Firstly id like to say I’m not that keen on camping, campervans or people that clog the roads with their caravan but if id had to go camping it would be in the van in the video above. Known as the Volkner Performance Motorhome, the cost of this thing is more than the average home, but you could live in this thing for a fair while and be very comfortable with its pop up plasma TV, full bathroom and luxury fittings. When you need to pop down the shops this van like many normal homes has a built garage to house you luxury sports car. With a price tag of around 750.000 Pounds you would want to like camping a lot but with this one it really does beat spending a week pooping in a bucket. Personally i think I keep ponying up the cash to stay in a hotel. (more…)
The ad above is for the 1982 Statesman by Holden, its interesting to note that the Statesman brand was a luxury marque created by Holden but most Aussies still just refered to it as a Holden Statesman even though Holden went out of their way to drop the Holden name from marketing material. We like the WB as it shows how a company (who had very little money at the time) could take an outdated model and do some clever design changes to make it into an all new model. one example is the huge rubber strip down the side that is almost hollow in some parts in order to hide the huge bulge above the guards left over from the 1970’s Kingswood. (more…)
The Paykan is a car built by the Iranian company Iran Khodro, based on the 1966 Hillman Hunter, the Pakyan came about after the Iranian government set up the nationally owned car factory to produce cheap cars for the Iranian people. (more…)
There are plenty of plans for cars that run on water around on the net but when it comes to perpetual motion generally most of these ideas can be described as a scam or fanciful at best. But that may be about to change according to the Reuters news story above. The idea of running a car on water is not new as well all know that water is partly made up of hydrogen which is a nice fuel source, the problem is with current technology breaking down the water into hydrogen and oxygen has been darn difficult especially on a scale to fit into a car. The company who has made the prototype car in the video claim that have the process licked but are not giving away any secrets as they want to sell their technology to a car manufacturer. So what do you recon? legit or another scam, we are hoping it is legit but with so many plans about for perpetual motions machines who knows. hit up our comment form below at let us know what you think. (more…)
Any Aussie out there should remember this marketing campaign for Holden from the late 70’s and early 80’s. The catchy Jingle was featured heavily around the footy season as Holden was a major sponsor. We couldn’t decide on our youtube feature ad of the week this week, so after you watch the above video featuring the Commodore hit the read more to see the 70’s version with featured the Holden Kingswood. Be warned you may be singing the jingle all day!
We liked the idea of styling and building our own car and this guy from Lithuania has done just that. While we would probably start with a Datsun 120Y and turn it into something that looked like a Mercedes CL, this guy has taken a perfectly good CL and turned it into a cross between a Ferarri and a Ssang Yong. We do give the guy credit for the amount of painstaking work this mod must of taken to achieve. Basically he has built a new body around the Benz with expanding foam held in place by cardboard. Once it set he has then finished off the styling with a lot of bog and filing. We really hate the grill and the bulberous wheel arches but then again we’d be happy with the untouched doner car, Mercedes Benz probably spent millions on styling the CL, why does a guy in a shed with a can of bog think he can do a better job. For the full gallery head over to englishrussia.com blog. (more…)
This weeks car ad is a funny one from Italian car manufacturer Fiat for their supermini car the Palio. Apparently if you buy yourself one of these you will love it so much you will do anything to protect it. If you know what country this ad comes from drop us a note in the comment box as we love to know. The Palio has been produced since 1996 in various countries from South America to eastern Europe and Asia. (more…)
The Popemobile is the name given to the modified car used by the pope when he appears in parades. While the pope has used many modified cars for decades the name only come in to use around 1980 when Pope John Paul II started to use the converted Mercedes Benz G-Wagon. The G Class or G wagon is a Mercedes Benz 4WD that has been in production since 1979. The G wagon is popular with armies around the world and is known for its strong go anywhere design. Pope John Paul II’s G wagon from 1981 is on display in the Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart Germany. (more…)
Aristotle Onassis was well known as a flamboyant Greek shipping tycoon and being a shipping tycoon means you need a fairly good personal yacht. His yacht known as the Christina was a converted 1943 built navy frigate that he purchased for $34000, as it had become surplus after WW2. After spending $4 million on it, the boat has been visited by celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Eva Peron, John F Kennedy and Winston Churchill and was lavishly appointed with his bar even containing whale teeth footrests and whale foreskin leather seats. After his death the Yacht was given to the Greek government for use as a presidential yacht but later fell into a state of disrepair. Today the yacht has been refurbished as a luxury charter now known as the Christina O. So if you want to sit by the mosaic floor pool that rises at the push of a button to form a dance floor, start saving up as 1 day on the boat can set you back more than what some people earn in a year. (more…)
Our classic car ad of the week features one of the worlds worst cars, the Yugo. Produced since 1981 in Serbia by Zastava the car was imported into the US in 1985 and sold as the cheapest new car available. Based on the Fiat 128, a car that dates back to 1969, the Zastava was popular in eastern Europe where the choice of other cars on offer made the Zastava look like a good buy and economical motoring. By the time the car got to the US under the Yugo name, the unrefined and sluggish box was bought up by cheapskates who would of been better off finding a decent secondhand car. Not only did the car suffer from poor build quality and performance, the market of customer the car was aimed at were often too tight to service them properly making the cars mechanical woos worse. Sales in the US stopped around 1992 when UN sanctions against the former Yugoslavia stopped exports. NATO later bombed the factory that has since been rebuilt to churn out a face-lifted version of the car that is known today as the Zastava Koral. (more…)
