KTM X-Bow - An affordable supercar?

As reblogged from Left Lane News:

Austrian motorcycle builder KTM first revealed its new X-Bow (read as: Crossbow) roadster in 2007, but sales didn't begin until 2008. The 1500-pound car has a four-cylinder Audi engine offering 237 horsepower at 6000 rpm and 228 pound-feet of torque between 2200 and 4000 rpm. Audi reportedly considered selling a version of the X-Bow under its own brand, but later dropped the idea.

Hot Hatches

When I first got my license, my first car was a '93 Honda Civic coupe. Suffice to say it's a nice car to rough up your elbows in. Eventually, I spent a lot of time in a Peugeout 206 which I still have parked outside the house even today. In this time, I managed to get my hands on both an older Peugeot 205 GTi and the newer 206 RC.

Suffice to say, this made me fall in love with hot hatches. There's nothing quite like driving a car with almost no bonnet. Have a look at how Best Motoring does it:

Gotta love hatches..

M

Brand Bowl & a midget Darth Vader

As is the tradition, every time the Super Bowl comes around you have a huge bunch of corporates running around creating various TVCs that they want to air during that time, seeing as almost the entire North American populace is watching the telly. Not including Canada of course. Or Alaska.

Brands usually spend the around the same as the GDP of an African nation to secure a spot during the Super Bowl. Suffice to say, getting a spot is quite the pinch to the wallet, so much so that even the Super Bowl organizers do their own bit to track overall sentiment and who basically wins the Brand Bowl. Many iconic TVCs have been conceived, produced, aired and made popular by the Super Bowl. In fact, PepsiCo has been notorious for creating some of their most popular ads for the Super Bowl spots, including the celebrity gladiator match with Beyonce, Pink, Britney Spears or the Pepsi Stuff ad with Justin Timberlake.

Come Super Bowl 2011, companies release their ads to the hungry eyes of the world to see. At the time however, young Mali was asleep. The following morning finds young Mali sitting at his terminal at work, clicking and typing away furiously, social media guru that he is. (Yes, Mali occasionally refers to himself in third person). His good friend Arun linked him to something. He said it was a Super Bowl ad. He said I'd like it.

One minute and two seconds later, total productivity = zilch. Amazement = +infinity. Star Wars fanboy = +500 Force.

What I liked about this ad, besides a bite sized Darth Vader, was that the parent played along and boosted the child's imagination. It also represented VW in a more relaxed fashion, playing along consumer passion points. T'was refreshing!

My bid goes to VW for this year's superbowl. Have you guys seen their Beetle ad yet?

Oh dear, I've fallen into it again..

Well it's true, after spending a lot of time contemplating my return to the blogosphere, I did give in and will resume blogging, effective immediately! My initial concern was that I will not have enough to blog about or any specific things I may want to write about. However, what I did discover is I do have things I want to talk and blog about.

I will hereby turn this blog right around and you can expect to see me blog about the following topics:

1. Motorsports. I've recently joined my company's racing team. This adds to my previous track experience, so I guess it's about time I start talking cars as much as I love driving them.
   
   
2. Paintball. Cuz it's awesome. And now that I have all my gear, it's time to terrorize the office.
   
   
3. Video Games. I play a lot of them. It's time to take it a bit seriously.
   
   
4. Campus Radio ME. Along with Ritesh, I started this almost a year ago. Here, I will talk about recent news, updates etc.
   
   
5. Movies. I spend a lot of nights burning through DVDs. Why not share my views? :)

By any means, this list is not exhaustive. But possibly a teaser of things to come.

See you guys around!

M