The Other Winner of the Super Bowl

For marketing people like me, The Super Bowl truly is a big game of another sorts. Its the time to see the best and brightest of the advertising world (who have the budget) show off their creativity on a global stage. There's a ton of articles out there about best and worst big game ads, with winners and losers. But to me, there was clearly only one winner this year, and it was this commercial by Audi for the R8 V10 Plus.

This ad had it all...it tugs on the heartstrings, instills patriotic pride and flaunts the new R8 both visually and delights the ears with a ripping exhaust note...all with gorgeous cinematography.

Watch it below.

A Great innovation that not enough car companies are using - Adaptive brake lighting

I'm on the GW Bridge the other day in stop-and-go traffic. The pace picked up a little bit, and I am following a late model BMW 535. He brakes suddenly, and I just barely miss rear-ending him. The only reason I didn't? He had a secondary set of adaptive brake lights, a brighter, secondary set of brake lights that illuminated to let me know he was braking hard.

The implementation seems simple enough; depress the brakes hard enough or panic stop, and an extra, brighter LED / bulb is activated to warn the driver behind you. The result is saving a few precious milliseconds that could be the difference between a short stop and a costly insurance deductible.

So the question is, why doesn't this kind of innovation, and other ideas make their way into more cars if it's clearly safer? For example, many VW Jettas have a feature that blink the brake lights when at a standstill, so you don't get rear ended at a traffic light. Recent Ford Mustang models also have sequential tail lights that indicate the direction of turn, which is also helpful.

In the last 50 years, the biggest innovation in brake lights has been the high-mount stoplight, which was so effective it was mandated into Federal law.  There are a lot of NHTSA regulations governing the illumination of brake lights, but for now the luxury car makers like BMW, Mercedes and Audi are leading the way. It will be interesting to see where this technology goes.

Zen for the gearhead

You know those moments in your life when you just find your Zen? I remember one of mine.

It was about eight years ago, and I was trackside in the early hours of the morning at Laguna Seca in Monterey, CA. I was working on a press junket at the time with the American LeMans series and was out shooting with some hospitality team Audi / Champion racing. I was alone, walking to check out a photo hole, when the engines started and started ripping through the track. It was the Audi R8, the Viper, and of course that yellow C6 Corvette with an unmistakable growl. I don’t know what it was about that morning, but I’ll always remember the time I had that section of the track all to myself, and to have the stillness of misty October morning shattered by screaming cylinders.

That’s why Jalopnik made my day today by posting the following link of the race at night, and just the sounds. It’s truly music to my ears. If you have ever enjoyed an ALMS race, this is for you.

http://jalopnik.com/5811092/hear-the-glorious-sound-of-the-mulsanne-straight-at-2-am

This weekend was the annual 24 hours of LeMans and Audicame out on top again, despite a scary crash near the beginning of the race, which fortunately McNish walked away from.

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Now thats how you drive in the snow...

As I slid about 40 feet today on the ramp from the Grand Central to the Clearview while trying to merge in, i was reminded today about the importance of proper control in ICY conditions. Than I found this video on Autoblog, which is 7 minutes of pure, unadulterated car porn.

The ride is Audi's RS3, somewhere in Canada. of course it is in Canada. Americans just don't get wagons. Even if they do have a turbo5, AWD, and an exhaust note thats so sweet it makes you appreciate the lack of soundtrack to the video.

So while there was no helicopter capturing my slides this morning, this is totally worth the watch.

Hit this link for Autoblogs, or see it below.

http://www.autoblog.com/2011/01/19/video-audi-rs3-makes-us-hate-winter-less/#continued

 

Car Crush: Audi RS6 Avant

I have mentioned before that wagons can be pretty badass. Besides hauling groceries, kids and pets, the wagon provides utility with a lower center of gravity and more even weight distribution. The result is the usefullness of an SUV, with the performance of a sport sedan.

There are some great wagons out there -The Outback XT, Magnum HEMI, The BMW 5 Series wagons, Stagea, etc. But there is an undisputed king of the wagon segment, and that is the Audi RS6 Avant. The specs alone are amazing - twin turbo V10, nearly 600 BHP, and of course AWD. Just too bad you will never be able to get one. The current iteration of the car was released in January 2007 at the Frankfurt autoshow, but we can expect that it will never see American shores. (but theres a good chance the sedan will one day show up).  So for now this uberwagon based on VDub's C6 platform will have to stay over in Europe on the Autobahn it rightfully deserves. But for what its worth, I could have totally used a car that could get me and all my groceries home from Stop and Shop in under 2 minutes.



Image from Jalopnik.com

Broken Down: 94 Explorer, 98 mountaineer, 94 maxima, 95 camry, ~95 grand marquis, a couple of vans, that tractor trailer in the middle of the CBX, 2K Focus, copule of mid 90's corollas, 93 Jetta