Between Elsewhere and Here

A Kinetic 150

I’m a red-blooded American, which means I have a deep soft spot for pick-up trucks. My favorite is Ford’s F-250 line – Ford’s middle weight that sits between the more consumer friendly 150 and the more heavy duty 350 and 450. Because the 150 is the most famous of Ford’s trucks, that’s the one you’ll see most of the commercials for, and that’s the one I present to you here.

And I’m not doing this to promote Ford in a time of need. Heck, buying a pick-up truck from Ford right now probably only hurts them, since they need to be building high-quality, high-millage, reliable cars and not surviving on truck sales like they did from about 95 until 05. Anyway… the commercial below is a fantastic usage of kinetic typography. I’ve seen a number of the new ads these past few weeks and finally felt like sharing since you know I have a love for type that flies and twists across the screen.

Tags: ad, cars, design, typography, video
By Christopher on 11/19/08 05:33 PM | | Link | Comments [0]

The Lamborghini Estoque Concept

Four-door coupes are all the rage these days. Aston Martin has the Rapide, Porsche is taking a shot with the forth coming Panamera. So it’s not a total surprise to see Lamborghini toss its hat into the ring with the Estoque, whose images were leaked on a French site this morning a day ahead of the Pairs auto show.

The concept of a four-door coupe is a compelling one. Mercedes kicked off all the four-door craziness with its CLS, which is still the only Mercedes I like and still the best of the four-door coupes. What makes a four-door coupe work is that it doesn’t look like a Ford Taurus. The rear doors flow into the back of the car as if they were vanishing. Simply put, a four-door coupe is supposed to look like a two-door coupe.

The Porsche Panamera looks like a four-door Porsche, and looks awful (thus far, I reserve the right to change my opinion when we get to see the car in full). The Aston Martin Rapide does a much better job of this, but it still kind-of looks like a four-door Aston instead of a two-door coupe. What’s interesting is Audi’s two-door A5, which is a two-door coupe, looks like the four-door A4. The A5 is nice, but its a little odd that they got the formula backwards and wrong.

That leaves us with the car pictured above; the soon to be Lamborghini Estoque. My immediate reaction is that I like it. It’s definitely a Lambo but it’s not a super-car, which does – admittedly – beg the question, “Why?” But I’ll get to that in a minute. The Estoque has the DNA of the amazing Reventon and the classic Miura. It has a nice long hood, aggressive DRG (those scoops under the front bumper), strong but subtle stance and (my favorite part) an elegant A-line that blends nicely into the rear. Initial reviews, however, are not kind. When seen from the side, it looks like it could use a few inches off the length.

All that said, I can’t help but ask why? Why is Lamborghini bothering to make a four-door car? Is there really someone out there saying, “Man, I really wish I could pick up my kids from school in my Lamborghini.” Okay, scratch that. Everyone who drives a Lamborghini just wants more excuses to show it off. But, does anyone really feel any strong desire to put kids in the back of their Lambo? What about groceries? Golf clubs?

In the end, while I like the concept (since that’s what this is), the Estoque is going to suffer from the same fault as the Porsche Cayenne: why did you make it? I fear the answer is: to make more money. And that’s never a good reason to make a car.

Tags: cars, lamborghini
By Christopher on 10/01/08 02:33 PM | | Link | Comments [0]

Arnold Terminates Txting

See what I did there? I made a reference to Gov. Schwarzeneggar’s former life as an action movie star in a headline about a new Cally law that bans txting while driving! They join Louisiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, Connecticut and Washington as the only states in the union to have a clue how dangerous txting while driving is.

Seriously… txting while driving? Punching away at your T9 keyboard while passing cars in the left lane? Seriously? Are you that stupid? Yes, I have sent text messages while in the car, but I do it while sitting at a stop light or when pulled over. Talking on a cell phone while driving is pretty stupid, txting while driving is asking to be killed. Unfortunately, you’d probably kill someone else while you’re at it.

Driving is the most complicated thing the average person does every day. We think it’s easy because we drive the same roads every day. We know the streets, we know where all the stop signs are and we know which lanes are the fastest through traffic. Because we travel the same roads day-in and day-out, we become tricked into thinking that driving is easy and that because a car hasn’t driven over the medium means it won’t happen.

None of these things are true. Driving is extremely complex, with tons of information being thrown at our brain forcing us to make decisions at speeds faster than anyone can travel by foot. The reason driving drunk is so dangerous is because excessive amounts of alcohol seriously impedes our ability to make smart decisions quickly. This is true for everything we do behind a wheel that’s not directly related to driving.

In fact, txting while driving is statistically worse than drunk driving. For the time that you’re txting, there is a 91% drop in steering control. At that rate, you might as well just take your hands completely off the wheel. Reaction time drops by a third and you have difficulty maintaining a safe distance behind other cars. The reaction time for drunk driving is – shockingly – only 12% slower than normal. Now, while the new study from the Transport Research Laboratory in the UK concludes that txting is more dangerous, one is probably drunk for a lot longer than it takes to send a txt message so over the course of an entire trip it’s still more dangerous to drive drunk. Both are, undoubtedly, stupid.

So why, why would you take one hand off the wheel and give all of your attention to working your cell phone key pad? It’s beyond stupid, and it will get you killed. It doesn’t help matters that the people who text message the most (those under 20) are also those who tend to feel invincible. Dangerous and stupid.

Thank you California for terminating txting while driving. Now please, please, enforce it.

Tags: cars, schwarzenegger, txting
By Christopher on 09/25/08 01:52 PM | | Link | Comments [0]

The Offical 2011 Chevy Volt

GM is celebrating 100 years of automotiveness and the celebrations kicked off today in Detroit with the roll out of the official 2011 Chevy Volt. For those of you who don’t know, the Volt is GM’s answer – in a way – to Toyota’s Prius. GM has been showing off a concept version of the Volt that looked like a futuristic sports car. The concept itself wasn’t anything great, it was more a physical manifestation of a theory. The theory was that GM could and would build the most advanced low-emissions vehicle on the planet that would change pretty much everything about driving except for the steering wheal.

For the average consumer, both the Volt and the Prius are just hybrid cars that combine battery power and a gasoline engine. Both have low-emissions and both make you feel smug and superior to SUV drivers everywhere. That’s pretty much where the similarities end. The Prius uses electric power for speeds under 15 miles per-hour. This is why the car is so quiet (and dangerous) in congested urban areas: no one can hear it coming. Once it hits 16 MPH, a gas engine takes over and despite the smug sense of superiority, you’re just like every other car out there – only uglier.

The Volt is a different beast all together. It’s driven by an eclectic engine that itself is powered by a “T” shaped battery with 220 lithium-ion cells, that’s the same battery technology in the laptop you’re reading this on. One full change of the battery is good for 40 miles of driving. Consider that the average American commutes for 24.3 minutes to work a day, the Chevy Volt will run at zero emissions for the average commuter to and from work – assuming you can change it up at work.

And if you can’t charge it up at work, what happens after you’ve used the 40 miles of driving from the battery? Easy, the car charges itself. A small gasoline engine kicks in when the battery is running low to charge it up. The only thing the engine does is extend the range of the battery by charging it up while you drive. This is much, much, much different than the way Toyota, Honda and others have approached hybrids. They don’t have faith in battery technology being able to live up to and handle the demands of daily driving. In truth, the battery is the one of the largest, most difficult challenges GM faces in building and delivering the Volt.

Back to today. What’s so fascinating about the Volt is how open GM has been with letting people in. Most cars are developed under tight security. Security is so tight, an entire industry has sprung up to get “spy shots” of cars being tested on the road. Typically pre-production models are covered in all sorts of disguises so that companies can test their cars in real world conditions without the public seeing it.

With the Volt, GM is doing the exact opposite. When a “mule” carrying the power train of the Volt was under going testing, everyone was invited to stop by and have a look. Press people have been given unheard of access to the men and women working on every part of the Volt. GM sees the Volt as not just a reinvention of the automobile, but a reinvention of themselves. The more press they get, the more coverage they get, the better. The logic goes something like this, “If we tell everyone it’ll be ready by the end of 2010 and we show everyone how hard we work, then we can’t fail or everything goes down the crapper.”

And that’s why I really want this to work. Bob Lutz, CEO of GM, has called the Volt the “car industries’ moonshot“ and there’s nothing like doing something most people thought was impossible. It is a fascinating story and an amazing project. So far, it looks like they’re doing everything right, and while the production version of the Volt isn’t as sharp as the concept, I actually think it looks pretty damn good.

[Link: Video Walk Through of the 2001 Chevy Volt]

[Link: GM CEO Bob Lutz tours and talks about the Volt design.]

Tags: cars, gm, volt
By Christopher on 09/16/08 04:36 PM | | Link | Comments [0]

Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt

Driving is the most complicated task the vast majority of us do everyday. Yet, we understand little about it. This book aims to decode our lives in traffic. Reading Socially »

Photographs of Tokyo taken at twilight from emergency stair cases by Japanese photographer Sato Shintaro. See more »

In-Flight XXX

American Airlines realizes that people use the internet to look at naked ladies. World shocked.

I'm doing Science and I'm still alive

A fun little typographical video of the Portal video game end credits theme. Fantastic.

The Offical 2011 Chevy Volt

The first official look at the car that’s GM believes is going to change everything.

RIP McCain'08 3.1.07 - 9.24.08

The McCain has become the pathological liar who – even when the truth is on their side – still feels the need to embellish, exaggerate and lie. Their spin is so out of control, McCain seems lost within his own campaign as if he’s being the script not in its entirety, not even page by page, but word by word.

Between Elsewhere and Here

A Kinetic 150

The Lamborghini Estoque Concept

Arnold Terminates Txting

The Offical 2011 Chevy Volt

The Webmatter of Christopher Doorley

In-Flight XXX

I'm doing Science and I'm still alive

The Offical 2011 Chevy Volt

RIP McCain'08 3.1.07 - 9.24.08

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