All hail the bland! ‘Malaise Era’ car show a hit
Over in the US, a show-and-shine event with a distinct difference has caught our attention.
What began life as a Facebook group for a guy called Bryan Raab Davis has turned into a real-life celebration of the drab, the conservative, the mundane.
“Malaise Motors” has more than 6500 members all seeing the good in the bad; cars from the 1970s and 1980s when US insurance companies imposed penalties for too much horsepower and carmakers were forced to apologetically come up with low-power alternatives.
The group’s show in California saw a gathering of all manner of under-powered Oldsmobiles, Fords and AMC Pacers.
“Malaise Motors” is a curious idea. Why not something similar in New Zealand? How many Holden Belmonts and Sunbirds are around? Does anyone still own a mint Hillman Avenger?
There has to be some mediocre metal out there worth celebrating.
Brabus founder, CEO goes to great tuning workshop in the sky
The man who took a Mad Hatter approach to some of Mercedes-Benz’s biggest models has died after a short illness. He was 62.
Bodo Buschmann founded Brabus when he was a student lawyer.
Looking to modify a Mercedes-Benz of his own, he couldn’t find the outrageous componentry, so elected to make it himself.
That was back in 1977. Since then Brabus (which Buschmann founded with Klaus Brackman; the first three letters of each surname giving the company its name), has risen to be the biggest independent Mercedes-Benz aftermarket tuner on the scene, rivalled only by the manufacturer’s in-house AMG sub-brand.
The company was a pioneer in the single brand-focused tuning world and now has a multitude of subsidiary companies, its own line of racing components and body panels, and has even partnered with Benz’s parent company, Daimler AG.
While AMG reigns it in (mostly), Brabus is well-known for taking a slightly more “overt” — to put it politely — approach to tuning and customising Benz fodder.
What good a body panel if it can’t be slashed with air vents? What good a flared wheel arch if every millimetre of space can’t be filled with enormous alloy wheel? And as for horsepower, Brabus can’t get enough of the stuff.
Brabus has modified everything in the Mercedes-Benz stable and beyond. While Brabus-badged C-Class, S-Class and G-Wagens are probably what the nameplate conjures up in the mind, it has also worked its dark magic on Maybachs and Smart cars. It has even unleashed a 6.1-litre bi-turbo V8 Viano van.
Buschmann’s son Constantin is set to take over the company, so we’re expecting the slightly unhinged approach to Mercedes-Benz modding will continue. And that makes us happy.
Citroen gets spaced-out with new names
We’ve never quite understood why French manufacturer Citroen chose to associate its range of people-movers with a Spanish painter and sculptor.
But in retrospect — now that the carmaker has decided to ditch said name in favour of something else more celestial — we’re thinking perhaps it wasn’t so bad after all.
Citroen’s Picasso MPVs will henceforth be known as SpaceTourers.
For real. It’s in a press release and everything.
Okay, the previous naming convention was hardly faultless. The company insists that its MPVs are basically slightly larger versions of its C4 hatchbacks.
Thus, we had the rather clunkily badged C4 Picasso and even-less-tidy Grand C4 Picasso. Now we will have the C4 SpaceTourer and the Grand C4 SpaceTourer.
So instead of tidying things up a bit — and maybe dropping the pointless C4 reference — they’ve simply replaced the confusing with the ridiculous.
Perhaps the biggest surprise, however, is that Elon Musk hadn’t already registered the SpaceTourer name as a trademark for some crazed outer-atmosphere personal shuttle vehicle he is planning to build.
Mind you, with a nameplate like that, Citroen hardly appears to have its collective feet firmly on the ground at the moment either.