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After going back through a past I did a while back on the rumoured BMW M8, my interest in the Bugatti Veyron was renewed, so I did a little digging on it.

Irresponsible. That's my first reaction. Anyone who designs a car that burns 5l of fuel per minute should be called irresponsible. When that same engine produces 1000hp, you call them sir. When it costs a million pounds, you probably don't call them. If you know a little about cars, specifically the close knit relationship between fuel and air, you know that a car needs to swallow a whole lot of air to burn fuel. An 8l V8 engine swallows 24ooo litres of air to make 500hp. That's a big engine. Now image an engine big enough to make double that. Holy hell in a handbag.


The smart people at Bugatti managed to keep the engine size down by mashing two v8 engines together to create a W8. (the two Vs make a W). They tickled it with a turbo charger. They bolted on the mother of all transmissions. It has always on all wheel drive. It's a serious chunk of metal.

* A W-16 engine that can produce 1,001 horsepower
* A top speed of 250+ mph (400+ kph)
* A zero-to-60mph time of three seconds
* A zero-to-180mph time of 14 seconds
* A price tag somewhere in the $1.2 million range.

Once all the mechanical details were taken care of, the designers dressed it for the ball, and what a pretty girl she is!


If you wanted to take her out on a date, maybe just one date, you can rent one for £15,000 a day. I was planning to waffle on and on about the Veyron, but I've been too busy staring at pictures of it. Quite literally. Just starting.

When I removed my headphones about an hour and the sounds of the real world came flooding in, I was welcomed by the sound of a lawnmower. Now lawnmowers as a whole don't have a particularly pleasing tone, but what made this one worse was that I new my car was standing close to the grass. A quick glance through the window confirmed what I suspected - the gardener was in the process of converting my car to an Eco-Friendly model was blasting it with grass from the lawnmower.

Here's what I saw:

What you can see here is a small taste of what happened after I took the picture and went back inside. My car now looks like a badly disguised G.I. Joe doing recon in the jungle.

And now it's started raining. Dammit

Lester

Last week I spent a long time doing my budget. A looong time. The purpose of all the number fiddling was to figure out how I'm going to get my mits on the new Nissan 370Z. After the 350Z, its' one of my favourite cars. As you can see, she's a real pussy magnet



So, step one is to sell my current 350Z. She's been very well loved and looked after and I always made sure that she has the best parts and services.

Here are her vitals

• R205,000 ono
  
• 2004 Nissan 350z - Black
• 63,000km
• New Bridgestone tyres
• Limited Slip diff with traction control
  
• Balance of Motor plan
  
• Full Service History at agents
  
• Full leather Heated Seats
• Bose 6 CD changer (including sub woofer)
• Smash and Grab tint

The stats:

• 3.5L VQ35DE V6
• 206kw@6200
• 363nm@4800
• 6 speed manual
  

If you're interested, please drop me a line with your details on the contact form or call me on o83 44 88 145.

Lester

Hundreds of taxis flooded in to the city centre at roughly 10am this morning to protest against the "Bus Rapid Transit" system planned ahead of 2010. The BRT system is designed to be a low cost, high speed transport system to be rolled out in all cities playing host to 2010 world cup matches.

While I haven't got the full story yet, I suspect the taxi drivers are petitioning the system due to the loss of income they will experience should the system be a success.

As usual, our office balcony served as a prime vantage point from which to view the protest. With taxi horns blaring and police sirens howling all morning, the city centre was plunged in to auditory chaos for the duration of the taxi drivers' circuit through the city.

(picture courtesy of Justin Hartman)

For more images, check here

The taxi protest adds to Cape Town's recent spate of newsworthy spectacles and comes not long after a bus burned to the ground and a truck was blown over by gale force winds at a traffic intersection.

With all this excitement literally happening on our doorstep, I'm really not loking forward to movving back to Century City...

Cnet announced this morning that Californian car manufacturer Tesla would start rolling out their Roadster electric car for sale to the public. I use the terms 'sale' and 'public' rather loosely in this context as one needs to consider that the cost of the all electric sports car is upwards of $100 000 and there is a waiting list that has been stretching for months already. The nippy little 2 seater does 0-100 km/h in under 4 seconds and has an electronically limited top speed of 2014 km/h. With a range of roughly 300km, the Tesla Roadster should be fine for most people to run around in for a day and then plug in for a charge at night.Charging the electronic sportscar takes about 3.5 hours.

I'm sure that we'll be seeing a bad ass action movie featuring a Tesla Roadster in the not too distant future.

After seeing a post about the new BMW 3 series on CarBlog last week I went snooping about to see if I could find anything else on the new bimmer's release. The boys over at CarBlog managed to get hold of this scanned pic from the new BMW E90 3 Series brochure: After a bit of digging I've found some actual photos of the new 2008 (or is that 2009) BMW 3 Series facelift. The new 3-series seems to be more of an evolution than a revolution, with many of the same lines from the last model still remaining.

As I didn't really car for the last iteration of the 3 Series, this one continues to 'not do it for me.' The design as a whole seems rigid and a little staid, and very noticeably, it looks as though someone has taken a hot iron to the car's bonnet. Maybe the magic of the design is lost on my uneducated eyes, or maybe it's just crap. What do you think?

BMW E90 3 Series Images after the jump

Is it 2008 or 2009?

I'm not sure. As i said previously, there's a new version of the BMW 7 Series out. Now, is this a 2008 model (since it was announced in 2008) or a 2009 model, since it will be available here in 2009? I'm confused.


Anyway, BMW unveiled their new limo in Moscow yesterday by using a 12 metre high hourglass. Yes, you read that correctly - a massive hourglass. The 7 Series BMW was placed in the top of the hour glass and then covered in thousands of little balls. As the balls moved through the neck of the hourglass, so the car was slowly revealed. A little cheesy, but very cool. Incidentally, the hourglass is the largest in the world, so if that old grandfather clock of yours is acting up, well - here's your answer.

Some pics and a vid from the event after the jump, including an interview with Chris Bangle, header designer at BMW and the creative eye behind the BMW GINA concept car.

BMW Goes Green

I found this waiting for me in my inbox this morning - pics of the all new 2008 BMW 7 Series. As some you may know, I've become a bit of a BMW fanatic over the course of the past few months. It started with the BMW M8 concept car pictures that were sent to me. Then it got a little worse with the BMW GINA concept car, and now the new BMW 7 Series has nudged me even further into Bavarian territory.



The internet's been buzzing with excitement since BMW officially released the pictures of its new 7 series which to be fair is more of a limo than a regular sedan. The newer model boasts increased fuel efficiency and lower overall consumption than any previous 7 series and also manages to come in at a few kilos lighter thanks to the use of aluminium in the engine.

I haven't had a chance to read to pore over the full technical specifications for the 7 series (available here), but some of the gizmos that the new 7 is sporting got me seriously excited. Among others, the gear shifting mechanism is particularly James Bond in appearance. The 7 Series's 6 speed automatic transmission is controlled from here and I'm sure all the Flight sim playing millionaires out in the world will completely love it.

Another feature that perked my interest is BMW's ConnectedDrive in dash internet system. This will display the GPS co-ordinates in a large easy to read manner and also allow the driver to access the net. While I'm not so sure that this is sucha great idea since the primary passenger may have a few other things on their mind such as say - driving, but hey - practicality isn't always a consideration when deciding on how cool something is.

Without going in to too many specifics, the BMW 7 Series is slated for a September release and will probably make its way to our shores in 2009. Oh, the estimated price tag is currently at a cool $185,000 which means that this hunk of metal (technically mostly aluminium) will set you back just over R1.4 million . Ouch.

BMW 2008 7 Series Image Gallery

Update: Official BMW 7 Series Video added

If you like this, you might also like:

BMW M8 Concept Car

BMW Gina Concept Car

After yesterday's post on the BMW Gina concept car, I scrounged about a bit and found the official BMW Gina trailer video. Very emotive in typical BMW fashion.




Now i know for sure that my next car will be a beemer.

Update - if you like this, try this article on the BMW M8 concept car

You know that feeling you get when you think you've done something, you're positive you remembered, only to find out later that you didn't even come close to doing what you were supposed to? Well, that's exactly how I felt this morning. I really thought that I'd posted up pictures of the BMW GINA concept car a few weeks back when BMW owned my OCD crazed soul. Yes, I posted pics of the BMW M8 and BMW's uber cool Infrared Video (on the 7 series), but it turns out I completely forgot to post the Gina. Bad Lester. Oh well, rather late than never eh?.

So without much further ado, I'd like to introduce you to Gina (Geometry, Function, N = infinite, Adaptations), the sexy Bavarian model with the dress that's got everyone talking. Gina challenges the assumptions that are made about the way that cars are made, specifically the shell or skin of the car. Gina uses fabric to build the shell of car. The fabric is stretched over the frame of the car to astounding visual effect as you can see from the pictures below





Ok, I'll stop yapping and let you watch the BMW Gina Video.

Prepare to be amazed

Update: I've added the official BMW Gina video, as distributed by BMW before the car's internet debut






Lester

This post about the BMW M8 concept car has moved to here:
http://lesterhein.com/bmw-m8-seriously-impressive/