Mad About Cars

Herbie!!! The anthropomorphic Volkswagen Beetle! The main star for many years of childrens Disney motion pictures, starting from 1969. In the franchise, Herbie, the car has a mind of its own and is capable of driving itself, and is a majorly serious contender in any auto racing competition!

It’s famous racing stripes, Red, White and Blue glow from front to back bumper sporting its famous number ‘53′ on the hood, doors and engine lid…. the car actually wheelies!!!!

The Story……

Before being passed to Jim Douglas, Herbie was bought by a rich woman named Mrs Van Luit. It was for her maid, but following alot of problems the maid had, Herbie was returned the following day.

In ‘Herbie Rides Again,’ Jim goes to Europe and Tennessee goes to Tibet because his philosophy teacher gets sick so Herbie is placed in the care of Mrs Steinmetz, Tennessee’s aunt.

In ‘Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo’, Jim returns from Europe and puts Herbie in the fictional Trans-France Race, from Paris to Monte Carlo, Herbie falls in love with a Lancia Scorpion named Giselle.

In ‘Herbie Goes Bananas’, Herbie is passed to Jim’s nephew, Pete Stancheck, in Mexico. Herbie befriends an orphan named Paco, and together, they stop a gang of con artists from stealing ancient Inca gold.

Paco gives Herbie the nickname “Ocho”, the Spanish word for number 8, purportedly because the digits 5 and 3 in Herbie’s racing number, as 5 and 3 were added together (5+3=8). At the end of the film Paco says, “Five and three are eight, anyone knows that.”

Herbie then passed from owner to owner until he was bought by Maggie Payton in ‘Herbie Fully Loaded’.

Films

• The Love Bug – (1969)
• Herbie Rides Again – (1974)
• Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo – (1977)
• Herbie Goes Bananas – (1980)
• The Love Bug – (1997) made-for-TV movie
• Herbie; Fully Loaded – (2005)

Television series

• “Herbie the Matchmaker” — original air date: 17 March 1982 (also known as “The Love Bug”)
• “Herbie to the Rescue” — original air date: 24 March 1982
• “My House Is Your House” — original air date: 31 March 1982
• “Herbie, the Best Man” — original air date: 7 April 1982
• “Calling Doctor Herbie” — original air date: 14 April 1982

The Aston Martin DB9.

A thoroughbred sports car with unique character.

The DB9 is born, “a synthesis of traditional craftsmanship using the finest materials in the world.”

A full-bodied sports car in Coupe or Volante form.
The Austin Martin DB9 offers driver involvement, luxury, character, and most of all, refinement……

Beautifully styled, a DB9 has unique power, sound and performance. Its beauty signifies aerodynamics at their best efficiency, power by weight, and devastatingly straight-line performance coupled with exquisite handling.

All great sports cars around the world strive to balance these qualities, yet the DB9 creates has these qualities. What the driver hears, see’s and feels is together in harmony, rewarding total involvement, uprooting the senses, and igniting passion for drive.

The Aston has a 6.0-litre V12 engine, organic electroluminescent displays (OEL) in the instrument pack and centre console, as well as LED (light-emitting diode) rear lamps to project further. Inside is trimmed with handmade natural materials, and everything is kept to a minimum for simplicity and style, with no distraction. Every bit of interior is hand-made by a skilled craftsman.

Great cars of the world handle superbly and should respond quickly and predictably to any driver commands, should be very nimble and very agile. So, the DB9’s components are made from either aluminium, magnesium alloy or lightweight advanced composite materials.
The front-to-rear weight is a perfectly even ratio – 50:50, with 85% of the car’s mass sitting between front and rear axles.

This technologically is extremely sophisticated. A development programme boasts rigorous testing in locations across the border as diverse as Nardo, (Italy), Death Valley in the USA and inside the Arctic Circle, Sweden. Here more than one million testing miles have been covered in total.

Yes, its good news from Porsche! They will be showing the brand new new 911 GT3 at the Geneva show this March. We rate the current car as one of the greatest ever made, so the thought of a sparkly, new, updated version has got us running around the office like excited spaniels!!!!

OK, so it looks pretty similar to the last one and that’s because it is still a 997 variant. But who cares?!
Besides, it’s what’s underneath that counts.

Porsche has given this car a good seeing-to, hopefully making a great machine even greater, if thats at all possible!

It has 425bhp, that’s 20bhp over the last car, while the engine has been beefed up by 200cc to 3.8-litres!

And it now also has Porsche’s VarioCam system working away on the exhaust camshaft timings, optimising the torque / power / usability and emissions balance. Or so the boffins tell us?

All that science translates to a 0-62mph time of 4.1 seconds! and a top speed 194mph!
And for the first time on a GT3, you’ll be able to turn the traction off in stages – ‘properly off’ is the correct mode… Just make sure you’re some sort of magnificent driving God before you go trying that!

It’s also much stiffer than the last car, some aero tweaks have helped eek out more performance too. There are also bigger brakes, which will be useful before corners, if you want to keep your £81,914 Porsche in one piece!

There’s only one thing to say to all of that……..

Yes Please!!!!!

On the 20th September 1948, the Morris Minor was born. Launched at the Earls Court Motor Show and named after an earlier and named after an earlier Morris Minor car of 1928, it was the work of a team led by Alec Issigonis, who later went on to design the Mini. The prototype had been known as the Morris Mosquito[3], and some later models were called Morris 1000. The models varied from the standard saloon, to a wood-framed estate called the traveller, a convertible, plus a panel van and a pick-up truck version.

It was conceived as a vehicle to combine many of the luxuries and conveniences of a good motor car with a price suitable for the working classes. The Morris Minor, when compared with competitor products in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, excelled as a roomy vehicle with superior cornering / handling characteristics.

In 1961 the Morris Minor became the first British car to sell over 1,000,000 units. To commemorate this event, a limited edition of 350 two-door saloons were produced with distinctive lilac paintwork and a white interior. Also the badge name on the side of the bonnet was modified to read “Minor 1,000,000″ instead of the standard “Minor 1000″.

Eventually, over 1.6 million of the light-weight were produced and exported around the world, including many variants of the origional model.

Today the Morris Minor and 1000 are amongst the best served classic family-sized cars in the old vehicle movement and continue to gain popularity. The enduring affection for the “Moggie” (”Moggie” is also a common British nickname for an undistinguished cat) is reflected in the number of restored and improved Morris Minors currently running in Britain.

Most of our gasoline is made from crude oil, and formed from the remains of plants and animals that lived hundreds of millions of years ago. These remains were actually covered with layers of sediment over time. With extreme pressure, and high temperatures over millions of years, these remains became the mix of liquid hydrocarbons which is an organic chemical compound of hydrogen and carbon, and we call it crude oil. Refineries break down these hydrocarbons into many different products. These “refined products” include substances such as gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil, jet fuel, liquefied petroleum gases, residual fuel oil, and many other products.

After crude oil is refined into gasoline and other petroleum products, they must be distributed to the consumers. The majority of gasoline is shipped first by pipeline to storage terminals near consuming areas and then loaded into trucks for delivery to individual gas stations. Gasoline and other products are sent through shared pipelines in “batches.” Since these are not physically separated in the pipeline, some mixing or “commingling” of products occurs.

This means that the quality of the gasoline and other products must be tested as they enter and leave the pipeline to make sure they meet appropriate specifications. Whenever the product fails to meet local, State, or Federal product specifications, it must be removed and trucked back to a refinery for further processing.

After shipment through the pipeline, gasoline is typically held in bulk storage terminals that often service many companies. At these terminals, the gasoline is loaded into tanker trucks destined for various retail gas stations. The tanks in these trucks, which can typically hold up to 10,000 gallons, usually have several compartments, enabling them to transport the different grades of gasoline or petroleum products. The truck tank is where the special additive packages of gasoline retailers get blended into the gasoline to differentiate one blend from another. In some areas, ethanol may be “splash blended” in the tanker to meet environmental requirements. When the tanker truck reaches a gas station, the truck operator unloads each grade of gasoline into the appropriate underground tanks at the station, thus explaining how our fuel is couriered from the origional source, right to our doorstep!