Some Weekend Celebrity Car-Stalking

Amy Winehouse’s BMW 7-series is as big a train wreck as the beehive-wearing singer and her drug troubles. Maybe she chose this car while seriously trippin’. Oh well, she could have done worse – she could have been getting out of a Porsche Cayenne or a BMW X6. Or maybe Miz Winehouse is just slumming it while in and out of rehab.

Is Vince Vaughn slumming it? Because pleeze, we know you’ve stashed plenty of money away from the wildly successful Wedding Crashers a few years back, followed by another $200+million grossing movie, The Break Up. So why the 90s Pontiac Firebird? And why are you getting your own gas!

Simon Cowell isn’t slumming it…he’s car couture all the way!...the $400k+ Rolls Phantom; the $1million+ Bugatti Veyron. Lawhd! Leave some for the rest of us…jeez!

A much more modest Kevin Costner is pictured here with his two Audis - an S8 and a Q7. Looks like Mr. Costner likes him some speed and 4-wheel drive…hence the “S” model with Quattro, of course. As for the Q7, this is one of those SUVs that never needed to be built. Based off the Porsche Cayenne and Volkswagen Toureg and priced right in the middle, this middle child is often overlooked and totally forgettable. You might as well drive a Volvo. The boy in the Q7 pic is his son.

Here’s Dannon yogurt-living Jamie Lee Curtis and her Honda Clarity Hybrid (not widely available). They love to taunt your Pap by deliberately making these hybrids as hideous as possible. Bad styling on hybrids just won’t die and neither will Michael Meyers, it seems.

Here’s Ellen Degeneres, but where’s her preferred ride – a Porsche 911? Instead, she’s making a run to Real Food Daily in her Toyota FJ Cruiser. We love the outfit…matches well with the car. You look like you’re going fishing, Miz Degeneres…right on LaCienaga Bl. Oh those silly lez-beens with their cars and their wardrobes.

More Prius Irreverence

These mock ads were done by a clever graphic designer who obviously shares the some warm and fuzzy feeling for the Prius as your Pap. In a previous post, we discussed how inappropriate the Prius is for L.A., and your Pap still stands by that assertion! (click to enlarge pics...but your knew that.)

Mercedes Hair Dryer

The 2009 Mercedes SL features AIRSCARF:

AIRSCARF allows you to keep the roof down in cooler temperatures. A soothing stream of heated air to your neck, head, and shoulders helps take the bite out of chilly top-down conditions. With individual 3-stage temperature controls and airflow that automatically adjusts to your driving speed, you'll never want to put your roof up.

This feature has been on the $50,000 SLK for several years now. A nice feature, but aesthetically, your Pap thinks it’s poorly executed in the $100,000+ SL.

Why? Because those headrests now look hideaous – like salon hair dryers, and way too bulky. Then there’s the issue of the headrest being set too far forward, thereby pushing your head forward as well. Not only do you end up with the posture of an upright turtle, but it’s uncomfortable even in a short ride. Worst of all, you will find no dealer that stocks the new SLs without AIRSCARF!

Oh well, we were bound to find something terribly wrong with the new SL sooner or later.

The BMW Hydrogen 7: a Lab Rat Your Pap Kinda Likes!

The Fans will recall your Pap’s dislike of the 7-Series as discussed in a prior posting. The main reason we don’t like the 7-Series is because it looks like a hideous alien ship and can never come close to being what a Mercedes S-Class is (the primary competitor of the 7-Series). But when BMW introduced the Hydrogen 7 a couple years ago, your Pap eased up a bit on the criticism, giving this hideous thing a chance. After all, it seems appropriate for a car that looks like a crazy science experiment to be a science experiment.

The Hydrogen 7 isn’t publicly available, but rather has been a test mule driven by celebrities for a couple years now. Of course, BMW chose high-profile individuals to drive the Hydrogen 7, making sure the car shows up at red carpet events, movie premieres and the like. Below, your Pap has found some pics of several participating celebrities. About a dozen Hydrogen 7s are in L.A., and eight more in New York.

So why is the 7-Series acceptable as a Hydrogen vehicle? – because the gasoline 7-Series (2002-2008) is a true failure and will go down in automotive history as one of the ugliest, gimmicky and controversial BMWs. So while this generation 7-Series never cut it as an executive luxury sedan, why not turn it into a lab rat. They did, and now you have the Hydrogen 7…a cool science experiment!...maybe Jack Nicholson was onto something when he conducted such an experiement by in the 70s.



It’s not that your Pap has a vendentta against the environment, it’s just that environmentally friendly cars currently available are all dogs! – as a car-lover, you give up way too much when you drive a Prius, for instance. And it’s not that we don’t want to do good things for the Earth, it’s just we’d rather write our donation checks to Greenpeace, Heal the Bay, The Nature Conservancy and the like in the comfort of our Bentley Continental GTC; our Lamborghini Gallardo; or our Aston Martin Vantage. Driving a hybrid is not the only way to help the environment, thank you.

But back to the Hydrogen 7. Well, at least it’s a properly equipped BMW; it’s comfortably sized; it has luxury amenities; and it’s a much more substantial car than the tinny Prius and other cheap “green” cars. If they gave one to your Pap, we’d gladly take one – great car for tooling around Venice, making Whole Foods runs and picking up take out from Real Food Daily…if you’re into that kinda stuff!

The New Manual (Automatic) Transmission – Convenience or CASTRATION?

In a city where standing water breeds not mosquitoes, but babes famous-for-being-famous, things aren’t always what you’d expect. For instance, you would expect a Porsche 911 cruising the Sunset Strip to be a “stick.” You’d also expect manual transmissions on the Lamborghini Gallardo, Aston Martin Vantage or Ferrari F430. Not so! – most of these cars are not manual transmission anymore, but rather a very sophisticated automatic disguising itself as a manual transmission. That means even the biggest posers won’t find themselves shamefully grinding the gears as they pull away from Sky Bar. And that’s good news for those scenesters, but for the clutch-driving purists, these paddle-shifting transmissions are complete automotive castration.

Sure, these clever paddle-shifting transmissions boast fast shift times, which means the quickest 0-60 time possible for the car, and even more impressive when used in conjunction with Launch Control (your Pap has previously discussed this). But there’s much more to the enjoyment of a car than attaining the fastest shift time. Perhaps your Pap’s biggest beef about these paddle-shifting transmissions is (on some cars) removal of the shifter entirely, resulting in the aforementioned castration…all in the name of convenience – convenience in L.A. gridlock; convenience when driving and talking on the cell phone or while eating and drinking. In its wake is a crater, a cavity that no doubt former waitresses who’ve married wealthy men are now using to hold make-up brushes.

What an absolute travesty! Your Pap wants to know: what the hell are the Fans doing in these performance cars during the weekday commute. We hope that if you own an Aston Martin or Porsche, you have the resources to keep a proper commuter car and the requisite driver for this tedious commute that you can’t handle!

Below are photos that may shock you and may revile you, but the Fans must see the situation that has arisen. It is very real, and it is very upsetting. You have been warned!

First – you see a beautiful Aston Martin hand-hewn interior of luxurious leather and fine stitching. Before long, you notice the shifter is missing. In it’s place a bento box-type compartment to hold knick knacks and such; perhaps nicorette gum or the forgotten Motorola Razr phone.

In the next photo…a Ferrari F430. You see another example of aesthetic-terrorism. The manual transmission shifter long associated with a sports car has been removed. In its place, another cavity and a couple of buttons. Of particular note, a button that brazenly announces “Auto.” We are now starting to see a pattern, a signature unique to the perpetrator of these beautiful, pedigreed automobiles.

In the third picture…a Maserati Quattroporte (a family sedan). We would expect such a vehicle to have automatic transmission. But no, Maserati thinks this car is more than it really is. Instead, the traditional automatic shifter has been removed, and a paddle-shifting pseudo-manual transmission has taken its place. To add insult to injury, Maserati has installed a coat-hook type device in its place. Are we to grab hold of this during fast turns? What is the proper etiquette?…does the driver get to hold on to this nub or does the passenger grab hold during said fast turns? Or has your Pap been totally wrong…the handle actually marks a resting spot for your hat!

Your Pap apologizes if these pics have caused the Fans distress, but you must know the state of our automotive nation!

A final word: pleeze avoid these castrating paddle-shifting transmissions where at all possible. Because men, if you get a sports car with the paddle-shifters and then suddenly develop a need to own a Ford F-250 King Ranch or a Hummer H1, don’t come to your Pap for help!

Celebrity Car-Stalking

Here are some more celebrity car-stalking pics for the Fans. Hopefully this will be enough celebrity smut to get you through the weekend.

Posh and Becks have a fleet of impressive new cars. But when wanna tool around in a cheap/easy little cabriolet, they each have their own 911s. Both fully customized. In usual footballer fashion, we would expect embroidered monogramming on all headrests.

Patrick Dempsey also has a Carrera – the racy 911 GT3-R. The doctor likes a fast car!

Hayden Panettiere has a very different kind of Porsche. It’s the deplorable and brand-shaming Cayenne. Few SUVs are as unattractive and pointless as this dreaded Porsche. What was Ms. Panettiere thinking…perhaps papa-Panettiere should have slapped Hayden across the face instead of her mother. Has she redeemed herself? We see her getting out of a yellow Lamborghini Gallardo in the next pic.

Another lady, another Lamborghini…here’s Danica Patrick gassing up her Gallardo in a beautiful silver-tone color. Your Pap likes!

Sharing the same great chassis and components with the Gallardo is the R8 – and here’s Hugh Grant getting out of his. We believe tranny-hooker-loving Mr. Grant traded in his Bentley Continental GT last year and picked this car up. The seats in the Bentley were crushing his his balls and hurting his back…Yes, for real!

A more comfortable if less attractive Bentley is the Continental GT Flying Spur, with Ryan Seacrest as the owner. Look at those huge black rims – hmmm…not sure about that!

We prefer you leaving the Continental GT Flying Spur as is. After all, it’s just a family car…suitable for a baby and motoring at speeds up to 200 mph. For new-parents Nicole Richie and Joel Madden the Flying Spur seems great for a quick trip to Whole Foods.

Audi does Christmas

Audi’s new ad campaign tag line is “Truth in Engineering?” So let’s get the truth on Audi’s new headlight styling on several of their models – the R8, A6 and A4.

It looks like Audi designers went right over to The Home Depot in Ingolstadt, Bavaria and picked themselves up some LED rope lights and retro-fitted them onto the faces of their A4, A6 and R8.

Your Pap likes LED lights when done right, but on these Audis, they’re downright cheezy! Unfortunately the flagship R8 wasn’t spared either. Now there’s a time and place for rope lights - like as Christmas lawn decoration in a Palmdale tract development, but pleeze, not on a German performance car. We know you wanna out-do BMW’s “halo ring” headlights, but for your Pap, those rope lights seem to mimic the same sporty character as Pontiacs from the 1980s. We hope Audi pulls the plug on those ridiculous lights soon.