kwhelan

look like a bitch to keep clean

extra gear reminds me of something NZ would make. The new host asks the guests the most inane questions, he reminds me of guy williams but he's not actually trying to be funny. the segment when he asks what do you think of this new model as shown on tv screen and chris harris trys to play cool is pathetic. can't believe he would watch that back and not be embarrassed by it.

I was disappointed with extra gear,seemed really scripted,really nervous ,the questions were purile and we learnt nothing new about the cars.The bit about the racing team was slightly interesting but not related in any real way and even the ride along went nowhere.Whole concept seemed flawed and they seemed to be really struggling to find anything to say.

gives you some perspective to celebrity issues. https://www.facebook.com/artiequitter/videos/10156810603950322/ start at 15mins mark

for my e39 I used the standard roof button panel and wired it directly to my standard nz garage remote which i then just hid behind the panel in the hoodlining. had to dismantle my garage remote to solder pair of wires to the button but whole job took 30 mins and worked a treat even had the light working, looked completely standard. left it running on its own battery for power meant I kept the remote when I sold the car and it was still usable gave me a lot more purchasing power when looking for a cheap button assembly. Did the same in wifes VW but had to install a push button in dash. hers had to be located inside dash because the button was on dash both worked flawlessly over 50 mtrs

"Soul for me is a descriptor of of character. Partially inherent in the design but also earnt over time. Does the old stuff have more soul, yes because it have been part of our psyche for a longer period of time, we learn to love the traits of a design good or bad." not so sure about the time aspect,isnt soul more giving an object a human quality, flawed or with a character? people used to name their old cars,i suspect rons old vw had a name not necessarily because of the length of time he owned it. can't imagine anyone naming their new sedan/hatchback nowdays I wonder too that bmw might have hit a peak at some point and thru just overuse the brand will loose ground much like apple. you can't stay top forever regardless of how good the product, peoples perceptions and moods will waver. If all they test is comparing every new car to an M then sooner or later your going to be writing something else just to be different or make a point

2001 so guessing high mileage, I'm guessing auto trans and or sensors are a little fatigued, you can't expect an auto box to work as new forever or the myriad of sensors but even the new specially the multi geared ones it is definitely possible to confuse them at times ,more so if your coasting along like a nana,you lift off for a roundabout and apply power and its not always 100% the same experience,and slowing down they can downshift at odd times,driving them harder and the bugs seem to disappear. but the vanos are cheap and it will only improve any situation so if its bugging you get it done.

Probably safe to say all mass production cars have lost soul. the whole system has been simplified to cut costs, designers using computers looking for the best option are surely going to come up with the same answers regardless of whether they are chinese or german because they are sharing info 'all using the same input data and looking for the same result, things like emissions,consumption,road noise etc because of company buyouts and sharing arrangements you now have Porsche technology turning up in skodas or kia ,well you get the drift massproduction dictates the chassis as much as function styling is copied or outsourced to the same studios or designers are poached and laws dictate things like headlight sizes and location for crash testing purposes anyway It must be very hard to stand out nowadays when the playing field is so leveled Soul is perhaps a thing of the past when you needed to accept a car for its quirks /idiosyncrasy's ,our most fond memories are of some piece of well loved machinery that popped out of gear at the most inopportune time or something like that, cars are just to appliance like now for people to really care, they have got so good you just expect them to work, I cant remember even checking oil or water between 12 month intervals because I know thru experience it just never changes.

Has BMW lost its soul? hell no, they make a huge range of highly respected cars that most people would die for. most get rave reviews in auto mags and are held usually as a standard to judge others by do they win every car of the year in every category,hell no are there amazing cars built by other companies, of course plenty have the new gms upped their game and built some great cars for a great price, definitely this article is just one mags opinion and even they are obviously surprised by their results, which would they personally buy,they don't say but i suspect not gm no backseat, poor air vents,steering too heavy I would say the bmw would lose significant value far quicker in the end does it matter, you buy the one you like ,not every model of a brand is going to be a winner,id love a new jag but would I buy an older one,hell no bmw has not lost its soul and Ive seen plenty of articles over the years where bmw don't come out on top certainly not affecting sales

There was a particular summer maybe 15 years ago when they went all out, We had a ute with a motorbike strapped on the deck being used as a mufti car issueing tickets left right and center, there were so many mufti cars that year you just didn't know where to look until they got out with their hat on its was quite weird. they had flashing lights behind the grill otherwise people just didn't know to stop at all.

been a couple of recent road deaths in papers , one baby not strapped in car seat, doub't they get that in sweden and we have numerous crashes where there are 8 onboard a toyota estima dressed in bright floral shirts with half flat tyres that are travelling to a funeral somewhere out of town, bet sweden isnt full of imported japanese people carriers loaded to the max, just mum and dad and little heidi/sven then there was the 3x the limit driver with 2 other adults onboard and 3 kids in the car unbelted again who got ticketed,sweden? not likely I would also wonder about there rail or shipping for freight, do they have the same amount of logging trucks mixing with joe public on the napier/taupo/gisborne road for example. I'm not saying trucks cause the crashes but its not a good mix. you cannot compare the 2 countries in my opinion

Not sure how many of you watch movies from internet sources but a few are finally making there way to the cinemas I had previously thought the Martian 3d would scoop a lot of the awards (much better than that clooney/bullock crap which seemed to do so well) but it looks like Dicaprio might finally get his first oscar The Revenant is amazingly shot in nearly all natural light and with a new 65mm camera that just looks amazing http://nofilmschool.com/2015/02/emmanuel-lubezki-using-arri-alexa-65-inarritu-revenant personally Id like to see MadMAx get some ups,that was old school fun and a must if you didn't see it.

thats really interesting, I wonder how much social economics and intelligence pays a part, I would suspect most of the population are highly paid, and educated drive very late model cars and are generally more careful and considerate as a nation. Plus they wouldn't have many foreigners that drive on the wrong side of the road. Theyre one of those countries that are almost incomparable to NZ for statistics in anything where we more match AUS. I wonder what their alcohol intake per person is compared to ours, Not to say we couldnt strive to achieve that level but we have to be realistic with what we can do with our limited taxes and resources. A lot of this country don't even have licenses or insurance or road worthy cars. what is there minimum driving age? I read we are expecting 50,000 Chinese to visit in Feb for their big holiday season. thats a lot of planes lets hope they are all on bus tours down south

as are 99% of mounted speed cameras, in 50km zones, some even on motorways where everyone is travelling in the same direction with a concrete barrier for protection

So you are in agreement with my original statement then, I was right to be cynical of the police managers comments he's trying to justify a political decision with questionable road safety figures and yes I am a cynic and a conspirator but I think life is actually pretty simple and when you question and put common sense to most things its actually pretty obvious. human nature will never change the world is full of sheep and the strong always want to control the weak masses, I do question everything and am probably glass half full mentality, but a realist. the fact that most people in the world follow some/any religion confirms how easily led people are. knowing how badly the press behave the police manager was probably grossly misquoted anyway. I am very much anti drink driving and have lost close friends because of it, I certainly don't have a mantra about anything and if my ideals are shown to be wrong in a convincing way I'm more than happy to change views but they have to make common sense to me first. I just wish people actually stopped and considered how much authority lies to them

you didn't get attacked but the data sure was, anyone can make statistics say anything they want i.e." have you bashed your wife in the last 36hrs" yes/no hell I could show you statistics that made you an idiot if you didn't buy all the bruce judge ariadne shares you could possibly afford

I was told that if you are caught in queensland you get processed in a booze bus on side of road and if over limit you are in the cells till 9am mon when you are delivered directly to court bad luck if caught on a fri as opposed to sun but great idea and would work here interestingly on the old limit when they did a live drinking test on campbell live with a collection of people all the people said they felt too drunk to drive and wouldn't have long before they were actually legally over the limit so I think most sensible people err on the side of caution. the new limit just seems to be more about money than directly affecting the biggest categories of death by accident which I would be targeting my resources at if in charge

More than 8000 drink-drivers were nabbed in the first year of New Zealand's lower alcohol law. The 8000 caught by police would have been legally under the limit before tougher legislation came into force in 2014. and didn't we just have the highest roadtoll in ages and we now also have way more options to avoid the driving with UBER and the increased bus and train routes etc I guess you could argue that they are falling in line with overseas trends but i get annoyed with their logic National road policing manager Superintendent Steve Greally told NZME he believes the new legislation is working. "That is extremely encouraging for the long-term. "It seems like Kiwis are doing a great job of taking drink-driving more seriously," Greally said. Alcohol is responsible for around 27 per cent of crashes Wow How do they know, I would agree it was possibly a contributing factor but tiredness which caused the lack of concentration is the unknown,I guess alcohol exagerates a persons tiredness. I would argue those that crash are so far over the limit that the limit is arbitrary. We have so many multiple offenders that are 3x the limit if it really was 27% there would have to have been a lower road toll, the whole logic makes no sense https://nz.news.yahoo.com/top-stories/a/30526660/new-alcohol-limit-nabs-8000-drivers/

best place to source new part, can't really risk waiting for overseas delivery with 1 month on WOF or whole arm with tie-rod if thats a better option but Im told the inside seems to go before the tie-rod on e36

Wife and I killed couple of days in wellington and went and saw the displays at Te Papa and War memorial. Both thoroughly enjoyed, I preferred the war museum and wife preferred Te Papa but learnt so much and we came out of both feeling quite sick and teary. decided I would have lasted 5 mins in those conditions partly because I question everything and would have had a problem blindly following orders. Really angry at the needless waste of lives by guys playing chess at the top. 4 years to try and take a f*$king hill then pack up and go home. So grateful I was born at a later time and didn't have to see my kids sent off to war, damn that made you think hard with a lump in your throat. but for the grace of god. A new found respect for those that went and the subsequent Anzac parades just because of my previous ignorance levels. Confirmed my distrust of authority, those bloody recruitment posters and bullshit Amazed at the wax figures ,preferred the real size ones at museum and kept waiting for one to move. Genius For anyone at a lose end, take the trip had to queue for an hour to get in at TePapa but no props at war museum. Both free too

unless it wasn't a holiday? in which case they wouldn't have been speeding at all ,DOH so if we cancel all holidays the road toll will be fantastically low and we will all live happily ever after

Im beginning to think your just trolling this thread to have a laugh. funnily enough in your speed crash data graph they say excessive speed for conditions, and 6kms for a holiday period alters that? if you take out the unlicensed,disqualified and never held license columns leaves the fully license crash rate at only 10% which sounds about right to me, then add in the unwarranted and unsafe cars why should average family be penalised for incidental speed because of the idiots who ignore any limits and crash because of grossly excessive speed,no limit would ever save them from themselves back to the original point of topic there is no justification for any sane thinking person in the policy of lowering the limit for the holidays except to make more money and it makes me nervous to think we have paid staff (re police) who actually believe that it does and will give you a lecture from their lofty I've just saved your life arrogance. it discredits their intelligence in general in my opinion and therefore my respect for them. name another job which has to meet a quota for issuing tickets, save lives BS, make revenue if they want to save lives crush more cars and really ping the disqualified and unlicensed and the heavily intoxicated repeat offenders would be a huge start, bring back a seperate police and traffic dept because the idiots in traffic are going to discredit the police to their level in public opinion which is already at an all time low

You sound like you work for them and therefore firmly believe in your indoctrinated stance which as discussed on here is extremely weak under scrutiny, we all agree there has to be a limit ,its the hypocrisy as started in the topic header that they are dropping it to 4km to save lives. no one died doing the extra 6k/hr the 3 mounted speed cameras in my town are all in 50km areas high density with no previous accident history whatsoever ,do you think that is to save lives? most on here don't argue with the original speed limit and 10km amnesty. I've just done 1000 kms in last few days and constant looking down at speedo every 60 secs because it crept up and around that 4km was really tiring distracting and dangerous, I noticed even on the motorway that constant looking at speedo while some sign flashes 80km going thru ngarunga gorge wellington actually causes you to drift around in the lane how is that safe? my brother returned to auckland from Hawkes bay, got to bombay 5hrs,from there to north shore 6 hrs because of some accident,and no it wasn't a 747 that crashed into 4 lanes of traffic like you'd expect. absolute disgrace and arrogance

that would have to be the most cruel state controlled punishment that I could think of and only be from some labour police state were we are all just zombies. I'd have to give up driving and become a passenger because I could not help myself and would be too frustrated to drive. what annoys me is the NZ police having to close the entire road "SH and all" for 4hrs at every scene while they examine and photograph everything which just ruins everyones holidays and nerves and probably causes more accidents. Overseas the main concern is to get traffic flowing again,pull the wreckage to the side,hose it down and reopen the lane. deaths/accidents occur and always will and there are cases when we want to blame someone but come on NZ police, what you do currently is really really bad management of time and resources.

theres something wrong with the new lights and grill,can't put my finger on it but they're maybe too thin, side on it looks ok till the front bonnet suddenly droops and from the back its not as nice as previous models either earlier versions were nicer they just seemed to have gone too far with changes that under bumper valance with lights is pig ugly Audi and merc seem to be improving in looks my opinion anyway