Recent Comments:
VIDEO: Audi releases official footage of the R8 {Autoblog}
Jan 19th 2007 1:04AM Richard, thay said 'typical' only of race cars. In the sense of it being a characteristic normally associated with race cars. They're not saying that it's a characteristic only found in race cars.
VIDEO: The Touareg pulling the 747 {Autoblog}
Dec 9th 2006 6:44AM I think you're getting so worked up about this you're having trouble distinguishing between when I'm being sarcastic and serious. It's quite entertaining, really.
I actually do believe that the VW thing was a PR stunt, but I think we can draw the line at passenger cars because it was clearly a stunt aimed at the buyer on the street, who isn't generally interested in hiring a man to pull his stuff or having an airport buggy to do it. But my main point was that you're as much of a manipulator yourself. Or do I really mean that? Was that serious? Or sarcastic? Hmm.
VIDEO: The Touareg pulling the 747 {Autoblog}
Dec 9th 2006 12:09AM Yup, I agree, it's hard to see through this haze of VW's PR mumbo-jumbo and identify the facts...obviously, they picked a large item that's relatively light for its size, and that rolls easily, in order to make the job easy for the Touareg and produce more dramatic, spectacular results.
It's the kind of PR-savvy obfuscation you find when a person, oh, I don't know, maybe starts making outlandish, unnecessary comparisons - say between a man and an SUV rather than between an SUV and another SUV - in order to make a point which actually isn't that dramatic, since it doesn't demonstrate that any other passenger car could have done this. All these PR stunts and exaggeration, how shameless, don't you agree?
VIDEO: The Touareg pulling the 747 {Autoblog}
Dec 8th 2006 8:39PM Yeah those airport tractors with their gearing and their specially tuned engines sure are used as passenger cars all the time. Heck, I saw one with a caravan behind it just the other day. Like a rocket, it was.
VIDEO: The Touareg pulling the 747 {Autoblog}
Dec 6th 2006 9:04PM #38 Big Rocket -
I don't think that's the sentence of my post that you ought to be concentrating on. Maybe you want to look at the last two sentences in the earlier paragraph.
VIDEO: The Touareg pulling the 747 {Autoblog}
Dec 5th 2006 6:44PM #38 Joseph -
No, you're not talking about how strong machines and humans are, you're talking about how capable they are at pulling 747s. And that particular task is not a matter of force or load-bearing capability alone. You make it sound as though this test is exclusively one of strength, but it's not. In any case it's unclear what you mean by 'strength'.
Now I could tell you humans have superior traction or greater tensile strength in the bones than a Touareg, but I'd be talking nonsense, about as much nonsense as you are - because your comparison between the man and the Touareg is pointless. The human and the machine are so different as to effectively render it so. We could talk about how the Touareg got the job done quicker and could have kept on doing it continuously for much longer than the man, but that would be pointless as well. The comparison between man and machine is simply being made here in furtherance of the insufferable smugness of people who enjoy nothing more than being gleefully unimpressed. It's as much of a PR stunt as VW's ad, if not more so.
Is the Touareg's achievement truly amazing? I'm not sure. We know that the guy who pulled the 747 is amazing, because none of us could have done it. Hence, the relevant test in this case would be if another passenger car, perhaps one with less torque, could successfully tow the same 747. And while hyperbolic, it's not an entirely irrelevant test, because some people do buy cars for towing.
Unless I'm wrong and you and your enlightened fellows inspire next summer's caravaners to don harnesses and go off a-dragging instead.
VIDEO: The Touareg pulling the 747 {Autoblog}
Dec 5th 2006 3:42AM I don't get the people who say that this isn't amazing because a human can do it...um, in all our centuries of engineering the human race hasn't even come close to producing a machine as astounding as the human body. So VW didn't manage. And guess what, that wasn't what they were trying to do. Alright then. That sure is a big bubble you're bursting.
An American in Paris disses the Euro Focus {Autoblog}
Oct 5th 2006 7:30PM I don't know, I was under the impression that most of the UK motoring press consider the Focus to be the best-to-drive in the class, followed by the Golf. Unless that's just some sort of anti-German thing going on, because it still happens with them in this day and age.
Ad Fight!: BMW, Audi and Subaru in ad grudge match {Autoblog}
Aug 8th 2006 12:55PM Subaru makes superb cars and all, but honestly their ad was a bit unwarranted, opportunistic and piggybacky. As has been pointed out, BMW bested everyone at the Engine Awards anyway. Subaru's use of the words 'From the winner of the 2006 International Engine of the Year' seem to refer to the overall prize, when that one went to BMW's V10. So, in short - lame.
Well done Audi, though. Bet those Bavarian boys are plenty sore at having essentially sucked exhaust fumes at F1 for so many years.
