The Back To The Future movies are the stuff of legendary cinema. Action and adventure packed into 3 fantastic films, but of course the on-screen star was always Doc Brown’s DeLorean DMC12. Now both the Doc and his time machine are back for a series of adverts. They might not be a return to the big screen but the comical scenes do us just fine. Interestingly, the DMC12 in the ad is the actual car from the original film.
Your cold, tired and alone. A Zombie infestation has taken hold of everyone and everything around you. The time has come to arm yourself… Natural instinct and continuous rehearsal from video games dictates that either a shotgun or baseball bat is your best bet. Subaru disagree and in this rather interesting ad they shall educate you on how best to defend yourself.
BMW are particularly good at raising a smile in the industry. Be it an April fool to remember or yet another witty advert like this one, you do being to wonder who siad the Germans don’t have a sense of humor.
I love driving. Well, as you can imagine this would have been a poor career choice if I didn’t. Getting behind the wheel of any car, yes even some poorly conceived Korean contraption with three wheels, is a pleasure in that it is better than walking. To have a roof over your head and a seat to sit on is much better than many modes of transportation. Riding an elephant may be exotic but when it comes to parking at your local supermarket, life does tend to get a bit tricky. So why is the car a subject of what is often a rant in this space? Like many people these days I found myself this past month a little short of cash meaning that the fuel in my car has had to literally go that extra mile. I am here to proclaim how driving my car became hell!
There are many old wives tales and children’s stories that tell you how best to make your petrol last longer. Lets just say that my driving style doesn’t normally adhere to any of that advise and thus the stage is set for my current predicament. I wouldn’t say that I have a led foot but my natural rhythm of driving lends itself to being exuberant. I often wont change gear until I have gained every atom of performance that cog has to offer for example. As you can imagine preserving my liquid gold was quite a challenge.
Let me state from the off that this whole ordeal was not enjoyable at any point. At first it presented the elusion of enjoyment through setting and achieving targets, but soon you hit a barrier that turns driving from a pleasure to a pain. Doing 30MPH in 5th is the least manly activity one can part take in. A once lively machine effectually becomes neutered and the most frustrating thing is that all you have to do to set it free again is drop a few cogs and give it a boot full. You cant however as the polar ice cubes will melt and so will the last few pennies in your wallet. Besides the lack of favor behind the wheel there is also the inevitable increase of anger you will feel towards other road users. When someone slows a little too much normally you let it go and the world continues to rotate. In ultra-fuel-save-mode a once small inconvenience is costing you economy and the end result are words I am not allowed to reproduce here.
Driving once to represented freedom for me but during this period it became like living under the rule of a third-world dictator. You must not accelerate too briskly, you must not decelerate too suddenly, you must not change direction with any real conviction. What you will do is boil to death because the air-con drains the fuel and don’t even dream about opening the windows as your MPG will plummet.
Those who say “but isn’t it rewarding when you think about all the natural resources you have saved” can keep their environmentally clear consciences to themselves. I would rather have let my fuel injection system loose with what petrol I had and conked out in the middle of nowhere with some sense of fulfillment. Driving economically is genuinely more painful than gouging my own eyes out with a spoon.
Soon this torment will end and the car shall receive a well deserved drink. Speaking of a drink I need one a bit stronger than tea to get over the stresses of being kind to the environment.
The marshals in any sport do a fantastic job of keeping things running smoothly. In Formula One they are first on scene at an accident and help clear the the wreckage in order for the race to continue. One such marshal had a bit of a “trip” whilst at the Canadian GP this weekend and found himself infront on a high-speed F1 car. Now this is serious as he could have been hurt but it is just a little bit funny watching him screamble to his feet only to fall over again…
Diesel over the past 10 years has become more prominent than ever and what with fuel prices continuing to rise people want the maximum MPG. VW are really pushing their new range of diesels that can achieve just that and with them come a range of new adverts. In this rather witty ploy to get you to buy their cars a father tells a son he can drive the next time they fill up…
Ever had to tell someone something that could result directly in you being injured or hurt in any way? Well Land Rover with a witty new advert offers safety in these times of “danger.” Keep up the good work marketers!
The Germans really are on top form with their marketing. The witty and banter laden adverts are some of the best we have seen for a long time and never fail to raise a smile. In their latest ad Mercedes-Benz follows Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg out to dinner where their competitive streak ensues in a comical competition. Mika Hakkinen however has the last laugh…
We have all been there… Driving a car with less specifications than a tea-cozy, but Citroen’s latest advert puts a comical spin on those machines we wish had just a bit more of everything. I fear this may inspire owners of such vehicles!
Over the past few weeks many of us from the Inside Lane office decided to take our break abroad. I personally travelled on a floating hotel to a variety of locations (oh get him and his fancy holiday); however the one snag with traveling via this method is that you go where the boat goes. Now this wasn’t a problem as Spain and Portugal are lovely places but the last stop was France. I can admire the French for several things as they are fantastic cooks, brilliant architects and wonderful artists. Culturally France is brilliant but civilization is not their forte and this shows on the road most predominantly.
If you decide to drive in France there are three outcomes to your journey; death due to frustration, death due to kamikaze bus driver, or death due to Arc De Triomphe. So in short you will die! Driving in France is much like entering a war-zone armed only with a toothpick; you don’t stand a chance of arriving in one piece. Just looking around at cars that were stationary I could not find a single one without a dent or missing body panel. Even cars that were less than a year old appeared deformed and decapitated, though I did notice of the few German cars I saw that they were untouched. Hmmm why is that? History would tell us it is fear of invasion; you make up your own minds.
So we have established the end result of driving in France but what causes all the battle scars on the local’s conveyances? Well based on what I saw and past experiences it is a combination of France’s attitude towards driving and poor road design. For example I was minding my own business in one of the many parks around a place called Brest, you know buying the traditional “Brit on holiday” ice cream when a man on a scooter bounced onto the curb and drove through the park. It was like something from wacky races and I was next expecting Dick Dastardly to emerge from the shrubbery! I looked around to find that the locals didn’t even flinch yet here I was in shock and awe of what had just happened. A MAN ON A SCOOTER JUST DROVE ACROSS THE GRASS AND THROUGH THE PARK! After regaining my composure I then remembered I was in France and this was an everyday normality that people got used to.
Next stop the famous Arc De Triomphe, a fantastically sculpted arch that sits proudly in the centre of a roundabout. But this being the topsy-turvy world of the French it has 7 lanes of traffic circling around it. Who in their right mind designed this? Cars dart through 3 lanes of traffic like mosquitoes though the blades of a fan, motorcyclists lay scattered around the edges of the never ending circus, the sound of broken glass pierces your ears every 30 seconds and of course there is the gauze of noise fabricated from the multitude of tones supplied by various horns. It is so bad that most insurers will not insure you on this roundabout!
Parking in France is much easier than it is in the rest of Europe as the rules of the road state “park where you like.” The consequence is that cars are strewn left, right and centre often finding their way into entrances of building, being used as additions to famous monuments and even parked on tram lines. It doesn’t help that everyone drives a Renault Espace, a car that they would quite understandably want to write-off.
So is the solution to ditch the car and take a push-bike? NO! Not unless you don’t value you the use of your legs, and I’m not just saying that because the environmentalists have stolen yet another perfectly good car from the showroom. The problem is the bus drivers and their axe-murdering ways. They are the most vicious of drivers accelerating hard out of junctions often taking out the odd pedestrian, they cut across lanes like a knife through butter and to cap it all off they hate cyclists. Every bus I saw would surge towards the nearest bike and attempt to either make them disappear under their wheels or pull alongside and squeeze them against the side of walls. Cyclists recoil in fear of the brutal mammoth but the elderly don’t stand a chance as they just stand there in acceptance. And the worst part? Cars and buses have the right of way meaning that the law won’t protect you when the inevitable accident happens.
On the way back to the ship I was confronted by what I first thought was the next French revolution! JCB’s and dump trucks lined a road the size of Oxford Street though this could no longer be called a street as all that was left of it was rubble. With the lack of this main road the city was in panic with traffic jams everywhere my eyes looked. These “road works” claimed a road that stretched from where I stood all the way down to the ocean. It disappeared off into the horizon with the curvature of the earth. However a sign did read, after much deciphering, open’s next week. Say what you will about the French, but they know how to get a job done quickly.
