Ben's Car Blog

The End

Ben — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 10:56:37 +0000

Please re-direct your browsers and RSS readers to http://benkraal.supersized.org/. For car-specific posts, please read the cars category at my new blog (http://benkraal.supersized.org/categories/1-Cars) There are no new car-related posts there. Yet.

Winding Road

Ben — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 21:59:47 +0000

I love car magazines. I love free stuff. What’s not to love about a free on-line car magazine?

Winding Road is literally free, yet it’s a propper car magazine. It’s free because they have almost no distribution costs. All their costs are paid through their advertising.

WR focus on what could be loosely called drivers cars so [...]

Ford Australia gets more interesting

Ben — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 03:22:34 +0000

At the Melbourne Motorshow Ford Australia are previewing a bunch of interesting cars, all of which are enough to make Joe from My Ford Dreams green with envy.

First we have the Turbo Territory. 245kw or 330-odd horsepower in a BMW X5 sized urban assault vehicle. Why Ford North America dropped the ball on the amazingly [...]

Old Japanese Cars

Ben — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 03:00:04 +0000

Over at AusRotary there’s a great thread with a few pictures of 1960s and 1970s Japanese cars, most of which never made it out of Japan. Go on, have a look.

A couple of the cars in that thread are what I’d call “big iron”. More than 4 cylinders, fast and, well, big. In Australian terms [...]

Woohoo!

Ben — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 03:24:35 +0000

Just thinking about a few things:

Tarmac rallying, as currently implemented in Australia is a Bad Thing. What makes a car a “classic”? What gives a car “character”?

Oh, yeah. The thesis is with my proofreader and my supervisors for final checking.

Too busy to blog

Ben — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:17:06 +0000

I’m really, really, really busy finishing my Ph.D thesis right now.

Follow the links in my blogroll for more car-blogging goodness while I’m away.

The Eleven Point Plan — My Overview

Ben — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 03:39:39 +0000

T’other day, John Markos O’Neill posted his ambitious eleven point plan to eliminate the private car. This provoked Jalopnik to dismiss him out of hand and other bloggers, particularly, J G Halmayr from Ride (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) to take the time to carefully consider each point of the plan.

I might weigh in [...]

The “Next Car”

Ben — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 03:11:57 +0000

Swade’s enthusiasm for Saabs has had me thinking about the “next car” for when it’s time to let the Mi16 go.

I’m thinking Saab 9000 Aero, or whatever a high-pressure turbo 9000 was called in any particular year.

Pros:

Big-ish but not stupidly massive Roomy Safe Enough fasts to be interesting Small enough engine to be fuel efficient “Different” Annoys people who look down [...]

What sort of Car Blogger am I?

Ben — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 22:56:10 +0000

I got an email from Bill Discher today about his research project. He thought that I was a “mechanic/body work” car blogger. This is what I sent him in reply:

I think you may have miscategorised me. This is not your fault, as I try to defy categorisation. Also, I think your [...]

The Dutton Rallies

Ben — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 05:57:16 +0000

The Dutton Rallies are basically a series of motorkhanas (that’s autocross if you’re from the ‘States) at various locations around a capital city.

They’re not cheap with entry being $1975 for a single driver team or $2590 (that’s 1295 each) for a two-driver team though you do get a stack of goodies when you enter and [...]