Its still just a Commodore

Holden is doing its bit for climate change and the environment by revealing at the 2008 Melbourne Motor Show the fastest car ever to be produced in Australia.  The HSV W427 is a Commodore-based four-door sedan with a 7.0-litre engine producing 370kW of power - almost 500 horsepower.

A mildly different production version of the W427 show car - a one-off concept created for the motor show - will go on sale towards the middle of 2008 priced somewhere between $140,000 and $170,000.

Now the obvious question is why the hell does Australia need a 7 litre petrol guzzler?  Holden, and the people it intends to market this car at, obviously haven’t heard of, or don’t give a rat’s arse about, fossils fuels being a limited resource, climate change, the environment, social responsibility or anything like that.    Also, whats the point of being able to go 3 times the maximum speed limit, its not like it can ever be used like that on the road?

I guess the price is going to put it out of the range of all but the most cashed up bogans, which is fortunate.  Imagine some of the bogans that hang out at the V8 Supercar races getting behind the wheel of a car that that.

At the end of the day, though, no matter how Holden dresses this up as a performance, high end vehicle, its still just a glorified Commodore.  If I was going to spend $150k on a car (which I assure you isn’t going to happen), I’d want something more prestigious than a Holden Commodore.

New toy

I got myself one of these today.

A nice blue ipod Nano 8gb.

Now to find 2,000 songs to load onto it.  My old MP3 player only held about 500 and I’d never filled that up …so why the ipod?   Meh!  Had a couple of hundred dollars cash from an honorarium I’d been paid, it was burning a hole in my pocket, I was looking for something to buy with it, saw the new ipods and thought, yep I’d like one of those.

Ummm, its just another phone you know

 I’m talking about the much hyped Apple iPhone which went on sale in the US this week.

Some people need to get a life, if their response to the launch of a new mobile phone is anything to go by.  For example:

• Kristian Gundersen flew from Norway to New York to be among the first people to buy Apple’s media-playing iPhone. He described the day as one of the best of his life.
• Albert Livingstone’s wife thought he was crazy for lining up overnight in Chicago outside the Apple store. He stood in line with his friend Mark Stevenson, 50. They rented a room across the street and took turns to sleep.
• Terry Austin, a 23-year-old New Yorker, waited in line for 27 hours outside Apple in New York.
• Grant Johnson, 41, managed to get his hands on three when the doors opened at the Apple store on New York’s Fifth Avenue. He had asked a girl in front of him to buy an extra one. “I’m keeping one and selling the other two, I’m trying to get $US1,200 ($A1,400) for them,” said Johnson, who had queued up for 25 hours. “I haven’t slept in a day and a half,” he said. “I need a nice hot shower and a bath.”
• Liz Cecchini of San Antonio, Texas. She and her husband lined up a day before the launch, enduring pouring rain to buy four - one each for themselves, their 15-year-old daughter and a friend.

Some people even paid others to stand in line to buy a phone for them!  These 2 got $300 each for waiting 24 hours.

Can’t see myself rushing out to buy one when they are on sale in Australia next year.  However, if someone wants to give me one, I won’t knock it back.  No doubt there will be glitches in the initial release so waiting a while for these to be ironed out, and the price to drop, is probably not a bad idea.