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  1. Hi everyone! 👋 Desmond here on behalf of the Sgcarmart Editorial Team. So, 2024 brings some changes to Mycarforum. As you'll increasingly notice in the coming months, the Editorial Team has taken over the content management of this platform. There are changes in store. The Forum, not so much. It will continue to be a vibrant platform for all MCF members to interact. However, major changes are afoot for this Blog. We are going in a different direction, revealing the slightly most esoteric side of the Editorial Team. What can you expect? Well, a little bit of everything. While cars are how we make a living, cars aren't the only thing in our lives. For all car-centric content, you can continue to get them from the various Sgcarmart platforms, including our Articles section, Youtube, Instagram, and TikTok. We’ll continue to bring you the most timely, relevant and interesting automotive content. But for everything else, well, you’ll see it here. Each of us as writers have varying interests, and you're going to be reading all about them. Photography, watches, music, movies, pop culture, geography, Tomica, cycling, tiny living, mental well-being, expect to see a little bit of everything. Our thoughts, our daily experiences (at work or otherwise), a little bit of all of us. All of your various interests, and all of ours as well. What exact form will this blog take? It's hard to say right now. But what we can promise is interesting, different, fun and exciting new content. So, stay tuned for what's in store! The Sgcarmart Editorial Team: Julian, Desmond, Mattheus, Jeremy, Zhi Xuan, Clarence, Denise
  2. By now photos of the 2012 BMW 1 series F20 have made their rounds through all the automotive websites and I have to say that this car is actually better looking than the model it replaced. Let me explain further why this new car is much better than the earlier version, the E81, in terms of styling. Firstly, is not styled by Chris Bangle. Any BMW not styled by Chris Bangle is a good BMW (with the exception of the 1st generation BMW Z4 which is messy with all the lines here and there, but still proportionate). Chris Bangle who has now quit the automotive industry (for the moment) gets his inspiration from an architectural philosophy called Deconstructivism. Now while that is all fine and dandy with buildings like the Guggenheim, in America or the Vitra Design Museum in Germany, a car with such a design tends to be too messy. Too many cris-crossing lines. Like the designer basically took an axe and started slicing the prototype clay models to get the look (example
  3. -Project Kahn Audi TR8- Recently Project Kahn previewed its reworking of the Audi TT. It basically looks like an R8 with the R8 side panels in a different colour and all so much so that they have named it the Project Kahn Audi TR8. It does look good in all of its photo enhanced glory doesn't it? But we have to note that this isn't the first Audi TT that was done up to look like its bigger brother. We already have Caractere doing the same thing with their Audi TT bodykit and we also have Niche Design doing the same thing. I suppose this shows that at least a good number of Audi TT owners actually cannot afford to buy the Audi R8 and end up modifying their TT for good measure. Or bad measure. Or whatever way so that they can achieve their goal in a slightly warped sort of way. Now this is similar to those that end up making their BMW 3 or 5 series into the M versions of their car. Of course some of them end up just changing the rear badging to achieve this goal. This is actually the cheapest way of 'achieving' their dreams, and the fastest way to be laughed at by a true motorhead. Or if you're talking about the lower end of the scale we have people doing up their Proton Saga into Subaru Impreza and it isn't even the same brand! The thing is, why won't anyone who actually owns an Audi R8 decide to turn it into a TT? Now this would be a really interesting project for people like Project Kahn or any of the Audi tuners. Imagine Project Kahn selling the R-TT; an Audi R8 with an Audi TT aping bodykit. It would be fabulous. Imagine cruising down the autobahn in the R-TT and then some insignificant little Volkswagen Golf GTI giving you the 'Get out of the way' flashing headlights and you simply floor the throttle and leave the puny Golf and its driver wondering what the heck just happened. Or if a Mercedes Benz C63 AMG owner would be so humble to remove his car's AMG and '63 ' badges and stick on the C180 'Blue efficiency' badging instead. It would be a Mastercard moment indeed to watch those pesky Toyota Camry drivers on the Malaysian highways thinking that they've got a big car and that they're pretty fast. I suppose this will only happen if the owners of the higher powered Audi, BMW and Mercedes Benz would become 'humble' and be willing to step down an imaginary notch to pull a really fast one on others. Let's hope that someone affluent enough reads this and is totally willing to do what I've just suggested. So 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. -Niche Design Audi TT- -the original Audi R8 - Imagine if this was rebadged as a TT! -
  4. One fine Saturday afternoon as I was driving a Perodua Myvi down a steep road which banked towards the right I got quite a surprise. 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. It was the angle the Perodua was sitting on the road that enabled the tinier Atoz to simply disappear behind the two items mentioned above. And it got me thinking. Have the A-pillars and the side mirrors of cars gotten thicker over the years? A-pillars are what you see to the left and right of the windscreen and is a very integral part of the car's sturcture. It holds the windscreen up, it also ensure structural integrity of most cars even in convertibles and it is also part of the car's silhouette. You can't draw a modern day car without having A-pillars. And speaking about modern A-pillars, as it is part of the car's monocoque chassis, it needs to be strong enough during a crash. Which is why you do not see cars these days with slender A-pillars like the BMW CSL from the 1970s or even the classic Lancia Fulvia (photo above) of the same period. Modern side mirrors have also grown in size. Cars in the good old days have it reasonable small. Some of you may remember side mirrors located on the wings of some cars from the 1970s and early 1980s. They were small. About the size of a man's fist or the size of some motorcycle rear view mirrors. But this isn't true anymore for cars. They are huge and can hide tiny Hyundai Atozes behind them especially when you add modern slightly thicker A-pillars to them. You would never find such a problem in the interior of a 1981 Honda Civic pictured below. Then you check out the photograph of the VW Scirocco's A-pillar after it. Taken with the same camera and with yours truly in my usual driving position. The newer car has double the size of the A-pillar and when you're sitting in a low slung coupe, it seems slightly worse (but in all honesty, the Roc is a nice place to be in). And now, the biggest pain are those cars with two A-pillars. Cars like the Honda Jazz, Honda Civic, Suzuki SX4 and the Peugeot 308 (the first photograph below). The former two seem to be quite alright when it comes to looking out of them, but the latter two aren't as good. They've created huge blindspots in places which were never blindspots previously. Soon we may be hearing "I'm sorry officer. I wasn't aware of that 20ton lorry as it was hiding behind my car's A-pillar." Sometimes, progress develops new problems. - A 1990 Mercedes Benz 200e W124 with its slender A-pillar and smallish side mirror. And it is a strong and solid car with great visibility. Who says A-pillars have to be thick? - The Subaru Impreza is a good example where high tensile steel is used, making it have a relatively slim A-pillar for a post-2000 car.
  5. I have been doing a little bit of reading here and there about the future of car interiors. Aside from the fact that I had nothing else better to do I have realized that I actually spend a whole lot of my time in my cars and also the other cars I happen to get my hands on from time to time. An average person would spend at least an hour or two in their car trying to get from here to there during rush hour or trying to get about town and that car seat and all the controls like the steering wheel, gear shifter and hand controls are what you interact with as you drive. But note that in the near future, you will see that only the seat you are on and the steering wheel in front of you would be similar to the car of today. The sketch you see above is one of a future Audi A3 Sedan. Ignore the funky steering wheel as it may be drawn that way to show the rest of the dashboard. And what do you actually see? A dashboard devoid of signal switches, wiper stalks and gear knobs. We already see a lack of gear knobs and shifters in the latest BMWs, Mercedes' and Jaguars. This has turned into a rotary selector on the transmission tunnel. And according to Audi the dashboard you see is how the envision their future interiors to be, slightly different from what we expect these days. We will also see wiper stalks/controls going missing as when most cars adopt automatic rain sensing wipers and then light switches going missing too when all cars adopt light sensing automatic headlights and cars that will detect lane changes and auto signal (this may happen eventually). And then you add the fact that you now have multi-media systems in the car telling you the temperature, location, air conditioning and entertainment in one screen (which will be touch sensitive and voice activated soon) and everything will be controlled through it soon. You can either scroll through a smartphone like interface to reach for the wipers if you want them on manually or you can do that Star Trek thingy and say 'Computer, wipers on to full. Rain factor heavy'. And so you do not need hand controls any more. Check out the interior photograph above. The interior is a design study that was actually designed by Johnson Controls, the people who are actually at the forefront of automobile interior systems and OE manufacturer to most manufacturers around the world. Note the sparse interior that is dominated by the instrument cluster, multi media screen and the armrest that has all the necessary controls. Say bye-bye to signal stalks, gear shifter and wiper stalks. Say hello to a cleaner looking car interior. And before you know it, car manufacturers will get rid of the steering, brake pedal and throttle pedal too. Everything will be automated and hidden away. Remember the Audi R90 that was featured in I-Robot? That Will Smith movie with the futuristic Audi (pictured below)? He had the option to over-ride the computer to drive manually. This is the future and it isn't that far away actually. Whether we like it or not, as is usually the case. And since all of these changes omit lots of 'unimportant' stuff, can we expect larger and deeper cupholders for those extra large coffee cups?
  6. The Hidden Agenda of the Straits Times Editorial http://singaporerecalcitrant.blogspot.com/...aits-times.html Can the Straits Times (ST) honestly say that it stands neutral in the present hustings? Everyone knows that it is under the tight control and direction of the Singapore Press Holdings helmed by a former PAP deputy prime minister who is in reality the government spin doctor and the ST can best be described as a propaganda broadsheet of the PAP. Anyone with any article critical of the government or its leaders aspiring to find printing of it in the ST will invariably come up against a wall of courteous denial, as the famous author Catherine Lim experienced recently when she sent a satirical letter about the comical Minister Mentor to the ST for airing in its Forum. Let's examine the implication of the ST editorial :GE 2011. What do voters really want? What does it try to imply by saying that the voter cannot vote for the opposition with the assurance that PAP will be returned to power in any case? It is a given that, with the present political state, the PAP will be returned to power but perhaps with a reduced majority. Is not the ST calling on the voters not to vote the opposition? It shows the ST is treading on questionable ground as a national newspaper supposedly dedicated to an objective presentation of news to the public. A blind man can easily discern that this is hardly objective by no stretch of imagination, Next the editor cannot resist the temptation of touching on the hotly contested Aljunied GRC which is being closely watched by not only the public and voters but also the PAP leaders as well as the opposition. To expect the editor to present an objective and impartial view of the electoral fray in Aljunied GRC may be somewhat unrealistic. He insinuated that a Workers' Party (WP) victory will not be cost-free. The so-called exquisite quality of the PAP team is given great play, especially the team leader Foreign Minister George Yeo. He is being put in the same distinguished category of the late Foreign Minister S. Rajaratnam. The editor asked if Singapore would have been better off if Mr. S. Rajaratnam, Singapore's first Foreign Minister, had been defeated in the 1963 GE as he almost was. The answer is given as an obvious no. The editor further asked if voters want a strong opposition badly enough to boot out of office so many able people. Can they vote against Rajaratnam, he asked? Even a blind man can see where the ST editor's tendentious arguments are leading to. Firstly it is invidious to compare George Yeo with the late S. Rajaratnam and secondly it is sacrilege to invoke the late Foreign Minister's name in such circumstances. Comparison of merits between George Yeo and the late S. Rajaratnam is at best subjective. ST is never a neutral newspaper and its tendentious deprecation of the Workers' Party is a natural progression of its heinous design. The electoral battle in Aljunied GRC has begun and it is best for newspapers not to take sides, leaving it to the contesting parties to convince the voters respectively and win their votes.
  7. Saab is in deep trouble according to its owners Spyker. The Swedish car manufacturer could seriously bite the dust even after the takeover by Spyker early last year. In fact, Spyker had to let go of a major shareholding of its luxury car manufacturing arm to a UK based investment company to inject some extra capital into Saab but even this little maneuver has not stopped the bleeding. Spyker's annual report had stated that Saab's future isn't certain if they do not secure new funding. I think Saab has caused the owners of Spyker to lose out big time. It had to sell off major shares in Spyker cars and now it reveals that Saab is bleeding badly. This statement is surprising as I remember writing about the Spyker-Saab deal in February 2010 where Spyker bought the beleaguered company from General Motors for a sum totaling US$74 million in cash and another US$326 million in deferred shares. Spyker took a 400 million Euro loan for Saab and another hundred million Euro loan elsewhere as backup. 400 million Euros is just part of the operating costs of Saab. Of course at that point of time Spyker wanted Saab to sell 120,000 cars per year and the bad news is Saab only managed around 80,000 or so units. It sold more cars in 2009 and obviously, selling less cars meant that Saab is in a real bad state. There was even an issue at the Saab Trollhattan plant which had to be temporarily shut down for about a day or so due to suppliers stopping the supply of parts. All of this isn't confidence building if you know what I mean. According to the annual report, Saab is losing tons of money due to trying to set up new distribution networks and sales/marketing operations. While this spending of money was necessary and budgeted for in the Saab turnaround cum business plan, Spyker did not anticipate that the actual cash needed was higher than planned. There was also talk that a Russian billionaire is interested in Saab and is willing to invest 500million Euros into Saab. But this is mere speculation and nothing is solid as yet. And why someone is willing to add more money to a sinking ship is beyond me. As if Spyker's foray into Saab isn't a lesson to others already. All this has basically shown that what I said in my earlier article written way, way, way back in December 2009 where I asked a simple question on Saab and its extinction at that point of time and whether it really matter to any of us? I basically asked and said -
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