The Good Die Young: BMW Is Killing Off The 1 Series M Coupe...

...after they produce it for one miserable year. And the thing is, motoring enthusiasts aren't really coming in droves to buy this car. Everyone's talking about this car as a return to BMW's E30 M3 roots but people aren't really buying it. They want big huge V8 M3s instead.


"But the question is, is the M Division into selling cars that are actually the 'Ultimate Driving Machines' or up to market forces? The reason I stated market forces because the report also stated that BMW admitted that less than a thousand units of the 1 series M Coupe will be produced instead......."


Click here to read more about it. Posted over on Myautoblog.org.

Since everyone's doing an Audi TT into an R8.....

"..... if you're rich and you couldn't care less about your Audi R8 looking like a TT, you should be the one doing such a thing. Everyone is making cheaper cars into more expensive ones so it will be something unique indeed if someone did it the other way round. "


Click here to read about it. Posted on Myautoblog.org.

The New Perodua Myvi: Pictures and Opinion

Typical Toyota/Daihatsu. In a way that is. The reason being that this all new Perodua Myvi is actually a million times better looking than the Toyota Passo version of it that was launched circa 2010 in Japan. That car (pic below) ended up looking ultra feminine and basically caters to the Japanese 'Ah Soh' customers (or those not familiar with the term - older auntie type people). These sort of customers buy the Passo simply as a means of transport. To the market and back. To the weekly bingo game and back. To the Hair Saloon and back.

Presenting Another Crazy Russian Monster SUV cum Sportback - Dartz Nagel

".... these Russians amaze the heck out of us. I get very amazed watching Sukhoi SU30s do incredible low speed maneuvers (at airshows), seen those large Russian Mil helicopters dump tons of water over fires (in a demonstration), felt the robustness of an AK47 and have even met a 75 year old Russian rocket scientist/engineer (who was still employed at the time) due to my line of work but when it comes to making cars, the Russians seem to think in ways weirder than even the Americans...."


The Russians are now King of the SUV hill. In my opinion that is.


Click here to read about it.

R172 Mercedes Benz SLK gets tuned by Piecha Design

"Styling exercises actually make more money for these tuners as nearly everyone wants the car to look really good outside of clubs, bistros and hotel lobbies instead of tearing up the autobahn."


Bodykits hit the streets so fast it makes your head spin. The new R172 Mercedes Benz SLK gets tweaked as soon as its out of the showroom. But as usual, its only about the looks. Performance parts take awhile longer.


Click here to read about it.

Subaru small cars are now Toyotas and why the new Impreza is slightly dull

"Of course it does. But they're so utterly predictable and dull vehicles. Take the Toyota Passo a.k.a Daihatsu Sirion/Boon a.k.a Perodua Myvi a.k.a Subaru Justy. They may look slightly different with different eylashes, skirts or jewellery, but they are basically the same shape."


So economic pressures have led Subaru to stop making their own small cars. Sad news. And why does the new Impreza look a little dull?

Click here to find out. 

Austin Mini 1275GT

I wrote a piece for Carthrottle.com on the Mini 1275GT recently. Imagine that, driving a tiny little car all the way from Ipoh to Kuala Lumpur. I left at night from Simpang Pulai near Ipoh and it was raining. The wipers were intermittent in that the wiper motor did not have enough juice to move them all the time (due to faulty grounding) and I was basically driving a dark B-road in the rain. Quite a scare but at least the very old car had good lights to balance things off slightly.

On those B-roads I felt like Paddy Hopkirk driving in a rally. Of course this wasn't a snowy Monte Carlo but it was pretty wet nonetheless. Driving a Mini on a B-road is certainly one of motoring's greatest pleasures.

Driving on the highway was slightly unnerving at the start. You feel slightly small until you get used to those lorries and busses passing by or when you're passing them instead. At least you can maintain a steady cruise of about 100km/h so that progress isn't that slow. It was a nice slow drive basically, one that I could actually enjoy listening to that 1,275cc engine and transmission do its Mini-like thrum. No other car has a noise combo like it so much so that when BMW made the new Cooper S, that supercharger actually mimicked that original gearbox whine.

 "On the B-roads it was a little bouncy but on the 12 inch Minilite wheels and tire combo the ride felt waaayyy better than the original 10inch rims and tires. I suppose this is due to the improvement in modern rubber. The Mini actually cornered better and rode more comfortably than when it first left the factory nearly 35 years ago. "

Read more about the Mini 1275GT here.

p/s. I did not drive back to KL without some semblance of back-up. Two cars left for KL that night, the other was this car from the cat family. A real mis-match.

More on my trip to Kuantan and something about New York's Yellow Cabs

As some of you readers may have read I was in Kuantan recently and this is a slightly more detailed write-up about it. Of course, I still left some bits out, mostly non-motoring. I took hundreds of shots, from a 16mp camera down to a 2mp camera phone. This mostly came from a 5mp camera phone as downloading a lot of 16mp photos takes up bandwidth and a chunk of my data plan. But what these photographs do is tell the story.

Click here to read about Kuantan.

And now, on something iconic. The yellow cabs in New York will be replaced in 2013 by Nissan Minivans. Sigh.

Click here to read more about it. Posted on MyAutoblog.org.

A-pillars in Cars These Days

I wrote a piece on how A-Pillars and side mirrors in cars have grown over the years over on MyAutoblog.org. A very relevant topic if I may say so.

" A Hyundai Atoz suddenly appeared out of nowhere. 'Nowhere' in this context meant that it appeared after it was hidden behind the A-pillar as well as the large elephant-like driver's side mirror."


Click here to read about it.