Mrs Benz
October the 25th is Pink Ribbon Day and the street appeal is being launched at the time of writing. While pink cars are never going to be popular (see some of my previous posts), this breast cancer awareness campaign seems like a good excuse to celebrate one of the great women of motoring history.
The woman is, of course, Bertha Benz, and without her, the car might never have existed. Bertha was born in 1849. In 1886, she was a typical Victorian housewife in Mannheim, Germany, busy supporting her husband, Dr Carl Benz, and raising her four children. Dr Carl was facing a few problems with his newly patented invention. Nobody wanted it, preferring steam trains and horses. Some people even thought that this noisy contraption that moved by some mysterious means was powered by black magic. They say that behind every great man is a great woman, and it was time for the great woman to step in.
007 Car Sells For $4.5m Plus Bonus
The 1964 Aston Martin DB5 car driven by Sean Connery in the James Bond movies Goldfinger and Thunderball has sold at auction in London, England for $4.5 million
Don’t forget the kids
Discovering, of late, that safety has been taken seriously by car manufacturers in the last decade has changed, for many, the way that they approach buying a new car. Safety is all about how the occupants are kept safe inside the shell of a crashing car.
To start with, it was the seatbelts that offered a car’s driver and occupants a means by which they were not hurled around willy-nilly in a car crash. Introducing ABS to premium cars in the eighties enabled control in emergency braking – particularly in the wet.
2010 Australian International Motor Show
This year’s Sydney Motor Show (AIMS), rotating biannually with Melbourne is currently a great success. The press saw many fantastic openings and unveilings of 44 new and improved vehicles.
I think the rotation of locations has been good for the manufactures that are laden with overseas pressures and agenda. One annual Australian Motor Show has let companies like Ford bring out the big guns with a massive display like those seen in Frankfurt and Detroit Shows.
Level 2, 9 Help Street