Happy 50th, Singapore
Ferrari is releasing a car to mark Singapore’s 50th anniversary since independence.
Always willing to cash in on any occasion, no matter how tenuously connected to it the company may be, Ferrari is celebrating 50 years of independence for Singapore by releasing a car.
Yes, that’s right, just the one car. The SG50 Edition is an F12 Berlinetta specially ordered from the factory’s Tailor Made programme by Ital Auto, the official Ferrari importer in Singapore. The price hasn’t been released.
Painted in a custom metallic red — called Rosso Singapore — the SG50 also boasts, um, a few white bits. Inside the customisation is even more extreme ... oh, hang on, no it’s just some red and white highlights, the Singapore lion emblem on the headrests and a plate that says “Singapore Anniversary Edition 1/1”
It seems a waste of time, but a single Ferrari with a few white stripes is probably all you really need for a country that has such restrictive private car policies that a “Certificate of Entitlement” can cost you more than a car.
Eco-friendly to the Max
Would you want to buy a new Aussie car inspired by the Mad Max movies? How about if I told you it was called the Immortus?
Awesome, huh? Just think of that aggressive armour, bristling with spikes, guns and skulls.
Sorry, think again. The Immortus doesn’t look anything like the car pictured above that featured in the Aussie movies; it is a solar-powered electric car with a theoretical unlimited range. As long as the sun is shining. In other words, it was inspired by the desire to NOT have to wage persistent, on-going war over meagre gasoline resources like in the movies.
Not the inspiration WE would have taken, to be honest.
Despite its lack of guns or decorative skulls, the Immortus is an interesting concept. Thought up and planned for production by Australian company EVX Ventures, the Immortus will be a long, wide, low (plenty of room for solar panels) two-seater that will use four in-wheel 20kW hub motors to propel it to 100km/h in under seven seconds.
Fully charged, the battery will be good for a 550km range at an average of 85km/h, but for that theoretical unlimited range you need a lighter foot to maintain an average speed of just 60km/h. And the sun. You will need the sun to be shining brightly to charge the battery faster than your average speed can deplete it.
Barry Nguyen, CEO and co-founder of EVX, said in an interview with Gizmag that he wasn’t planning mass production of the Immortus, rather, the company would make them in limited numbers for specific customers. In other words, if you want to be the anti-Mad Max, you need to hand over a major chunk of the $560,436 total price to get things started.
Hot Wheels bed the stuff of dreams
This racing car bed stands apart because of the featured track.
Do you have trouble getting your kids to go to bed at night? Well then, this will help. With the whole “getting them to go to bed” part, that is. Getting them to actually go to sleep? Well, this probably won’t help at all.
The idea of combining racing cars and beds has been a classic one for a long time now, but this new one from Step2 and Hot Wheels — the Toddler-to-Twin Race Car Bed — also combines a brilliant Hot Wheels track extension that is actually part of the bed.
As well as a headboard that also doubles as a shelf for a few prized Hot Wheels cars, a track runs around the outer edge of the bed, with connection points for a Hot Wheels (or other compatible) track down by the working LED headlights.
At US$350 (NZ$528) it is priced similarly to other race car beds. Now if we could only convince Scalextric to produce an adult-sized version ..
We are the world
■For the first time in many years there was some action in the decrepit Packard plant in Detroit recently. Just not of the car-building kind. A tiger got loose and roamed the long-mothballed factory for a bit during a photo shoot that went badly wrong. It seems the tiger, a wolf and a bobcat were there for the photo shoot when the big cat got away from its handlers. The group had permission to do the shoot there, just not for the wild animals. Probably for this very reason. The tiger was eventually rounded up, without any harm to it or the people trying to do the rounding up. It reportedly wasn’t very happy about it, though.
■Here’s a nice story about US police for a change: when Oklahoma police officer Chris Eastwood and his partner turned up at the scene of a car-vs-pedestrian accident they found that a homeless man, his dog and his guitar had been involved. The man and the dog were fine, but the guitar was destroyed. Instead of cuffing the man and beating him half to death like most US cops seem to do these days, Eastwood drove home, got his own guitar and took it back to the homeless man, figuring that he would be devastated by losing what little he did have. He was reportedly thrilled and performed a song for the officers, who recorded it and posted it on the department’s Facebook page.
Hard pressed to top that ...
The beautiful wooden motorbike seat will likely bring pain.
What is it with designers, electric motorbikes and weirdly impractical designs?
Although we love this new concept from a young French designer called Martin Hulin, it is not something we would ever want to ride.
It’s not because his Expedition E-Raw isn’t a stunning piece of design — it is. Inspired by classic custom and cafe racers, the E-Raw is all simplicity and exposed aggression and The Good Oil absolutely loves it.
But look at that seat. It is a triumph of elegance and design. It is a sensuously curved piece of art. It is also wooden and would pulverise your tender dangly bits inside of the first 500m or so.
But then designers DO think differently to normal people. For example Hulin said this of his design: “One might think that electric drive would sterilise the motorcycle experience. Actually, electric motorcycles asymptotically approach the mythical Centaur. The electric motorcycle is an opportunity for rich and intense experiences.”
The electric drive might not sterilise the experience, but that wooden seat would almost certainly sterilise the rider.
Number Crunching
149 CARS
The number of cars on the road per 1000 people in Singapore.
708 CARS
The number of cars on the road per 1000 people in New Zealand.
1263 CARS
The number of cars on the road per 1000 people in San Marino.
2 CARS
The number of cars on the road per 1000 people in Togo.