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  • zebrafishzebrafish <°)))< in Octopussy's garden in the shade
    Posts: 4,341
    Is that ohne of the Matera stunt cars?
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited March 2021 Posts: 16,333
    Yes indeed. They presumably didn't get time to feature it on the programme.
  • 007InAction007InAction Australia
    edited March 2021 Posts: 2,515
    mtm wrote: »
    Yes indeed. They presumably didn't get time to feature it on the programme.

    How stupid is it not to have it on the show ?

    Here's the Mercedes-Benz EQS' ginormous Hyperscreen
    eqs-promo.jpg
    Looks better than the stick on tablets the tesla's and others have.
    https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/electric-mercedes-benz-eqs-sedan-reveal-interior-hyperscreen/
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 16,333
    Not stupid, no; there’s just a limit to what they can fit in. Also AM won’t tell or let anyone say what those replicas are based on (even though we know they’re BMW M3s!).
  • 007InAction007InAction Australia
    Posts: 2,515
    mtm wrote: »
    Not stupid, no; there’s just a limit to what they can fit in. Also AM won’t tell or let anyone say what those replicas are based on (even though we know they’re BMW M3s!).

    It's just over a minute lap so if they wanted to they could have easily fitted it on that or a future show surely ?
    It's the star car of the century that db5 bond car.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited March 2021 Posts: 16,333
    Pretty much all of the Stig laps live on YouTube now rather than the show. They already had a long part of the show devoted to the Goldfinger continuation DB5 so I can see why showing another, cosmetically identical car (but without gadgets) would have been something they trimmed out: the mainstream audience probably wouldn't care. Especially as they'd been sliding the real DB5 about a bit too.

    You can watch Harris having a brief walkaround of the cars here though:
  • 007InAction007InAction Australia
    edited March 2021 Posts: 2,515
    mtm wrote: »
    Pretty much all of the Stig laps live on YouTube now rather than the show. They already had a long part of the show devoted to the Goldfinger continuation DB5 so I can see why showing another, cosmetically identical car (but without gadgets) would have been something they trimmed out: the mainstream audience probably wouldn't care. Especially as they'd been sliding the real DB5 about a bit too.

    You can watch Harris having a brief walkaround of the cars here though:

    That must be Eon's or part of Eon's collection.
    Imagine how much insurance is for all of those cars ?
    Over $100 million easily worth there.
    I saw the toyota 2000gt and db5 when the bond props came to melbourne a few years ago.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 16,333
    I think you're right; I'm never sure who owns the cars though. Certainly quite a few are in private ownership or owned by the car companies (I remember going to Beaulieu a few years ago when Bond In Motion was on, saw that DAD Jaguar on show there, then went outside into the grounds where there was a gathering of the Jaguar XK owners group where there was another DAD Jaguar on show!).

    Of those cars there's the NTTD Aston V8 (owned by Aston I would guess..?) and the new continuation DB5 which has never been in a Bond film and on loan from Aston Martin: the rest I would guess are owned by Eon.
  • 007InAction007InAction Australia
    edited March 2021 Posts: 2,515
    mtm wrote: »
    I think you're right; I'm never sure who owns the cars though. Certainly quite a few are in private ownership or owned by the car companies (I remember going to Beaulieu a few years ago when Bond In Motion was on, saw that DAD Jaguar on show there, then went outside into the grounds where there was a gathering of the Jaguar XK owners group where there was another DAD Jaguar on show!).

    Of those cars there's the NTTD Aston V8 (owned by Aston I would guess..?) and the new continuation DB5 which has never been in a Bond film and on loan from Aston Martin: the rest I would guess are owned by Eon.

    I took some photos of the 2000gt and db5 which were displayed outside the show.
    Outside also was klebb's spiked shoe, herve's mask and a few more props.
    Inside there were a lot of props like the dr no dom bottle and ppk's etc So many props but sadly they didn't allow camera's.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 16,333
    No cameras? That's a shame.
  • 007InAction007InAction Australia
    edited March 2021 Posts: 2,515
    This was the Exhibition i went to.

  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 16,333
    Ah yes; I think I caught that at the Barbican in London!
  • QBranchQBranch Always have an escape plan. Mine is watching James Bond films.
    Posts: 14,551
    Cool videos! Coincidentally, I just posted a pic of that Moneypenny Whitehall ID in the collection thread, but I didn't know it was at this Designing 007 exhibit too.
  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy My Secret Lair
    Posts: 13,384
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited April 2021 Posts: 16,333
    Yeah it’s quite hard to get upset about. Equally slightly missing the point to release an April Fools two days early (in March)!
  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy My Secret Lair
    Posts: 13,384
    :D It's not the first time VW has put out False Information.
  • ImpertinentGoonImpertinentGoon Everybody needs a hobby.
    Posts: 1,351
    Corporate April Fool's "pranks" might be the nadir of human creativity. Dozens of probably pretty smart (or at least highly educated) people sitting around and coming up with something as bland as this and they can't even get the roll-out right. And that happens at so many companies and none of it is funny or interesting, because the ultimate goal is to "raise the profile of the new car in a "fun and interesting way"." My god.
  • MajorDSmytheMajorDSmythe "I tolerate this century, but I don't enjoy it."Moderator
    Posts: 13,978
    Say farewell to the Ford Mondeo, as Ford are giving it the chop next year, after 29 years.

    https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/ford-mondeo-be-discontinued-march-2022-after-29-years

  • zebrafishzebrafish <°)))< in Octopussy's garden in the shade
    Posts: 4,341
    Ultimate eye candy: The Stradale 33 / Visione.
    This Alfa Romeo Hypercar only exists on a computer, but how wonderful it would be if this could become a real car.

    https://www.behance.net/gallery/112867781/Stradale-33-Visione

    Alfa-Romeo-Stradale-33-Visione-Concept-2.jpg
    02-2021-Alfa-Romeo-Stradale-33-Visione-bigMobileWide-978f6c90-1768327.jpg
    02-2021-Alfa-Romeo-Stradale-33-Visione-bigMobileWide-73f89b3e-1768317.jpg

    And this is the original:
    ALFA-ROMEO-33-Stradale-5851_11.jpeg


  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 16,333
    I think I'd want to make sure it has a strong air conditioning system before driving that through Italy! :)
  • zebrafishzebrafish <°)))< in Octopussy's garden in the shade
    Posts: 4,341
    Haha, that's right. Especially since the engine is behind the headrests. :-bd
  • 007InAction007InAction Australia
    edited April 2021 Posts: 2,515
    McLaren Artura, Brands hatch, sliding..... :)>-
  • zebrafishzebrafish <°)))< in Octopussy's garden in the shade
    Posts: 4,341
    Then...
    mg-mga-1600-roadster-1960-red-9392202.jpg

    ... and now:
    mg-cyberster-1.jpg

    Concept of the MG Cyberster by SAIC, one of the big 4 of state-owned Chinese automakers. While this certainly is just a show car, the MG brand seems to be up for a revival, fully electric of course. Good or bad?
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited April 2021 Posts: 16,333
    The MG brand was revived in China several years ago: there's a few of them on the roads. I guess they actually might be the only Chinese car firm to sell cars in the UK in fact..?

    I can't get excited either way about them though. It really is just a badge with nothing behind it, they're not MGs.
  • Posts: 2,914
    The Clarkson Review: Ferrari Roma
    A Ferrari that’s fun, not totally bonkers

    By Jeremy Clarkson (Sunday Times, April 25)

    Let’s dive straight in, shall we. You’ve all noted from the pictures that this week I’m reviewing the Ferrari Roma, which is the cheapest Ferrari of them all, so I’m guessing you don’t want a five-hundred-word treatise on the origins of, say, trifle, followed by a sudden dogleg and then a few words on the car. Right. Happy to oblige.

    I took it over to see my friend Eric, who has owned many great Ferraris in the past. He knows the brand well. He knows the appeal. He also knows his cars — this is the man who produced the film Rush. So he climbed in, took one look at the digital dash and the complicated steering wheel, and then leapt straight out saying: “They’ve lost the plot.”

    There’s more. Ferrari is saying that the Roma is 70 per cent new, but people with adenoids and way too much time on their hands have worked out that it has exactly the same wheelbase as the unloved Portofino, so they’re saying that while 70 per cent of the components may be new, the basic architecture of the car, and its engine, is not new at all. Others are suggesting that it was supposed to have been a Maserati but Fiat changed its mind at the last minute and stuck a prancing horse on the back.

    Everyone else I talked to, including one guy who’s actually ordered one, said it looked very like an Aston Martin. It doesn’t. It does, however, look extremely similar to an F-type Jaguar, which costs £100,000 less.

    In short, then, the Roma doesn’t have much appeal to the mega Ferrari fans, it may not be what it says it is, and it isn’t what you’d call good value.

    However, I have been banging on for years that Ferrari is losing its way, that it’s a hatmaker first and foremost, and that the cars it makes are way too big, way too powerful and really only suitable for the rich and famous in Saudi Arabia. Driving an 812 GTS in Britain is like trying to ride a cow through your local antiques shop.

    So I was rather looking forward to the Roma because it’s small, and because its engine is not completely bonkers, and it’s at the front, which is where Ferrari always used to put them in the glory days. And why should we criticise it for looking like an F-type Jag? Isn’t that like saying about a woman: “The trouble is she looks too like Alicia Vikander”?

    Then there’s the price issue. Sure, at £170,000 it costs more than a Jag or a Porsche — and a hell of a lot more than a Ford Mustang — but that’s OK if it has the Ferrari magic. And there’s no way round this: it just does.

    When you turn the steering wheel, even if you’re not going especially quickly, a combination of many things, both visual and sensual, causes the pit of your stomach to feel momentarily warm, as though everything is suddenly all right in the world. I know this is the sort of pretentious twaddle Grayson Perry uses to lose viewers but it really does happen. Well, it does to me. And then, when I changed down for an upcoming corner and the double clutch gearbox did its thing, it happened again.

    Oh, and when you put your foot down and there’s a combination of sound and torque-driven fury, it’s like you’ve dived head first into a vat of dopamine after drinking three pints of serotonin. It feels different to other cars somehow: lighter, sharper, better.

    I discovered this unusualness when I first drove a Ferrari 355. And I’ve experienced it a couple of times since, always when I’m in a small V8-powered Ferrari. They are just so bloody exciting.

    And for once the power didn’t cause me to soil myself. In all the Ferraris I’ve driven recently I’ve put my foot down and then, driven by a healthy lust for self-preservation, I’ve lifted it up again. I challenge anyone — and I include Lewis Hamilton in this definition of “anyone” — to keep their foot down for more than two seconds in a modern V12 Ferrari on a typical British country road while in second or third gears. You can’t.

    This means you’re paying for all that engineering and all that capability and you can’t use it. Whereas in the Roma you can. The twin-turbo V8 produces 612 horsepowers, which is a lot, but crucially you get only 560 torques. That’s still a lot but it’s not so much that you immediately hit a tree. It’s fun power.

    So what we have here is a car that tickles your tickly bits, and roars the triumphant roar of flat-plane internal combustion, and on the stretch of road I use when I have a nice car it was wonderful. It’s my kind of car, this.

    Maybe, and it’s a big maybe, a mid-engined 488 would be a tiny bit more darty, but in a 488 you’d have to slow down for all of the crests or you’d graunch the underside of its low nose. Whereas in a Roma you can keep right on going. As an all-round driving machine, then, it is fantastic. And it’s not even remotely crashy on poor surfaces. It glides.

    It’s practical too. Because the engine is in the front you get a decent-sized boot with a decent-sized opening, and back seats as well. I’m not sure who exactly could ever use them, as even Richard Hammond would moan about being squashed, but they’re useful storage spaces for smaller stuff. Babies, for example.

    Further forwards there’s a lot of clever-clever electronic interface stuff, with glass screens and haptic buttons and so forth, and I know this has gone down badly with some of my colleagues in the specialist motoring press. But I thought it all worked quite well. For once I didn’t even mind having most of the controls on the steering wheel. It’s still a stupid idea not to have stalks for the wipers and indicators, but at least in the Roma I’d figured out the headlight dim/dip operation after only three days of swearing.

    However, the whole thing then comes crashing down because of the seats. There’s no proper lateral support no matter what you do with the controls, and you feel like you’re sitting on them rather than in them. They are terrible. You’d be better off ordering the car with none at all and using your kitchen chairs instead.

    Of course you can opt for sports seats instead, which, of course, brings me on to the other problem with this car. The crazy options list. You want the rear diffuser to be made from carbon fibre? Well, that’s £6,720. Two-tone leather is £4,800. Foldable rear seats are £960. Basically everything is an option, which is why the test car I drove would actually cost you just shy of £230,000.

    The Roma’s good. Very good. It’s elegant and subtle and pretty and fast and surprisingly practical. I really liked it, but at that price I’m not sure I could bring myself actually to buy one.

    THE CLARKSOMETER
    Ferrari Roma
    Specifications
    Engine: 3855cc, V8 twin turbo, petrol
    Power: 612bhp @ 5750rpm
    Torque: 560 Ib ft @ 3000rpm
    Acceleration: 0-62mph: 3.4sec
    Top speed: 199mph
    Fuel / CO2: 26mpg / 245g/km
    Weight: 1,570kg
    Price: £170,659
    Release date: On sale now
    Jeremy’s rating: ★★★★☆
  • zebrafishzebrafish <°)))< in Octopussy's garden in the shade
    Posts: 4,341
    Enjoyable read. Now go watch Harry's review of the Roma again. "They've lost the plot" over the controls and steering wheel seems appropriate.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 16,333
    Thanks, a surprisingly readable article from him.
    I think the car is wonderful though, still haven't seen one as I haven't been into central London in months!
    Harry's review was good, yes.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 16,333
    I totally missed this new Hyundai EV, which I think is extremely handsome:

    ioniq5_080.jpg

    https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/first-official-pictures/hyundai/ioniq-5/

    Auto Express reckons they might make a racy version too

    Ioniq%205%20N%20-%20exclusive%20image.jpg

    https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/hyundai/354839/hyundais-n-division-considering-hot-electric-ioniq-model

  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy My Secret Lair
    Posts: 13,384

    The James Bond DB5 Story
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 16,333
    Out of interest I checked the MOT history on M's Jaguar from Skyfall: it's up to nearly 50,000 miles so is presumably still on the road in use! I presume the owners know what they have?
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