MG taps into BMC’s small-car heritage to market the 3

SAIC is doing a great job in tapping to the heritage of MG and the companies that have gone before. Hop over to the SAIC–MG site and you’ll see this image to tie in to the launch of the B-class MG 3 hatchback:    The imagery tells a good deal of the story already: the […]

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Johnny Foreigner might be better at running a car company in Shanghai

As I made links for the last post, I noticed there were a lot of comments on AROnline about the replacement for the Roewe 750, the Chinese car that is based on the old Rover 75.    The replacement will be on the Opel Insignia platform, owned by GM. It’s been followed by a lot […]

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Roy Axe gives a sincere look at his career

Keith Adams is well known to many motorheads out there. We probably encountered him initially at his excellent AROnline, formerly The Unofficial Austin–Rover Resource. More recently, some of us have got to know Keith as a writer for Octane, where his well researched articles remind me of some of the best motoring journalists’ work. They […]

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Putting a full site feed on a Facebook fan page is not a good idea

Even though more young women are spending time on Facebook at the exclusion of other sites, last night I decided to stop connecting the Lucire RSS feed in to its Facebook fan page.    We began the fan page very late, having relied on using a Facebook group. And even then, these were promoted half-heartedly. […]

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Retro moment: the first American Ford Granada

Above: The US Ford Granada in a contemporary advertisement, as posted at americangranada.com.   Not the European car, but the American one of the same name: the Ford Granada was marketed as a US alternative to a Mercedes-Benz. Not as overstyled as, say, the Ford Maverick, this was an extremely heavy car, and Ford’s marketing […]

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Stutterheim marks the Swedish mood

Sent to me by Stefan Engeseth, Stutterheim Raincoats‘ website conveys a very Swedish feel, touching on one of the emotions we don’t always associate with Sweden: melancholy during the winter. The copy on the site even says, ‘Let’s embrace Swedish melancholy.’    With emotive photographs and a very Swedish soundtrack, it helps create an atmosphere […]

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An ideal surfing camera, and why we love the Saab 9-4X more

My friend Gareth Rowson is now review editor for WideWorldMag.com (alongside his design practice). Here is his test of the waterproof Oregon Scientific ATC9K Action Camera, filmed while surfing at Vazon in Guernsey. I thought this was very nicely shot.    Less well shot, but significant, is the official video from Saab USA about its […]

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The “next Google” has to save the web

Spotted on Tumblr yesterday, via Dave Sparks: ‘Why Facebook Browsing Annihilates Web Browsing’, on the Fast Company blogs. The intro pretty much summarizes the whole piece:   Recent research suggests that Facebook is overtaking search engines in terms of “time spent” on the web. Want to see where the trendline is heading? Take a look […]

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How MG Rover mirrored the developments at Lada

I still have Adam Curtis’s The Mayfair Set, a TV series charting the decline of British power and the rise of the technocracy, recorded on video cassette somewhere. I consider him someone who can see through the emperor having no clothes, and in The Mayfair Set, he certainly saw through the Empire having no clothes. […]

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Wellington needs a new brand for a new decade

A very good Vista Group luncheon (Jim, Natalie, self), where we discussed: the Gap rebrand; The Hobbit, unions and the BNZ Centre boilermakers’ strike; and my mayoral campaign.    On the first topic, we concluded that it was down to a simple cock-up. None of us could see any reason for the Gap to rebrand […]

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