Archive | Automotive RSS feed for this section

Brandgasm: Johnnie Walker "Walk" 6 minute spot

Awesome performance by Robert Carlyle (the actor in the spot). The timing and flow of this spot was really well executed. It would be quite entertaining to see him perform this spot as his character Begbie from the movie Trainspotting

True fans are usually curious about what goes on behind the scenes; this is true for music, movies, racing and in this case brands. I liked the reasons behind the square bottle and diagonal label. Johnnie Walker wants you to socialize and drink their whiskey, they also want you to talk about their brand and the bottle/label tidbits are easy to remember and talk about.

My favorite whiskey to drink is not bottled by Johny Walker, but my favorite whiskey brand is Johnnie Walker.

[UPDATE]: The original video was removed from YouTube. Found another one.

Thinking About GM

I really want to believe that GM will get back up on all four wheels. I think that the company has some very talented people… I also think that they have an amazing amount of baggage that should have been taken care of in bankruptcy court before pumping so many billions of taxpayer’s dollars.

Talking about the billions pumped, Sarah Palin will appear later today in an interview with Sean Hannity. Among other things, she says:

“America is digging a deeper hole and how are we paying for this government largesse. We’re borrowing. We’re borrowing from China and we consider that now we own sixty percent of GENERAL MOTORS – or the U.S. government does… But who is the U.S. government becoming more indebted to? It’s China. So that leads you to have to ask who is really going to own our car industry than in America.”

Its scary to think what government and regulations can do to the cars that we drive. Scarier still, is to think what other governments can do… I’m pretty positive that given the opportunity they will tilt at their favor (borrowing that expression from this great blog post by Alexander Muse).

We as Americans better start tilting to our favor, hard. While we still have leverage.

Love the Beast – Movie

My good friend Michael sent me an email today with this YouTube link. The video shows bicycle riders doing some extremely serious stunts. The song in that video is pretty cool too, I knew I had heard it before.

Which brings me to the movie (and trailer embedded below) Love The Beast with Eric Bana, Jay Leno and Jeremy Clarkson (oh, and also Dr. Phil… wtf?).

The song on both videos is called The Funeral by Band of Horses

I have not seen Love the Beast yet, but I plan on doing so. I have no clue on when the movie will be (or was) out in US theaters, there is no mention of this on their site or YouTube profile. It will be in US theaters on August 1 (thanks Alex!).

McLaren is like a school day in summer time… no class

I borrowed the quote above from a commenter at YouTube. I thought it was both funny and accurate.

About the video: Last week’s race at Malaysia had very heavy rain. So heavy, that officials decided to momentarily park all of the cars on the starting grid to see if the race would continue or be cut short (about half of the race remaining).

Mark Webber (team Red Bull) who is one of the most vocal drivers when it comes to safety matters, was running all over the place talking to drivers and safety stewards about stopping the race.

He can be seen in the video below talking to McLaren’s driver Lewis Hamilton about this. Pay attention to one of the mechanics in the background:

The race was officially stopped a few minutes later. There was no visibility nor grip.

I am not a McLaren fan. They are one of the most technically advanced teams on the grid, but their culture and attitude is crap.

For those who don’t follow F1 closely; McLaren was involved in 2007 in an espionage scandal that ultimately cost them $100 million, and most recently (3 weeks ago) Hamilton was caught lying to the FIA stewarts which resulted in the suspension of all points scored by the team plus possible further sanctions. None of this is good for the sport.