26 January 2012
You park like an &*#^$@: Bad parkers beware!
Words by Leslie Sy
Don't you just hate it when you finally find a parking slot on the street or in a mall, you discover that you can't fit your car in because the car beside it is parked badly? What's more frustrating is that you can't teach its driver how to park properly without potentially getting into a heated argument and then some. Well, you should be glad to know that there are now websites out there so that you could teach these bad parkers a lesson or two.
In the online-dependent world we live in today, the internet once again comes to the rescue with websites such as www.youparklikeanasshole.com. The site offers downloadable notice forms or stickers for you to place on the offending cars’ windshields to teach their drivers a lesson. You can even specify the violation, whether it's parked over the painted lines, parked over two spots, or fraudulently parked in spaces reserved for handicaps, so that the parking delinquent can look up the site, find out what he or she has done wrong, and learn how to properly park their cars.
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Words and commentary by Ferman Lao | Video by Jade Lu
Unless you’re off the grid or have decided to detach yourself from the world wide web, it's almost certain that you've heard about the unintended acceleration issue surrounding one of the best selling SUV's in the Philippines, the Mitsubishi Montero Sport. This raised a lot of doubt over the Montero Sport's safety, that it could possibly jeopardize the lives of its passengers and pedestrians alike. But could it really be true? So, to confirm the myth, we went out for a little field test to find out.Thirteen known incidents have been logged on the now-defunct “Montero blog” site, and they all had a common denominator: owners claim that the vehicles accelerated uncontrollably despite them stepping heavily on the brakes. There were also some reports that say the harder they stepped on the brakes, the faster the vehicle went, and the louder the engine revved.
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27 October 2011
Haima retails rebadged Mazda's for a bargain
Words and photos by Jose Carlo R. Sapera
Perched quietly in the province of Pampanga is a humble little Chinese dealership that goes by the name of Haima. Unknown to most, they've been in the Philippines since January 2010 and operates under the management of the multi-car brand network of the Laus Auto Group. But last October 7, 2011, Haima Philippines finally stepped up its game as they unveiled several new models that will surely knock your socks off.
The moniker Haima is a result of a fifteen-year partnership with Mazda. The manufacturing plant of the Japanese automaker was situated in the city of Haikou in Hainan, China, thus the Hainan-Mazda relationship bore the name “Haima.” The cars they build are anything but cheap knock-offs. Instead, follow the same stringent quality assessment utilized by Mazda. And to our surprise, their engines are all Euro IV compliant and can even be upgraded to Euro V standards.
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Only a handful of people in this world ever manage to drive their cars so far that they'd see the day the odometer flips over. But one man from Norway, Maine, USA, gears up for a personal challenge to clock in one million miles (or 1.6 million kilometers) on his 1990 Honda Accord. Joe LoCicero or Million Mile Joe as everyone now knows him, is an insurance claims adjuster who logs around 62,500 miles each year, four times more than the average American driver's 14,000 miles/year, by driving from one Honda dealer to another. “I feel like a human ping-pong ball crossing the state,” said Joe.
The pursuit to reach one million miles began when Joe's Accord reached 300,000 miles. Since then, he started keeping track of his milage and now has 661 photos of his car's odometer. And unlike other record attempts that deliberately take time off to spend months on the road, this undertaking is achieved solely based on Joe's occupational daily driving routine.
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Words and photos by Christopher Kho
Lets face it. No one really buys a crossover these days with the intention to go off-roading. It might come with four-wheel drive and stand a foot off the ground, but the only rough terrain it will ever have to cope with are the ginormous pot-holes along EDSA and those pesky security guards at a mall's parking entrance. But lo and behold, there's actually one crossover that dares to step up to the challenge and break the stereotype. Take a good look at Nissan's X-Trail CVT.
Just over a year old, the trusty X-Trail bears an uncanny resemblance to the model it replaces. Without messing with the tried and tested formula, it simply improves on it by growing a bit larger, packing a bit more power, and shifting to a new 6-speed Xtronic Continuous Variable Transmission (XCVT). Though it might not look the part, we discovered just how capable this crossover really was on the rough stuff.
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Words by Christopher Kho | Photos and video courtesy of www.sheepo.es
For the most of us, LEGO holds a special place in our childhood memories. Building creations from small bricks, we tickled with creativity even after we've lost the instructions that came in the box. But for one man, tinkering with off-the-shelf pieces was simply not enough, so he pushed the limits of imagination and built his own Porsche 997 Turbo Cabriolet. Designed from the ground up, this is no static shelf-queen. Instead, it's fully-equipped with disk brakes, a retractable hardtop, and a working 7-speed dual clutch PDK (Porsche Doppelkupplung) transmission just like the real thing, making this the most awesome LEGO kit yet.
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25 April 2011
Just another day in the office for Russ Swift
Words and photos by Christopher Kho
For the average person like a majority of us, a regular weekday probably begins by spending half an hour or so on the highway driving or commuting to work. Then, for the next eight or more hours, we sit behind desks laboring tirelessly with the sole promise of getting a paycheck at the end of the month just so that we can pay the bills, make the rent, and feed a growing family. This mundane cycle is what we call a job, and as much as we despise it, it’s a fact of life. But for one fine English gentleman, a regular day in his “office” involves performing high speed four-wheel drifts, record-setting handbrake parking maneuvers, and tire-shredding donuts - all in an action-packed stunt show.
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Words by Christopher Kho | Video courtesy of Tuason Racing TV
Tuason Racing School (TRS) is giving Ken Block a run for his money with their “Truck Drifting 101” video, an action-packed 3 minutes and 44 seconds of adrenaline-pumping tire-burning sideways action directed by the talented Ardie Lopez and filmed at the King's Playground in FTI. It stars the TRS Mazda BT-50 Drift Truck: the world's first diesel-powered full cab drifter. This is not your typical chop shop pick-up that was converted from a road-going sedan. Instead, TRS snatched an off-the-shelf BT-50 and converted this would-be workhorse into a formidable smoke machine. And with the help of Mazda, Castrol, and Bridgestone, it won the 2010 Pro Am Lateral Drift Championship, fending off more predominant drift cars.
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