Cars Guide

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Mercedes C63 AMG inside your iPhone

Popular culture is something which we try to avoid but we cannot escape. Since 2007 I avoided iPhone, because everyone had it and it become more common than carrying your national identification card. Owning an iPhone became something like, entering an invisible group.

Also the other irritating popular culture icon is the new Mini. Like iPhone, everyone wants to own one and I don’t see a point to a buy a Mini. I can understand iPhone but Mini no way!

As you might understand, I own a iPhone4. Unfortunately the world mobile application business drag me to iPhone4. Nearly every brand has an application for iPhone and it is quite hard to experience them in somewhere else.

Anyway as I have the excitement of mobile application world. I immediately started to install automotive related applications starting from Rolls Royce Ghost. And Mercedes for sure. Interestingly Mercedes keeps its passion alive for making malfunctioning products. In 2000s, Mercedes was the king of producing malfunctioning car and it reach the peak in 2003. After that they revised their mentality and things became better.

Interestingly someone in Mercedes still has the passion of malfunction but in mobile applications. After installing the Rolls Royce application I found an application for Mercedes C63 AMG. The application was designed in US, you can understand from the bumper lights on both sides of the car. Application is very clever, you can experience sound of C63 AMG, pictures and videos !?! Actually you cannot watch videos because the software is trying to run flash based video on iPhone.

Unfortunately iPhone and Flash are not working together, everyone knows this thing. And the second funny thing is the non-functioning back button. You just enter a menu and you cannot go back, you have to exit the application and run it again! I have never seen these kinds of basic problems in applications.

But is this application belongs to Mercedes or Daimler AG? That’s main point, the application looks very corporate but does not function properly and this is very common in corporate applications. But is Mercedes this senseless to release an application like this? Actually I have no idea and I wrote this blog on purpose to see their reaction. May be someone from Mercedes tell whether it is real or not.

Pictures Copyrights
Mercedes

Sex Sells: Ferrari

Unfortunately I could not write anything on my blog on Friday due to 12 hours of travel from UK to Turkey. Adverse effects of low cost airlines :)

Today I found a reason to buy an iPhone! I am sure that you will agree with me on this. Today my friend found a Ferrari application on iTunes for iPhone. It is not a driving simulation or to create your own Ferrari or race for less fuel. This application is bringing the pure pleasure of Ferrari!

You can drive the Ferrari you wish. You won’t be driving around a circuit or in a road. You will be seeing only rev meter and speedometer and real Ferrari sound. I am not kidding, there six Ferrari models are available (458, F430 Scuderia, F430 Cabrio, 612, 599 and California). All these each models has its unique instrument panel and you can speed up either with in manual mode or in automatic mode. You can rev up to limiter and feel the real Ferrari pleasure.

Unlike any car game, it is not very easy to see the maximum speed. You have to push really hard to see. Especially with 458, you can see 325kph but you should know how to push the gas pedal! And each model is offering its own engine sound, that’s really unbelievable, I am sure that Ferrari spent a lot of time to develop this application with appropriate engine sounds.

And also you can test your ability to differentiate engine noise! You really don’t need to have a degree on music, you need the passion! Also there is a cheating function or a small bug. During the test, if you hold the gap between car models times is not counting!

This is the best iPhone application I have ever tried. I hope that they will be offering higher image quality but even this is enough to push adrenaline into your blood :)

Plastic dreams: SLS

The movie inception reminded me the ugly truth of dream and reality. When we dream of something, we don’t dream of something dull, ugly or plastic. Therefore we don’t want to have these things in our real life also. Especially when you dream of cars, you don’t dream of dull, ugly, slow and plastic. Unfortunately car companies don’t like to create dream which avoid these facts!

Especially the Mercedes, a few days ago I saw the SLS AMG. The real one! And I felt nothing; I didn’t feel the same excitement when I saw the Bentley Arnage. SLS is just a contemporary refurbishment of 1950s Gullwing model with park sensors. It was not something special! Sure, it has many new technologies, very fast and looks okay.

The main reason for my disappointment is the addiction of plastic. Unfortunately SLS AMG has couple of cheap plastic parts inside the car. This time Mercedes was cleaver and they hide those plastics in goods places. But when you pay huge amount of money for a car, you don’t want to find hidden plastic parts. SLS AMG has the cheap feeling plastic parts for the seat adjustments. The button which moves the seat to desired position is made by plastic and from very cheap one. Even the CL has better looking metal buttons for this thing. I do know that SLS AMG is focused on weight saving but they could have used carbon fibre instead of plastic. I think Mercedes thought, nobody will ever bothered with those plastics and let’s ignore the carbon fibre. And they transformed a perfect dream into plastic reality.

Mercedes can say; Ferrari and Lamborghini have plastic parts. But they are Ferrari and Lamborghini. They don’t produce diesel powered estate cars! Therefore, Mercedes should be much much better than those cars. Because, they are real dreams and in those dreams people might ignore the material quality.

And I have never seen a footstep made from soft plastic and looks terribly cheap in any other car! Even the Mercedes G Class offers blue lighted chrome Mercedes foot step.

Art of automotive: Ferrari 599 GTO

Probably last six months you might heard this song We No Speak Americano, most probably in everywhere. This old Italian song was covered by Australian group called Yolanda Be Cool and became very popular in short time period. Actually I am not very good song review but I do understand one thing, if it is Made in Italy, everyone listens to it.

While I was searching this song on YouTube I found the original version which was released in 1958 by Renato Carosone. And the original name was Tu vuò fà l'americano (You want to be American). As I found out that this song was Renato’s one of the most popular song and we understand this by finding its video clip very easily in 2010!

Of course if I speak about Italy, I cannot ignore the Ferrari. It is like Italian songs, it never lose its passion and soul even though the many years have passed over. As Tu vuò fà l'americano’s new cover was released, Ferrari also released a new GTO. It might not sound something very special for many people, especially if you were born after 1990s it won’t mean anything to you. But the GTO is the Ferrari’s Tu vuò fà l'americano.

GTO name was only used three times in Ferrari’s history. First one was the 250 GTO (1962), second one was 288 GTO (1984) and the third one is the 599 GTO (Today). GTO means one thing, this car is a classic from the production and you cannot own one, you just look after for the next owner! This is a very classic sentence but that’s truth, their owners disappear but GTOs keep living. I think GTOs can be explained with one sentence, Art of Automotive. All of these GTOs are state of art car for their era, honestly they are the state of art for automotive industry. Forget the VW powered Veyron or Zonda with Mercedes AMG engine! Ferrari 599 GTO is something which cannot be expressed with words.

I still remember the my childhood and playing with small Ferrari 288 GTO, it was an excellent, beautiful, powerful. You can find anything you need from a supercar but GTOs are not supercars, they are the definition of supercar! Ferrari 599 GTO is not that popular on media and it is not on Guinness Record book for the fastest something. But who cares? It is only produced 599 and they are all finished!

Most probably their owner’s will not drive that much, may be they will never drive them. 599 GTOs will be kept like a paint on your wall. You cannot find a mistake in a GTO, everything was designed for one purpose. For speed but not like Veyron’s air plane style of speeding, this speeding is an art from Ferrari. 599 GTO is one of the fastest Ferrari on planet right now, in many circuits it is nearly impossible to beat this car even if you thousands of horsepower. But the real thing is, we might see one in our life and we never forget that moment.

Ferrari GTOs are the only car which can be placed in Uffizi Gallery!