Air New Zealand acts in the wake of the Christchurch earthquake

Good on Air New Zealand for ferrying emergency supplies to Christchurch, for its $50 special to and from Christchurch till Friday 8 a.m., and for extra 747 flights to and from the disaster-struck city tomorrow (subject to the airport reopening down there).    I’ve also learned that there is an extra Wellington–Christchurch A320 service departing […]

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Trade not supplied

In November 1993, while my mother was dying of cancer, I went and bought 12 cans of Wattie’s baked beans from Woolworth’s in Kilbirnie. She said it would be an easy breakfast to prepare for her, so I should go and get some. There was a limit of six, but there was a misunderstanding about […]

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How will Chevrolet go down in Korea?

Last week, GM announced it would drop the Daewoo marque, as it has done through Europe, in its native Korea, in favour of Chevrolet.    The company will also be renamed GM Korea, a name it once had nearly four decades ago.    While most will think this makes sense, so GM can concentrate on […]

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Opel is not a snob brand

Arthur Daley, Opel’s last New Zealand spokesman: ‘Never mind the Capri, Tel: I sell Opels now.’ In the Fairfax Press, General Motors has apparently confirmed it will bring in Opel-branded cars to sell alongside Holden-branded ones.    It’s an obvious move. For years, a good part of Holden’s range was Opel-designed. Like Vauxhall, the model […]

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McAfee did good: a software company that didn’t jerk me around in ’10

A new computer arrived at the office, Firefox 3·6·13 was installed on it. Boom goes the dynamite (thanks, Jen—since I watch very little television I had no idea of this reference). It wasn’t the ‘unmark purple’ bug, either (sample size so far: 1).    It’s a different set-up to the rest. For starters, it has […]

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Users upset over YouTube–Google linking, and is Google showing greater bias in results?

I found out a day after many netizens: Google is now forcing all YouTube account holders to merge their accounts with their Google ones.    As part of my de-Googling, I won’t be following suit. Instead, I plan to stay logged out of YouTube: it makes very little difference to me.    So I won’t […]

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Slowly but surely, Autocade gets to 1,250 models

Autocade hit 1,250 models today, with a car that’s slightly unusual to non-antipodean eyes: Ford LTD (FE). 1984–8 (prod. unknown). 4-door sedan. F/R, 4089 cm³ (6 cyl. OHV). First LTD series with no V8s, with EFI six as standard, delivering 120 kW. Alloy head as with Falcon; electronic engine management, called EEC IV, delivering more […]

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We like links, but does Google?

For the majority of the years that we’ve been on the web (coming up to 20 years), we’ve maintained a links’ directory. It was disappointing, sometimes, to note that those whom we exchanged links with at the dawn of the web no longer link back. We’ve kept our outward links largely the way they were, […]

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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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