November portraits

Flying Kites

We went to the kite flying area near our house - here's the pagoda at the top, with a top-gear style vignette. Our kite was poor - and crashed into a tree. I managed to retreive it. We came back on aother day with a different kite. This one made short work of the line on my old reel - but pulled so hard that it was a nightmare to get back in - so no pics of that I'm afraid.

Seventy Five!

I think its quite a thing to reach seventy five - particularly in really good shape. We had a cake - cheating on the candles of course, and I had to marvel at how lives diverge; born on armistice day in 1934 in the tiny Eastern Cape dorpie of Alice, followed by a life lived on three continents, and reaching this point, seventy five years later, with a fabulous sixteen year old young man as a grand-son, a family living on two further continents, two Australian grand-children, two other grand children who will grow up learning Chinese. The 11th of November 1934 was a Sunday - considerate of Granpa George. Mao Tse Tung was busy with his long march - this having started in October 1934 - an event that is interwoven into the existence of modern China; the bank robber Baby Face Nelson was shot by the FBI (if you've recently seen the movie Public Enemies - with Johnny Depp); Katherine Hepburn was on the cover of Movie Magazine, which cost 10c - the same price as one gallon of petrol - that's four litres. In my new line of business, it's also the year that President Rooseveldt signed the law that gave rise to the US Securities Exchanges Commission.

SuperEv

AMR and the Tokyo Motor Show

This is Aston Martin's (AMR) Le Mans series winning race car. Serious stuff, it needs to be said. One piece monocoque (no chassis), rear suspension bolts directly to the gearbox - which essentially acts as the subframe. It sounded very very good.












I thought this was the best pic I took - Mazda's concept car, seriously flowing lines, very cool doors - gullwings that don't need the space.

There were a lot of amazing cut-aways, this one spared no effort, including a cut through the run-flat tires

Honda's new 1200 sport tourer - lovely bike, clearly, but I thought it looked a lot like the BMW K1 of 1991, without the seat back and rear side panels (which I think is the coolest raod bike ever built).

Subaru's B4 race car - nicely presented, and literally 2cm of ground clearance throughout. Must generate phenomenal downforce - but at the expense of comfort you'd imagine - like zero suspension travel.

Nice detail of the Nissan GTR race car - tasty ceramic brakes and beautifully machined rim.

Subaru's concept car - nice idea - but how practical? Can't really imagine parking and getting that door open in Menlyn.

A BMW GT3 race car - cool lime green I thought, and about the same ground clearance as the Subaru.

I thought this was particularly funny. Not sure how intimidating your average South African cash in transit heister would find either the police car or woman. The pose was ... menacing.

I thought this was an interesting company - called Suposse (not sure how you'd pronounce that) which builds small hi-performance stuff in the Lotus Elize sort of market space. They also did a Cateram looking thing (and Cateram had a stand there - and the likeness was disturbing). This thing looked pretty good to drive.

This must be the rarest car in the world - there is one of them - and it goes, its a 1970 Mazda RX500 - a rotary engined supercar. I loved it - highlight of the show for me - it had gullwing doors long before the first Countache came out from Lamborghini.

Lots of people were living their dream - and in Japanese style - super chilled out and friendly, and very happy to be part of someones pic.

Honda's GP bike, nicely presented, and all business looking. Must weigh nothing, and put out scary power. Not a subtle orange rim, it needs to be said.

There were a lot of design stands of one sort or another which I thought would have interested you. Here is the clay mock-up of the new Yamaha V-max. I liked it because they had the bikes actual front end bolted onto it - which looked cool - and the back end only partially finished.

This groovy coloured Lambo was actually part of a tyre stand - shows how not to do it though - I cannot remember which tyres they were.

A very big component of the show was alternative energy - hybrids, electrics and hydrogen cell stuff. Lots of electric bicycles and mopeds - like this one. Cool design I thought - clean - perhaps the future has two wheels?

One of the Subaru's - I liked the lighting.

Lexus's concept car (I thought - no, not exactly - actually this: http://www.motoring.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5229152&fSectionId=1566&fSetId=381- and my second best shot I thought. Not sure if I go for all the air scoops (but now I understand why it needs them).