Great. The day comes when I decide to leave the house, walk around, take more pictures. The sun shines, it is warm, around 75F, I only take a shirt, the camera and go. What happens?. Dark clouds move in with rapid speed, cubic tons of air move between the houses quickly. The water (rain) just waits to see me out there, unprotected. Here we go. And I was by the Hudson fiord by the time this whole spectacle started. So here I am, in the middle of the water, and there is rain coming down, wind is blowing helicopters with double speed across the sky. What is there left to do? Find a warm place. But where? I was in the park, Hudson Fjord Park, no exit, these are still being built, not even a bus shelter. I finally made it to 54th street. (from 95th!)...(The rain started when I was in the 60’s)...
There is the department of sanitation. And then there are the Car dealerships. Yeah. The car dealerships.
They are technically like Galleries. Cars are art. I did not choose to go to the Auto Show. I wanted to be alone with the vehicle. Think inside the metal box. Be one with the parked machine. Interact with the popular expression of art for the people. The first dealership happened to be an Audi... oooo a tiny place off the west side highway, with only two cars in the window. Never has the interior of an Audi felt nicer. It was just the right amount of everything there. And there was even this big button with a cup icon on it. I pushed the icon and a superbly complex cup holder came out. It unfolded like a transformer. Wild stuff. I guess I would keep a cup there with flowers maybe, or a bowl with a navigator goldfish. (Audi is part of the Volkswagen concern... Remember the bud-vase on the beetle dashboard?) The interesting thing was that even though the cup holder was out, it did not obstruct anything. Well done boys and girls at audi. Next to the cup holder a red triangle. We know this one. And next to the triangle an icon of a credit card. No way. A credit card? Why would there be a credit card slot? I pushed the button and out came a drawer for, I guess, Credit cards. I figure it is a great storage space for those New Jersey Highway tickets. Overall a nice feeling to the car. A good interior. Warm. I guess this is what made me happy.
Next dealer was saab. What happened here. I sat into the convertible saab, the 93 I think, with the hope that this is going to be some great experience. Hey it is a Swedish and smart car. Let’s see. The dashboard gave me the impression that the money guys won. They got the "most effective" vendor for every item on the board and then the designers, probably strapped to some device had to put them all into the dashboard. We have ovals, we have round corners, hard edges, circles. The shapes just do not work together guys. Hmm. I guess this is going to be very cool in a few years. Just hope the Money guys did not win in the Saab Fighter Plane division. And yes, there was a cup holder. Right above the cd player. Plop. I think this was the sound. Maybe a frokkk... Well, nothing attractive. And the cup blocks effectively the cd slot, which means that there will be no changing CD’s while handling hot beverages in the car. A security feature? Saab is famous for them. The best one used to be and probably still is the ignition key between the seats. Why would anybody put the ignition key between the seats? The key is there to prevent knee injuries upon impact. It really makes sense. A great design idea somehow. But now there are these buttons around the place for the ignition key and the hand break (Is this the name for it in English?). So if somebody has some sort of heavy saab key chain, with many toys attached it might be that the key will not be injured, but that there will be some sort of trouble. Ok, no big deal. I like the feature. I did not test any other cars at the saab dealership. Went around the cold and rainy corner to the flagship ford dealership. Yeah, here we go. Range Rovers, Jaguars, they even had a miata, and of course fords.
The little land rover needs to grow up. I spent maybe 10 seconds in that car. It just was not ready yet. I had the feeling something is still about to grow there. On to the big brother. Range Rover. Is this really a car people drive in? This big thing? With these strangely thin doors and a pretty strange feeling to it?. I only saw this years model. It felt a bit bland. I do not remember much. It was not very convincing. (Nice cup holders though.) Oh, now I remember. The storage between the seats was against any logic. The old model opened up to give the passengers in the rear four cup holders. Thirsty kids. Or maybe two Bottles and two glasses, true Brit. The cover was just screwed together with a hinge straight from home depot, screwed in with several round headed Phillips screws. Ouch. I could hear the designers scream at this one. The money people won again. In the newer model there was a bit of a confusion. The storage space has been worked on. Obviously. It really needed it. What happened though was that we now had two storage spaces on top of each other. Which is fine. Except that the big button opened the small department, and the small button the big one. To make it even more interesting, the cover now opened softer, the hinge was concealed, they used a little hydraulic damper. Nice... Maybe... Except the damper was too short, so the cover did not open entirely, even though there were still the four cup holders. Maybe it was some sort of intelligence test? I failed.
On to the Jaguars. Boy, I almost got a little nauseous in the silver presentation model. The leather was gray, the wood on the dashboard was turned gray, so it looked a lit like marble and the stitches in the gray leather were red. Unbelievable. Who would go for this? There must be people out there who are really fancy about themselves and Jaguar can obviously be very adaptive with their interior finish. Car seemed a bit short lived when it comes to design. The convertible Jaguar is not a small car, but I barely fit into it. I tried to pull the chair back tried to move things around, but still. So much car around me, so little space left for me. Sad.
So I left the Jaguars pretty disappointed, on to the fords. The Navigator did not let me in. (Big and locked, there it was), but then there was the New and beautiful Thunderbird. A shiny sleek little car with the hard top on. The round windows inviting to board the ship. Inside a tiny surprise. A red theme made things a bit unusual, but still interesting. There are no back seats, just a space that accepted my bag. A thunderbird logo was a large reminder for the moments whenever a passenger needed to reach to the back. Yes, we are still in the new thunderbird. A beautiful car. The size felt right, the proportions felt right, things just felt right. The numbers on the tachometer could have been less zippy, but other than that... Nice. Then there was the price. The red accent was $800 extra. Hmm. Not sure if I would opt for it then, so the total of the car was something like 39,990.- wonderfully calculated by the money guys. Next to the price sticker, which seems to be regulated here in the US, because they all looked the same, was a small Ford sticker, announcing that this car was part of a Special Edition and thus the total cost of $49,990.- Hmm. Ten thousand dollars more because of the sticker? This seemed a bit unusual. A very expensive sticker. I broke my silence and asked a sales associate for help. He was quite friendly and explained that this was indeed a special edition car. A very rare item, rare and sought after. Black were one of the four colours available. The other ones were yellow, aquablue and red and if I wanted to see the colours, then he would show them to me, because they had cars in the back. I wanted to see them indeed. We walked through a simple glass door into a large garage and there they were seven Thunderbirds in various colours. One of them was yellow with an all black interior, so I joked that at least it would be $800 cheaper, because it did not have this silly “colour accent package”. “This is a black accent package Sir, that is $800 extra”. Excellent. So why did they have so many of the cars if they are so rare and sought after. I happened to be in the flagship dealership. Hmm. Interesting. I asked for a catalogue. He offered to download something off the internet for me. I will try this myself, later.
Across the street from Ford was Cadillac. They have this recent breakthrough and they celebrate research and technology in their advertising, so I was very much looking forward to seeing some of it. The dealer had a collection of Cadillacs from the 50’s and 60’s quite a refreshing site. I guess it was part of the “heritage reborn” concept. And there it was, an orange CTS, a very “edgy” kind of car. On the outside at least. Each corner seemed quite well sculpted. The area between the grill and the s reminded me of my good old Mercedes/8 (another story). So I hoped that the edgy-ness could continue on the inside of the car. But it did not. Inside was a quiet and happy place, but it was grey plastic that dominated. The instruments were quite refreshingly designed, but the middle console was not as much of a breakthrough as one would have hoped. There was an interesting interface in the steering wheel however, which somehow reminded me of a different kind of device. All in all a refreshing kind of car. But maybe it has something to do with my age?, maybe there was something that excited me about a Cadillac that would make the European Witold unhappy? I walked over to the monster of monsters, the Cadillac Escalade, a monster of an SUV. I felt like a little person entering the interior of this thing. I had to take an extra step to just get to the seat. I would not stay for long, everything was very big, not for me. Just wanted to open the door. And there it was a strange and unusual door opener. I understand what was intended here. Imagine you buy such a car because you want to feel secure. You would like to think of it as a safe, as something that will keep you and your family in a warm and happy place, while out there becomes a battle ground on which you can now really win. The doors to the outside should open like safe doors almost, shouldn’t they? The designers at Cadillac could not install a wheel with a combination on it. What they wanted to install was the experience of this last moment, when the save is actually opened. The large handle is swung to open the heavy steel door. So there it was, the big handle, positioned very low, so it was a bit like lifting a weight to open this 6 foot monster of a door. (At least it felt like 6 feet tall.) I wish the design had stopped there. The handles on the doors of the new Cadillacs were like twisted ribbons of steel. Quite a refreshing idea. In the Escalade however, or at least the one I sat in, they had this organic, maybe ergonomic shape that felt like some body part. To make the experience even more interesting, they seemed to be made out of plastic. Hmm. Cadillac is part of GM (as is opel and holden(?) One of their cars is the good old Corvette, the car with the reputation of being really good for sly older race drivers. I will not get too excited about the car here. It felt nice, which worried me a bit. The inside felt like a good place. A look behind the seats showed me where the thunderbird got the Logo idea from. The red accent of the corvette I was in continued as a Metal piece right into the passenger area. It was also possible to reach right into the trunk. I also liked the instruments or the “Driver Information Center”. The corvette felt like a sports car. Certainly after the monster SUV experience.
Not far from here was the BMW dealership, so as a conclusion of the car excursion, I wanted to see the new 7. The car did not look right in the pictures I had seen of it, so I wanted to meet it in person.
As I arrived at the BMW dealership, which is a large place on 57th and 10th (as far as I remember), the surprise was big, or should I say it was mini. There was no Flagship 7 in the window, but several cute mini cars. (congratulations on the URL of the site.) This might have been one of the most refreshing moments of the day. The cars were obviously cute, and they felt very smart too. The interior was not that small at all. And the exterior was quite a good looking car. No bad angles here. Many surprising intelligent details in the design. The inside of the door did not feel right to me, but otherwise, not sure what could be improved in these little cars. The speedometer in the center of the console was the size of a Beatles single. The main instrument behind the steering wheel was the RPM meter (is this the right name for it?). A wicked little racing machine. I remember a friend in High school, (Gerritt?), he had a black mini. I had my /8 Mercedes at that time and the wheel of his mini was the size of the hub cup of my car. Driving the mini was quite funny too. (He let me test it, of course.) The steering wheel was on a very odd angle, I remember. It was like driving an 18 wheeler, except the thing was tiny, and wickedly speedy. The current mini has the steering wheel on many angles. It looks like it is even more a wicked speedster even though it might not really matter as much in the land of unlimited possibilities as it did in Autobahnland. The car costs about half as much as the Thunderbird, even with out the special sticker, and I even felt secure. Then again, it was not parked next to the Escalade... More later. This post is getting out of hand.
