An Interesting Car Month in Milan.

February 29, 2008 · Filed Under Milan · 1 Comment 

First, I caught sight of a very sleek matt-black Maserati down in the centre, only to learn afterwards that it is one of a kind and belongs to none other than Lapo Elkann who is one of the Fiat clan. Presumably Lapo was at the helm. The car was being driven rather briskly too, I might add.

Next, down by the Castello, I espied what may well turn out to be the farmers’ supercar, and distant relation of the humble tractor. Well, they are both diesel powered, or rather can be. This car, you see, was the stunning Audi R8, which has also been built with a fire breathing diesel engine. However I don’t think was the agricultural version of this particular supercar, but it did sport German licence plates. Didn’t sound like a tractor anyway.

And, then, I saw the new Jaguar XF in a showroom near to where this non-supercar driving English teacher catches his bus. Now, how can I put this, well, this new Jag looks an awful lot like a Lexus. Not a problem you might be heard to utter. No, but for the fact that I’ve always considered that most of Toyota’s finest look extremely bland. The white paint work of this particular one did not seem to do it any favours either.

Although my rather party pooping observation may delude you, by all accounts it is a very good car, at least Top Gear thought so. Still a shame it looks like a Lexus though.

For a rather more jazzy presentation of this new Jaguar, unless you are epileptic (the flashing of the flash presentation is a wee bit overwhelming…), click here and select the country where you find yourself.

Last, but by no means least, while we were coming back from our meal out last night, we followed a stretch-Hummer limo. Now, if you know what a Hummer is, you will know that these leviathans of the road are anything but small when they are the normal versions, but this thing was gargantuan. It must have been at least 10 metres long. Just the thing for the Fiat Panda sized parking spaces that are, more often than not, on offer in Milan.

Just to cap things off, this giant of the road appeared to have, as far as I could make out through the blacked out windows, those constantly colour changing fibre optic type lights beloved of Christmas trees affixed to the inside of the roof. Very nice, especially if you wish to convey the impression that you are a high-powered New York pimp (on holiday in Milan), I suppose.

What an interesting car-month February turned out to be.

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At last, Top Gear in Italy

February 25, 2008 · Filed Under Italian TV · 2 Comments 

Some time ago, I wrote a little post with some suggestions for improving the TV here, one of those suggestions included adding a decent motoring programme, like Top Gear which I got back in the UK.

Well, for a couple of months now I’ve been buying the Italian version of the Top Gear magazine, and it is not at all bad. Then I noticed a few ads, including one whole bus which was covered in an ad for the Top Gear motoring programme.

Finally, car mad Italy gets a good programme about cars, motorbikes and all things motoring, I thought. About time too, even if the programme is part of the Top Gear franchise, and therefore, not Italian in origin.

However, there is a downside. Isn’t there always? The downside is that to see Top Gear you need to have a subscription to Sky, which, incidentally, we almost had, but for some mysterious reason (possibly because I was always a bit short with the Sky telesales people - I hate telesales), our Sky subscription was never activated, even if we now have Cartoon Network and CNN.

What the heck, I can at least read about exotic and un-environmentally friendly cars in the colourful Top Gear magazine. And Italians finally get a magazine that is a) not as dull as ditch-water and b) is not a thinly disguised car manufacturers brochure.

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