars.

Acting as a mobile chicane.

The downsides are that it did like to munch through Super unleaded like I drink cold water with a hangover, average was about 14L/100km which wasn't terrible, if I drove carefully on a long cruise I could just about keep it under 10L. But on a 'fun' drive that number would go to 25L, 30L, or even 38L I saw once, so yeah there have been refinery fires that have been more efficient than this. Also driving like a moron also yielded near constant rear tyre replacement which at 1,400 AED each gets pretty annoying every 5 weeks. I tried to be clever and found some Chinese tyres for 500 AED each think they're called 'Nankang Ditchfinders' or something and I'm not sure what compound they're supposed to be but I think possibly they are manufactured out of dustbins. The tyre didn't wear like normal tyres, instead it shod small chunks every now and again or if it did manage to get hot enough to start melting it threw melted rubber all over the wheel arches. Obviously within hours of fitting them they had become egg shaped which resulted in a cartoon like ride, won't bother with those again.

Overall I have admit that secretly I rather enjoyed my time with the SS, even though if you had asked me even 4 weeks before I bought it if I would buy one I would have swore blind that never in a million years could such a thing happen. Truth be told it's actually a pretty good car and superb value for money given the performance. 400bhp and a great V8 soundtrack with handling that is easy to control and fun and when pushed even good enough to keep up with 'quicker' cars.

Would I buy one again? Probably not, unless one fell into my lap at a cheap price.
Would I buy an American muscle car again? Absolutely. A Challenger Hellcat looks like the most comedic thing on the planet, but from what I've read the next generation Camaro could very well be a good all round performer so let's see what they come out with.

Car names

During my daily utterly horrendous commute to work this morning I was pondering names of cars. Some models have become household names that we don't even think about what they actually say anymore. Like the VW Golf, we just say it not thinking that Golf is a sport for men who have too much free time, and it isn't really a sport, all Golf does is ruin a good walk.

I started started to try and think of the best car names, the one that springs to mind immediately is the Jensen Interceptor, such an unfathomably cool name, it's easily worth the asking price of this lovely classic just to announce to your friends that you will be taking the 'Interceptor' this weekend. Another frankly awesome model in more modern times is the Ford Raptor, naming a vehicle after a terrifying dino-lizard that will hunt you down and kill you using cunning and huge claws.

Here we see a Raptor pouncing on a weaker model.

Another model name I absolutely love is the Lamborghini Countach, apparently it's what car designer Giuseppe Bertone blurted out when he first saw the prototype for the vehicle in his studio. Countach which basically means 'Holy shit!' in his local North Italian dialect. I can't imagine what he said when he actually drove it, but I'm sure they would not of been allowed to name it that series of expletives.

There are plenty other of really great names for cars, but there is no point to list them all because I'm sure you're got a brain like mine and are already thinking of the same ones I am, like Viper or Diablo.

Then you have the middle ground of car names, which are superbly efficient and don't mean anything. Like Audi S6, Porsche 911, and Mercedes E300,  We all know what they are because they've been around for so long we just accept that they've been named in the same way Hewlet Packard names printer cartridges. I don't mind this way of naming cars, it's definitively German and works quite well, apart from when it gets convoluted and stupid like for example the BMW 328i which is now a 1997cc four cylinder engine albeit a very cleverly engineered one, but why didn't they just call it the 320i and make it simple, this 'up badging' as I call it seems to be finding home with all the big German manufacturers now. They seem to have dropped their horsepower race of the early to mid noughties with this never ending one upping of each other of their badges, it won't be long before you can walk into a Mercedes showroom and purchase a new C30000 fitted with a 2000cc engine, because C30000 sounds better than C200, supposedly.

Then we have the bottom end of the automotive naming system, the stupid and pointlessly named cars. The Hyundai Pony for example, I mean what are you trying to say about your product by naming it the very thing it is designed to replace. It's like calling a computer the new Dell Typewriter or how about trying out the new Casio Abacus.

I suppose at least it isn't offensive, like the Mitsubishi Pajero, which is actually a swearword in Spain and a derogatory term for a laborer in other Spanish speaking countries. They actually rebranded the car as the Montery in some markets because of this, still makes me smirk whenever I see it though, I can't imagine another manufacturer making the same mistake again, but perhaps you know better and if you know of any please get in touch. Secretly I do hope that a manufacturer does though, I'd love to see the marketing material for the all new Fiat Stupid Twat or the Subaru Lazy Bastard. Whilst I think of it, if you saying Toyota MR2 in French "Est merdeux" it does sound a lot like the expression for it's shit, another one to chortle at if you ever see an MR2 on the roads here. Which you won't because they're all in the bin by now.

The award for lazy automotive nomenclature goes to Volkswagen. Once upon a time they did actually name a car the 'thing' fair enough it was crap so probably didn't warranty having any effort spending on it, but still, they could of at least tried. Even the manufacturers from English speaking countries have made daft choices, like Ford, in the 90s they had a sporty coupe called the Probe, I just can't imagine anyone proudly saying at the water cooler on a Monday morning "Oh Dave, I had a fantastic time with my Probe this weekend, I even woke up early just to play with it. My Probe sure gets my heart racing..."

But my absolute favorite for crap car names goes down to one of the following. Sadly neither of which you will probably ever see on the road here.

Izuzu Mysterious Utility Wizard.... Yes that's what it is called. Just think about the mental state of the people that decided this was a great choice of a new SUV. Is mysterious a quality anybody actually wants in a car?

Vauxhall Adam... Terrible name. Adam is the name of a 42 year old account who lives in North London that cycles to work everyday, not the name of an exciting little hatchback.

Gaylord Gladiator... Just read that again, now say it outloud. Now look around and notice how other human beings have retreated away from you. No matter how good this car ever was it was doomed to fail from the start. It just sounds like the nick name given to the prison rapist. Could you imagine the length of the conversation when someone asks you what do you drive?

Gaylord Gladiator - Nice wheels, someone did a great rim job here.

I did see another great car name a while ago, actually saw it myself in person whilst I was in Ajman.
It was a Chinese SUV, looks like the kind of thing that Chevrolet would have declined to build in the 1980s but knowing how old fashioned Chinese cars can be, it was probably only a few years old. I think it was manufactured by some bland three digit name like COW or something, but the model name was hilarious. First it was a long badge that essentially took up 50% of the width on the tail gate, along the lines of HAC-J50HXG80LLX25S it basically looked like the machine that prints the badges was stuck on Windows printer test page, and then under neath this ridiculous name it was proudly displaying the sub-model name, the mighty, the majestic, pride of the fleet 'City Cowboy'. What was the point of giving it that long stupid name, to then top it off with that.

They could at least just be honest and name it the 'Crap but cheap', like Izuzu did with their 7.5 ton truck, the 'light dump'.

For sale, forever.

I was meandering through Dubizzle trawling the motors section as I often do when I stumbled across something for sale which will haunt me forever.

I don't even know where to begin with this, I actually need a thesaurus just to find some new vocabulary as I don't possess the words necessary to articulate just how horrendous this is.

Let's start with what it is. It's a car, apparently, manufactured by a New York based mental institution called Zimmer and this fine piece is known as the 'Golden Spirit' which I presume is just lazily named because of the golden bonnet ornament, it's probably a copy of the Rolls Royce 'Spirit of Ecstasy', I can't be bothered to zoom in and check for fear of being sick and I'm not interested enough to research it.

The story of it's inception according to someone on Wikipedia is -

"The idea for this automobile was initially drawn on a napkin at a private dinner between Paul Zimmer, Chairman and President of Zimmer Corporation and Bob Zimmer, Paul Zimmer's son, employee and shareholder of the company."

Basically they're in a meth lab together, totally off their faces when Paul thought it would be cool if someone redesigned a car for Hitler. He transcribed his hallucinogenic trip onto a napkin, most likely in blood and excrement. His son took one look at it, and once he had regained consciousness he responded with "Whoa man, that like, totally, like blows my mind man."

This one I found on Dubizzle was actually produced in 1987, begs the question who would of bought such a thing. I have three possible answers, one of which is that time travel is very real and someone simply went from 1972 to 1987. Or perhaps Zimmer had found someone cryogenically frozen and unfroze them just so they could sell it. Thirdly it could of possibly been a genuine buyer there was a lot of very drunk rich people around in the late 1980s.

Yep, it looks pretty dreadful inside there too. Loving the Recaro seats trimmed in afterbirth purple leather. The dials and wood dashboard look like they came from a 1970s Bentley, how uncouth.

Just what is going on back here. Did someone honestly design this, take a step back and this was acceptable? It looks busier than Dubai Mall parking on a Thursday night. Clearly one spare wheel isn't enough, everyone knows that these days tyre quality is so poor that even on a car that isn't designed to be used every day needs to carry 3 spare wheels.

I just can't imagine how these ever sold, they did apparently have a showroom in Jeddah. I can't imagine you'd get too many "Wallah habibi"s driving that around, I'm willing to bet the Police would take you in for questioning and try and charge you with crimes against humanity. Apparently the showroom still exists in KSA, if anyone finds it please send me a photo.

Is the standard response.

It is for sale by 'Top Gear - Used Car Trading' in Dubai if anyone would like to buy it. It's only done 64,000 I guess miles rather than KM since the advert states it is an American spec vehicle. If you have some sort of disorder and would like the most vulgar car ever designed then please get in touch with them and I'd love to hear from you too, the asking price is 

THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND DIRHAMS!!!!

I honestly can not fathom where they got that price from (how much must they be new?) and why did they stop at 300,000 AED why didn't they just make it eleventy-nine-hundred-billion it wouldn't of made any difference to the progress of the sale.

I would like to hear from anybody that can generate an valid argument for buying this car for 300,000 AED, sure if it was 3,000 dirhams it would be amusing to buy it drive it around until it got impounded and then just leave it to die.

Oh and if anyone does see this car in Al Awir take a video of the sound of the horn, I'm 99% sure it will have a comedy sounding horn.

I looked at it again...

.

Because French.

I was going to write a big article ranting of why French cars don't sell well here but then I found an image which basically summed it up for me which I shall reveal to you later.

My history with French cars is pretty minimal, I don't think I've ever actually owned one, maybe I have but purely just to sell on again immediately. I've had a number of friends who elected, against my best advice, to purchase a vehicle built (I use the term loosely) in the peoples republic of France, a nation famed for cheese, wine, and surrendering.

I remember one friend years ago bought a new Citroen C4 with a crappy low spec 1600cc engine that had about the same amount of power as a recently deceased bird and was as refined as emptying a bucket of excrement from a balcony into the street below. Needless to say it never did many KM because the car was constantly in the workshop and the owner was always afriad to drive it too far away from home for fear of it dying, I think he sold it finally after 3 years and 15,000km for a tremendous loss and 36 months of absolute crap motoring. Did he save money? Sure he did, a Golf would have cost several thousand pounds sterling more but he would of enjoyed his ownership and after 3 years when he wanted to move it on he would of been able to get more than small change for his car.

The only French car I'd buy, and I wouldn't buy one here and in any case I don't think you could find one here is the Renault Avantime. A truly pointless car that I can only imagine started out as a joke in a very lazy meeting

Renault Boss - Come on guys, think up something wacky and interesting! Like a big 7 seat people carrier but instead put it with 4 seats, 2 doors, and more glass than the Lourve.

*leaves the room*

Renault design team- Okay, MPV, 4 seats, 2 doors, lots of glass. That work for everybody? Let's take the rest of the day off...

LOL - What have you done?

I think it looks kind of cool, in a quirky kind of way. A bit like the Japanese bullet train, it's pretty ugly but somehow it is quite nice to look at. I'd buy one of these just for the sake of having it, in Europe you can buy these for such small money these days and providing you can keep it from breaking in any irreparable way then I honestly do think it will be a classic in future. Renault are a very old company and won't be going anywhere soon as even though they do make pretty abysmal cars they sell well in other parts of the world. If you get time have a flick through some videos of it on YouTube, the interior is really nice and it does have some very clever little touches and ideas.

I'd take a V6 automatic in the blue above or the bright green, although I can say with an enormous amount of certainty that I was would break mine almost immediately and render it utterly useless as a mode of transport.

If you are wondering what I was talking about at the start of the article, about the image I saw. It's this. The recall sheet for a popular French car in Europe, I don't even know if they import them here, I hope not for the sake of customers.

Wheels may fall off? Joking right?

Engine may fail? That's reassuring.

Rear screen may detach? I bet that's fun for the car behind on the highway.

Fuel may leak and create fire risk? LOL.

Directional control may be compromised? The steering doesn't work.

Can you imagine the fear of trying to drive that any distance, constantly worried about fire or a failing engine. It's amazing how this car even made it to production with these issues. Can you imagine Toyota or BMW releasing a car like this. It just wouldn't happen.

Conclusion?

In future the first 12 months production of any new French car should be sold as 'Beta Version' and once it's actually ironed out all the problems they can sell it as a fully functioning car.....

Inline but off center for Audi.

Autocar reports that Audi is working on a new four-cylinder engine that features a bank of inline pistons sitting offset and parallel to the crankshaft rather than directly above it.

A patent drawing of the proposed design has been discovered that depicts its unusual design, with pistons attached to connecting rods via rocker arms that are fitted with counterbalancing weights.

According to the patent filing, “damping free inertia forces” are created, which should reduce the vibration of the inline four cylinder to the level of a six or eight cylinder engine. Autocar speculates that lobes could be added to the crankshaft that would allow the motor operate using variable compression ratios, something that would be an excellent step in development of ever more efficient internal combustion engines.

Audi and its parent company, the Volkswagen Group, are no strangers to novel engine layouts, having featured inline 5 cylinder, narrow angle V6, W12 cylinder, and even W16 engines in their cars over the years.

I'm sure it will be quite some time before this new engine design ever makes it into the market, but Audi is set to launch a new motor next year that uses electrically-driven turbochargers to reduce lag and increase performance.

Dangers of US imports?

One thing that seems to come up repeatedly for me here when selling a car is this statement "I've seen an American specs one for xx,000 cheaper". Or often what happens is I will spend time with someone discussing a car only to find out a day later he/she/they decided to buy a seemingly identical one for less money.

American specification cars do differ from the specification that is originally destined for this region.
To some people a car is just a car and providing it is the same year and colour it might as well be identical, but underneath they can be very different and hide an unpleasant past.

US cars do often differ with the GCC equivalents, cars of German origin especially.

US Import - different bumpers, no xenon, no panoramic roof.

The US cars have different dashboards, different bumpers, different lights, often different exhaust/emissions systems so have sometimes have a lower power output than we have here. Depending on where in the States they've come from the AC system won't be up to the job, thus after an hour of driving in Summer the cabin will be at a temperature previously unknown to science. Then the engine overheats because the thermostat and cooling system are not configured for this climate because 6 months ago your car was sitting at -33c in Minnesota.

Another problem is accident damaged cars. The car is deemed roadworthy and irreparable in the States yet it can be exported and repaired very poorly in an unskilled workshop here, so if or rather given the standard of driving here you do have a crash you won't have the protection that the original manufacture intended, your vehicle might not even have airbags fitted. You can check for any registered accident damage by doing a report at www.carfax.com but it will only show you damage that was recorded, but what it does show is usually very detailed.

You've also got flood damaged cars to contend with, often insurance companies won't pay out on these if it is deemed that it was the owners own stupidity that caused the damage so what you find is that nothing is registered on any report because it never went through the process of insurers, rather the car is just sold as spares and then shipped here and as above 'fixed' and put back on the road. Flood damaged cars are a nightmare, they develop electrical gremlins that are seemingly incurable and you will spend weeks and tens of thousands replacing wiring looms, control modules and convenience units just to fix on mystery problem only for another to develop immediately after.

It doesn't always make financial sense to buy an imported car, sure it looks cheaper now but sometimes you'll find that it requires parts for servicing that are only for USA markets so will have to be brought here especially for you and I know of some main agencies/dealerships that won't touch a vehicle that isn't an original GCC vehicle.

You've got depreciation to take into consideration, sure you can save maybe 15,000 or even more on a 2012 Mercedes C-Class but when you want to sell it in 3 years or so it will be worth less than a GCC one anyway so you're never really financially that far ahead anyway.

You might save 5,000 or even 10,000 over the 3 years of ownership having a US imported car but one of the biggest annoyances for me is the options they come with, we've grown quite accustom in UAE to vehicles generally coming with very high level of factory options. It's extremely disappointing to get into an imported one and realise that it doesn't have the dual AC system, the sunblinds, parking sensors, bluetooth, navigation and if it's come from a cold climate state they will usually have small alloy wheels to accommodate the winter tyres which just look depressing compared to the big S-Line, AMG, M package wheels. It's a lot of hassle and in reality doesn't offer any substantial financial benefits worthy of the potential headache. It only makes sense if it's a car you really, really want and simply isn't officially imported here like a Tacoma.

I'm not saying that they've all previously been upside down, submerged and on fire, of course there are some perfectly fine ones. Just do a carfax report and check the car thoroughly.

Bentley SUV

Since I first saw images of the Bentley EXP 9 F concept at the 2012 Geneva motorshow it's been something that has been of intrigue to me. By now we aren't strangers to the concept of luxury SUV or even 'sporty' ones and the Bentley promised to delivery the most luxurious package possible along with ample performance.

But now it seems the concept is absolutely turning into a reality, as pre-production models have been spied testing in different parts of the world. It interests me because of the potential impact on the car market, especially here in the UAE.

Even discounting the NewBentley.com link on the side of the car it's pretty obvious from the front end and headlamps that this is unmistakably Bentley. It doesn't look that big though which is a bit odd, I was expecting a full on monstrously ostentatious behemoth that would make a Range-Rover look like a dustbin.

Obviously they can still change the styling and the back end isn't properly revealed yet either so it isn't possible to make a decision on how it looks but I suspect the proof of the pudding will be getting up close and personal with the Bentley in the flesh so to speak. I'm not able to find any proper photos of the interior but I'm sure it's going to be quite special, Bentley do have a way of doing things that just feel right.

Something which I'm sure will be most great importance will be the engine, I presumed that it would be fitted with the 4.0 V8 BiTurbo as found in the Continental GT. Possibly available with a large turbo diesel unit, probably the V8 TDi as found in the A8, which is pretty much magical, as far as diesel engines at least.

Thanks to the plate number being displayed on this photo I was able to run the number through a system in the UK, where the vehicle is registered, and pull some information. Turns out this test vehicle is actually fitted with a 6.0 engine, presumably the W12 twin turbo. An engine which in it's latest form produces 626bhp and a mighty 820Nm of Earth spinning torque. Which would certainly give this SUV a serious bit of go, I doubt it will make it into production in that level of tune but 550/580bhp seems about right any more and it just seems uncouth and totally unbecoming of a gentlemen driver.

I'm hoping to find out some more details about this new Bentley as time goes on. It is rumored for launch in 2016 which I don't doubt. As for the price, expect it to be a lot. I can't for any reason see why it would be any cheaper than the Mulsanne which comes to about 1.5Million AED. That's not to say that it won't be popular here.

Where else in the world is a 6000cc twin turbo SUV designed and built by one of the most expensive luxury car manufacturers going to sell in any substantial numbers?

In case you are still left wondering where the target market might be for Bentleys new venture into the luxury SUV market. The rumored name for this model?

The Bentley Falcon