The rumour-mill is grinding away and word on the street is that Bauer magazine Max Power is no more, closing it’s (lambo) doors for good.

It’s not much of a surprise to those into the modified car scene but it’s a shame nonetheless.  Over the years the title has been out of favour with it’s target audience after shifting focus onto scantily-clad women rather than modified cars but even an editorial change in 2007 wasn’t enough to save it.  Under Emap, Max Power was at one time the most popular magazine for car enthusiasts and hosted a number of live events.

As the Peterborough-based title employs a number of people locally hopefully they’re being moved to other titles but the outlook is bleak.

Do you work for Bauer?  Can you offer any more insight into rumoured closure of Max Power?  Leave a comment below

When it comes to driving in America, choosing the right car is half of the fun.  When you’ve got endless miles sat with the cruise control jammed into “on” you need to make sure you’re in a happy place so choosing the right car is essential.
Even with the price of fuel being so much cheaper in the US, I’ll be ignoring the thirsty supercars in favour of something slightly sensible.

So looking ahead to what the car industry has to offer in 2010 I’ve found there’s quite a few models that tick the right boxes.

Lincoln

A model I’ve never heard of before is from Ford’s luxury brand Lincoln – the Lincoln MKZ.  With headlamps that look slightly Saab and a front grille that’s straight from a Weber bbq, this beast of a car is an executive’s dream with it’s AWD and leather interior.

Acura

Another unfamilar brand to me, the Acura RDX is (according to a car encyclopedia) the luxury brand of Honda and once you’ve seen both the exterior and interior styling it starts to make sense.  The dashboard is feature packed as you’d expect with a great instrument cluser that looks more like something you’d find on Gran Turismo than inside what’s essentially a family 4-door AWD.

Chevrolet

Back to America for the final car and this time a GM Chevrolet.  The Chevy Equinox is a 5 seat crossover with a choice of two powerplants, both of which use fuel-saving direct injection technology.  The quality of the materials used in the build of this Chevy are reported to make the driving experience feel more like a Cadillac than a cheaper Chevrolet which is great news for the rental market where you’re not bothered about the badge on the front.

This story begins on the A1139 where the Paston Parkway meets the Frank Perkins Parkway. The roundabout serves virtually all of the traffic from the A47 that is heading to the South of Peterborough or beyond to the Southbound A1 or A605 / A14.  Being fairly wide and as visibility is usually quite good, traffic can be at a rapid pace if you’re caught unawares and are a bit slow on the old gear change. Generally speaking, it worked and I don’t think there were any more accidents there than were to be expected.

This was fine for years until some bright spark decided it would be a great idea to slap a petrol station on this notoriously busy roundabout, adding an extra entrance/exit between two of the busiest approaches.  Not only that, the petrol station became some kind of bastardised Somerfield with a KFC restaurant nestled in behind.  It’s probably worth mentioning that the backdrop for this setting is a glorious landfill site which has a fine whiff to it if the air is in the right direction.  Mmm fried chicken.

Before you read on, this story is covered much more accurately at the Paston Parkway J8 (Eye roundabout) website so you may find it beneficial to visit that site once you’ve finished digesting my spiel…

Obviously an attraction like this is hard to resist with motorists flocking to their site in their thousands  on a daily basis (probably).  But the town planners had failed to anticipate one thing: the desire for residents in the Welland and Dogsthorpe areas to consume Zinger tower burgers and nip to the Somerfield for some groceries – a desire that would see them risking their lives crossing four lanes of fast moving traffic.

Fast forward to today and a campaign is in full force to have a footbridge installed to allow residents their fried chicken fix without risk of walking in front of a moving vehicle.
Whilst it does seem a little OTT just to allow pedestrians to a site that was never intended to serve the pedestrian population, it would be the most practical solution to the problem.  Peterborough City Council however laugh in the face of practicality and prefer to make life a bit of an adventure!

You really couldn’t make up the solution the council have decided to opt for: a signal-controlled pedestrian crossing, across the lanes of a dual carriageway (both directions) leading up to and exiting one of the busiest roundabouts in the city’s road network.  Just imagine the frustration of motorists as they leave the roundabout at the (I believe) legally permitted 60mph only to find a set of red lights and scores of people crossing with bags of shopping.

Oh, I forgot to add – the site has more recently been redeveloped as some kind of garden centre extravaganza named “Peterborough Garden Park” with Van Hage as the flagship retailer.  With space for over 400 cars the developers are hoping for some serious footfall to the site, so why haven’t the council forced the developers to provide the footbridge as part of the deal?

Fun times.

Further reading – Paston Parkway J8 (Eye roundabout)

I’ve been meaning to make a quick blog post about this for a while now, but it slipped my mind.

For whatever reason, Edoya (Peterborough’s damn fine Japanese sushi and noodle bar) has been renamed to “Misaki”.  The staff are the same, the menu’s the same (i.e. bloody fantastic) and well, it’s the same.  Just a different name.

So if you’re struggling to find Edoya, or wonder if Misaki is the same place, then now you know!

One of the downfalls of being a freelancer is that you’re often just working solo, probably from the spare room / study and don’t have much call to leave the house, especially when the weather’s as miserable as it has been recently.  Add to that the clocks going back the other weekend and now it’s dark outside even earlier.

So with that in mind, I’ve been thinking lighting and more specifically lamps and even more specifically, desk lamps (I do work from a desk, so it makes sense!).

What I hadn’t expected was the vast array of lamp designs and styles – upright necked, jointed, goosenecked or even keyboard lights.  Once you’ve sorted that, then you need to consider the type of bulb!  Thankfully what could be a potential nightmare is made so much easier with websites like ShopWiki.com that crawl the internet looking for the best shopping deals.

I found several fantastic looking desk lamps, but they were all from shoppers in the US… the hunt continues!

This year I’m being all proactive and have already purchased my boxes of Christmas cards (or “holiday” cards for those of you in America) to hand write and send out to clients and the accountant. I’ve probably not sent personal Christmas cards out since I was in primary school and even back then it was just a competition to see who could get the most cards from the cute girls, so going to the effort of writing cards again after so long was a bit of a shock. Making sure the handwriting was all neat and tidy felt like I was about to be judged!

Last year it was a bit of a rush job, picking some random black cat (my company is called GattoNero) stock imagery and having it printed onto some horrible card by an online photo developing company, which I won’t be doing again. By the time they arrived and I’d written on the cards it was only a few days before most companies shut up shop for Christmas, but the thought was there I suppose.

So this year, I’ve decided to plan ahead and have found some cat charity cards that fit the bill nicely. They arrived today so over the next few weeks I’ll start putting together a list and doing some writing (remember, handwriting the card AND envelope gives a better impression than doing some mail merge!) to make sure they are ready to send in the first week of December.

I don’t really remember the Fiat 500 the first time around.  I mean, I recognise the now all too familiar headlamps and iconic front grille, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one on the road.

That can’t be said for the New Fiat 500 though (Fiat Nuova 500 for those in the know) as it’s fast becoming THE car to be seen in.  You can keep your sports cars and your tank-like 4x4s, if it’s attention you want then the smart money is going on the quirky little Fiat 500 with it’s gorgeous interior.

One thing the Mini had going for it right from the off was the customisation that owners could do to make their car stand out from the rest (and there was a lot of “rest” about).  The Fiat 500 needs the same if it’s going to have the same impact and thankfully it’s already on it’s way.  The interior and exterior colour options, the bodywork graphics and of course the aftermarket modifications like a Remus exhaust, will all do their bit to make the car every bit as desirable as it should be.

I took a 1.3 diesel 500 out for a test drive and was pleasantly surprised at the comfort level compared to other small-mid sized cars.  The 1.2 Punto is painfully slow and I’m glad the 500 doesn’t follow in it’s big brother’s footsteps.  The forthcoming Abarth model should also stir things up a bit and I’ll be heading back down to the Fiat showroom for that!

I mentioned it briefly earlier, but for Fiat 500 Nuova owners looking to tune their Italian city car for a bit more performance or even just to add a bit of styling a Fiat 500 sports Remus exhaust has got to be on the wish list.  Twin chrome tailpipes, a gorgeous exhaust note and fantastic build quality will make this the exhaust to have on the car to have.

The niche where BMW’s Mini has been successful in over the past few years is now going to become a little crowded with a whole new cult following.  With some models of Mini selling in excess of £25,000 which is pretty ludicrous unless you really can afford it, the 500 is really appealing to those with a budget and is pretty much guaranteed to sell like hot panettone.

ciao.

The first week of July’s been a little hectic and has seen the launch of the new Remus UK website for performance exhausts, the purchase of a new car (dapper Focus Zetec in a grey colour – probably called Sunset Blue or something by Ford’s fartarse design department) and the discovery of a new (well new to me) Indian takeaway in Peterborough.

Oh yes, curry is that important to me I feel I need to put it in writing! The establishment in question is the Donner & Balti Express, but don’t be put off by it’s dubious name, this is in fact an award winning curry house! Chef Mohammed Abdul Hakim has been awarded Peterborough Curry Chef of the year for three years in a row.

I’ve also discovered this week that Moo have finally added business cards to their already fantastic range of moo minicards, stickers, greetings cards and postcards.  Arriving in a pretty-much-standard 84x55mm, you get to choose from a couple of paper options and can upload images and designs to make the cards stand out. What makes Moo even more appealing is that you can have a number of different designs printed in the same batch, giving you an assortment of different cards!

If you’ve had your head in the sand for the past few years then you won’t have seen Moo cards before, almost like cigarette cards of old, these are often used by aspiring designer types as a cheap by eye catching business card alternative.  But now they’re an alternative no longer.

Who knows what delights next week will bring!!