PIMEN MAGAZINE: June 2010

The hills are alive (this would be creepy if the verse ended here) with the sound of music

Had a really fun night with Elia, Susi and Rex (I'm not sure if that's how to spell her name), my hosts, and another Israeli Couchsurfer named Boaz, watching The Sound of Music, haha! I haven't seen it in years, and as a child I never really did appreciate the historical background of the era that it depicted, so it was really interesting to watch it again. And the landscape! Susi and Rex apparently lived near the place that the movie was shot, and even got baptised and went to weddings in the church where Maria married Captain von Trapp.

It's so fun watching it with Austrians as they protest at all the Austrian stereotypes and stuff the Americans probably made up to rhyme the songs with ("Who eats schnitzels with noodles??") (And, while we're at it - apparently people also said "gloomy pussies" back in the day. *cue juvenile smirk*). Also fun is all the singing to the words, though Elia didn't know them, but Susi, Rex, Boaz and I were all swaying to the music. Especially the part with the puppets, the best part of the show obviously, as a kid I would rewind the tape and watch that part over and over again. Ahh. Good times.

Elia's bringing me to a demonstration tomorrow for a girl and her family who are going to be deported back to Kosovo. Looking forward to it.

Saab Soft Launches 9-5 Via iTunes AppStore

In iPhone and iPad application news, Saab released a new app for the launch of the 9-5. I believe this is Saab's first application on either platform and unfortunately it's not much of an effort.

The application merely mimics the content from their website where feature pages, a 360, an image gallery, and intro video are provided as content in the app. There is nothing more than the reuse of existing content repackaged for an application. It's very similar to what Mercedes did for the C63 AMG two-years ago.

I personally would've like to have seen some handraiser implementation within the application so the company could engage further with the app's users provided of course they are not disappointed after downloading something they basically could have seen on their iPhone or iPad's web browser.

Oh well, hopefully we'll see some more interesting things as Saab gets ready to spend big for their "Change Perspective" 9-5 launch.

Automotive Facebook Fans by Brand: June 2010

Well after a fairly mild, ho-hum couple months life is heating up on the automotive brand fan pages with several companies upping their marketing on the site and a lot of double digital month-over-month growth from several brands in June.

The big battle of fans was last month’s BMW vs. Audi battle royal. It seems both brands answered the challenge by working hard to get new fans. BMW had a staggering 36% increase in fans which is an insane growth percentage from a brand with already the highest numbers of major automotive fans on the social media site. They added 244,181 fans in one month!

Audi did very well too with a 16% growth rate and 103,255 fans added in June. That’s almost the total amount of Toyota Facebook fans; 107,389 fans to be exact.

I’m still trying to figure out what BMW and Audi did to drive so many “Likes” in one month. My guess is outreach to owners through Become a Fan messaging and some social media marketing on Facebook, but I can’t confirm either.

Toyota did a lot of marketing on Facebook this month, but they didn’t do it to drive people to the Toyota fan page; instead, they took users to their Toyota Safety landing page where they are working on their safety perception issue after many recalls.

Lexus had its own Facebook goals where they drove consumers to their Facebook fan page by enticing them with the new halo vehicle advertisement for the new LFA super car. The message must be getting through as my own father in-law, not a car guy at all, started asking me about the LFA one day on a Home Depot run; though, he saw the ad on television.

Honda reignited their love machine this month by running Facebook ads for their Everybody Knows Somebody Who Loves a Honda Facebook application and they even did a Father’s Day ad that tied in that Day’s message with Honda’s own campaign message (sorry I had a screenshot of the ad but must not have saved it.)

Mini and Infinti both had big jumps in fans with 32% and 43% gains respectively. Infiniti ran a campaign promoting their Cirque du Soleil contest that brought users to a Facebook tab promoting the contest. Meanwhile, Mini had its fun challenging Porsche to a race.

The Mini vs. Porsche effort definitely spawned some major engagement with its fans that mostly loved the idea of challenging the all mighty Porsche 911.

It certainly was a crazy June on Facebook. I’m curious what July will bring.

UPDATE: Thanks to one of my new Twitter followers @ChrisBrashear it seems Audi ran a photo upload contest in June which I'm sure was supported with some ad dollars on the site too.

Toyota Goes Digital to Market Safety Perception Gap

Toyota is in a real tailspin lately after countless recalls and the latest JD Power Quality Rating that gave the automaker a terrifying drop from 6th to 21st place out of 33 brands. Some industry pundits feel Toyota has enjoyed a leisurely advantage from their customers’ perception of strong quality over the years while in reality it has been deteriorating. A recent episode of Autoline After Hours had host John McElroy commenting on how all of the news is finally showing some of the chinks in Toyota’s quality armor that many consumers have known this for years. (As a side note: If you like this blog, you'll love Autoline After Hours it is by far the best Auto Industry podcast. I highly recommend it for weekly viewing.)

Whatever the case with Toyota’s real or perceived quality and safety issues are they have launched a major digital media campaign to respond to the safety issue.

The initial response was Toyota’s Recall landing page, but now they are moving to a strategic response around “Toyota Safety”. The online ads are directing people to the new safety site that communicates some of Toyota’s efforts around building safe cars. They feature their IIHS Top Safety Pick ratings, their SMART Teams who conduct rapid on-site analysis of issues, and their TV spots (online video) feature safety engineers and families that trust the brand. “At Toyota, we’re currently investing one million dollars an hour to enhance the safety and technology of our vehicles.”

Toyota has even branded their five safety features under the “Star Safety System” which is now standard on all their vehicles. What is the system? It’s traction control, stability control, anti-lock brakes, electronic brake distribution, and brake assist.

The latest ad buy was one recently used by Chevrolet on Yahoo! Mail that uses a background look to the mail login page (see image at left.) They are also buying several key placements on Facebook to get the message out.

I really like Toyota’s Safety landing page. It provides four clear messages with some well-executed online video explaining the company’s commitment and seriousness about responding to their safety perception issue. After months of news stories reporting unattended accelerating vehicles --some true and some alleged hoaxes -- the company needs to show they make safe vehicles.

The question now is will we see a Toyota Quality landing page after their plunging JD Power Quality rating? If one types in http://www.toyota.com/quality the page is redirected to http://www.toyota.com/productleadership/#/Precision. This page does not look like it is ready for prime time as a destination for online media, but that could easily change if Toyota uses the same formula they have for the Safety and Recall landing pages.

1988 Mazda MX-6 GT - Anonymous GT Car

This is beyond sleeper. This is anonymous. This is damn near invisible. This is cool.

The MX-6 was, for all intents and purposes, a 2 door Mazda 626. It was also, for all intents and purposes, a Ford Probe. The MX-6 shared a floorpan and drivetrain with the Probe and was built in the same assembly plant in Flint Rock, MI.

The MX-6 GT looks just like the rest of the MX-6 line. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to tell it from the MX-6 LX. The big difference between the two, the very big difference between the two, is the engine. Where the rest of the MX-6 line came with a 2.2 engine that put out 120 HP, the GT had the same engine with a turbocharger bolted to it and it put out 145 HP. The car could reach 60 MPH in around 7 seconds. The GT also came with a three-way electronically adjustable suspension, with sport, normal and comfort settings.

Like so many older Japanese cars, many MX-6 GTs fell into the hands of kids who lowered them, "customized" them and generally beat the hell out of them until their only real value was the price they'd bring in as scrap. This car is, according to the seller, a completely stock (right down to an AM / FM / cassette deck), well taken care of MX-6 GT. The car has just 97,000 miles on it and everything still works. The downside is that it's an automatic. It's not a bad automatic and if you ignore the overdrive button it's not too intrusive on the overall driving experience. (I have a friend whose wife had one many years ago. I got to drive it a few times. It really wasn't too bad. Still, a manual transmission would be more fun.) That's the trade off, I guess. You get a well taken care of, hard to find in this condition, car, but you have to put up with the automatic. If I were in the market for an MX-6 GT, that's a trade off I'd make.

Located in Goshen, IN, click here to see the Craigslist ad.

You can find a really well written owner review of the MX-6 GT here.

1965 NSU Spider - An Ivy League Graduate?

This car may have some pretty interesting history... The seller can't verify the claim, but he was told that this was one of the first NSU Spiders sent to this country. Princeton University brought it over to study the then new rotary engine.

And it's that engine that makes this car so special. The NSU Spider was the first production car to use a rotary engine. It can't exactly be called a success. These early rotary engines were less - a lot less - than reliable and the Spider was not a big seller. (However, in a weird way could be considered a success in that the failure of the engine put NSU in the position to be purchased by VW - which then merged it with Auto Union to form Audi - and it caught the attention of Mazda, who licensed the engine, perfected it and put it in the very, very good RX7.)

The seller has spent a lot of time and money restoring this car. He writes, "It was a rust free car to begin with, with the famous Wankel engine out of the car but been meticulously overhauled (in a crate) by the guru of wankel engines in the US (I have spoken to him on several occasions and I think he would be happy to confirm that he went over the engine which has all the necessary updates in terms of reliability but has been kept true to originality). The car (paint & interior) needed restoration when I bought the car. This was professionally done and included: paint, new top & new interior ( both true replicas of the originals) , reconnecting the engine and making the car roadworthy."

After years of being ignored, NSU Spiders (and NSUs in general) have recently been getting a lot of attention (Jay Leno owns a Spider). It will be interesting to see what this car, in very good condition, goes for.

Located in Tenefly, NJ, click here to see the eBay listing.

You can find the NSU Spider "episode' of Jay Leno's Garage (including a cool video) here.

A big thanks to JaCG reader, Michael, for sending me the link to this car!

Down time

I actually wrote like, 3 blog posts today, when I had my netbook with me while roaming the city. But I'm not in the mood to post them now. Partly it is because two of them are about how I got lost in the city and everything, and right this moment I am acutely aware of my ignorance about Austria and Europe in general. I keep telling myself it's alright because I really didn't have time to do any travel research or read about Austrian history (or Czech, or Italian, or any of the 7 other countries that I'm visiting), and I'll come back again, better prepared - but it just feels awful when my host tells me certain places and events and is completely astounded when I know nothing about them. Just like I was astounded when she said she hasn't watched Sound of Music before (The movie's set in Austria).

I hate this feeling of knowing that I'm missing something completely awesome that is right in front of me but I'm too dumb to recognize it. I know I can't know everything in the world but not knowing anything just sucks horribly =(

1961 Alfa Romeo 2000 Spider by Touring - (Not As Bad As It Looks, Even Without Beer Goggles...)

So, a man walks into a bar. An Alfa Romeo sits down next to him... OK, that's a really poor attempt at humor. There's a typo in the title of this car's listing. It's written as "1961 ALFA ROMEO 2000 TOURING SPIDER BAR FIND" (I know, I know, I have no right making fun of anyone else's typos given all the ones you'll find - usually on a daily basis - in this blog. Sorry. It was just too amusing and I couldn't resist.)

It doesn't matter where this car was found, it's a very cool car, but one that needs an awful lot of work.

Introduced in 1958, the 2000 Spider was designed and built by Carrozzeria Touring. It shared its 1975cc engine with the Berlina, but used a pair of Solex sidedraft carbs to get 115 HP out of it. (The Berlina engine used a single Solex downdraft and made 105 HP.) Still, it wasn't especially quick, with 60 MPH taking 14.2 seconds to achieve. Consider this a touring car, not a sports car.

No matter what type of car it is, it's the body that made it stand out. It's just a beautiful car.

This one is not so beautiful and with good reason. It's spent the last 20+ years in a barn. Old barns are, apparently, great places to find old cars, but they are definitely lousy places to store them. (Have you ever seen a weather-proof, humidity / temperature controlled old barn?)

This car is rusty. I've seen worse, for sure, but this is not a "quick grind, skim coat of filler and paint it" type of car. This will need some welding. Probably a lot of welding. But, if you're handy with a welder and proficient at creating patch panels, this car could be a great project. The really good news is that this car appears to be complete. All of the very hard to find - in many cases, impossible to find - parts are still with the car. A rust free car (if you could find one), with lights, trim, chrome, etc., missing, might cost you more to restore than this one will.

Touring only built around 3500 of these cars. Not many are left. Even so, they are not extremely valuable. A car like this is a labor of love. If you have the time and talent, it's a great restorattion project and when finished would be a hit at any Italian car show.

Located in Orlando, FL, click here to see the eBay listing.

Me? I'm going to head down to the bar and see what sits next to me. I just hope that the bartender shuts me off before a Fiero starts looking like a Ferrari and I mysteriously find it my driveway tomorrow morning...

Netherland Tourist Attractions

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Netherland Tourist Attractions

http://www.whenwegetthere.com/tourist_destination_attraction/europe/netherlands
http://www.europe-trips.eu/Netherlands/tourist-information-Holland-resorts-hotels

Netherland Tourist Attractions

http://european-union.ca/netherlands/index.html
http://www.jaunted.com/tag/Netherlands

Netherland Tourist Attractions

http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com/lounge/amsterdam-attractions-1914.html
http://www.guiageo.com/paginas-6.htm

Netherland Tourist Attractions

http://www.travelodestination.com/facts-about-amsterdam/
http://www.the-hague.world-guides.com/the_hague_attractions.html

Netherland Tourist Attractions

http://gohappytravel.blogspot.com/2009/10/tourism-and-recreation-in-netherlands.html
http://www.myamsterdamguide.com/tourist-attractions-in-Amsterdam.html

Leaving Prague soon

Leaving Prague in a couple of hours, I'm now hanging out in the hostel cafe with Meghan, a Canadian traveller whom Baska and I met yesterday. She's writing her postcards and I'm writing my blog.

Prague has been breathtakingly beautiful to the untrained eye, and I'm sure it would be so much more meaningful if my eyes had been trained somewhat, in gothic architecture and Czech history and the works of Franz Kafka. I think I'll come back. In fact, I think it's quite mandatory that I do, because I touched a certain statue, which is rumoured to bring the toucher back to Prague. Seems like a curse of some sort. And I really don't mind. I've actually been thinking thoughts like "the next time I'm back in Prague I'll have to go for a classical music concert" or "the next time I'm here I'll totally buy a beautiful painting like that".

I've been walking a lot. I've been making unhealthy food choices. (In fact I'm having a humongous bowl of fries right this moment.) I've been enamoured by street musicians. I've been staring at token Asians in the tourist crowd. I've been drinking beer like nobody's business and having no hangovers at all. I've been getting lost in little alleyways that lead into courtyards where ancient markets must have been held hundreds of years ago, on the same cobblestones that horses must have trotted on. It has been good, in a surreal way.

Anyway - Vienna up next. My bus leaves at 5pm and arrives at 9:15pm, and it's a country that uses Euros (I arrived in Prague with not a koruna cent on me, completely korunaless - it was rather interesting, as nobody spoke English and I didn't have any money to take the subway. Worked out in the end, like how things usually do.) and speaks German, which pronunciations makes sense at least even if the content doesn't, so everything's good. I have a CSer host there waiting for me so it will be great.

1970 AMC AMX - No Jokes, No Apologies Necessary

I've written in the past about my love of the AMC Javelin / AMX line. In most most of those posts I've felt the need to include some sort of self-deprecating joke or half-assed apology for that. This time there are no jokes or apologies needed. This is an absolutely stunning car. This is a serious machine. This is a car that anyone who loves cars should appreciate.

The AMX was not built to compete with the Mustang, Camaro and Firebird, it was built to compete with the Corvette. It's a 2 seater and was 1" shorter than the Corvette. Its wheelbase is 97" (vs 109" for the Javelin on which it is based). It was the first steel-bodied, two seat American performance car since the 1957 Thunderbird. In its day, there were arguments about whether the AMX was a true sports car, GT Car, or muscle car. I agree with what Road Test magazine wrote after testing the car, "For the doubters we can testify once again that the AMX feels like a sports car, drives like a sports car, handles like a sports car and therefore in our book (and that of the Sports Car Club of America) it is a sports car."

With a 0-60 time of 6.5 seconds and the ability to do the quarter mile in 14.1 seconds, the AMX was competitive with the Corvette on the straight parts of a track, but didn't handle quite as well in the curves. (By the time this car was built however, AMC had tweaked the suspension and this car could most likely stick pretty close to the Corvette in all but the most serious S turns.)

What is so impressive in my mind about the AMX (and Javelin) is its design. It's clean, almost European looking. It has a long hood, short deck, flush door handles and minimal chrome. (Yeah, AMC couldn't resist the fake side exhaust vents, but compared to the other crap US car manufacturers were tacking on to their cars in the late 1960s and 1970s, they're a minor sin. Actually, they look good and they'd be really cool if they were real.)

This car is unrestored. It's a 4 owner, well documented car, that, except for a recent engine and transmission rebuild and some Edelbrock intake and exhaust headers, is completely original, including the paint.

The seller has done some serious research and states that out of the 4116 AMXs built in 1970, this is just 1 of 98 to have a black leather interior, 1 of 628 to include factory "Machine" wheels and most importantly, one of 1,632 4 speed cars to have the "Go Package". The "Go-Pack" included power disc brakes, E70X14 white letter tires, a posi-rear, handling package, 7 blade "flex fan", heavy duty cooling system, fan shroud, 140mph speedometer, 8000 RPM tach, space saver spare and ram air induction. All useful stuff. The seller also notes that this car is featured in the "Guide to Muscle Cars" and was also photographed for the "Muscle Car Trading Cards" from the early-1990's. (I had no idea there were muscle car trading cards!)

This is just an amazing car in amazing condition. It will be interesting to see what it sells for.

Located in Saint Charles, IL, click here to see the eBay listing.

For more info on the AMX, chek out AMX-perience.com

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