Category Archives: Frankfurt IAA Expo 2011

VIDEO: 100 seconds of Subaru WRX STi ”NRG edition” (Nürburgring special)

Subaru didnt do much noise at FRANKFURT IAA 2011 EXPO, but we still jumped with high enthusiasm when we saw they did bring the Subaru WRX STi ”NRG edition”; which driven by Tommi Mäkinen did sub 8-minute laps of the Nürburgring with just basic tuning done to the car!

 

This video explain a bit of the ”extra bits” added to make it so quick, and you will be suprised on how few they really are- this should motivate you all for this coming winter in doing your own modifications to improve laptimes in 2012…

 

VIMEO:

 

Frankfurt IAA Auto Expo 2011 – 100 seconds of Subaru WRX STI from Superior Media on Vimeo.

 

YOUTUBE:

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8il6kIpe1oI

 

Even if Tommi Mäkinen is an incredible driver, I think we all need to learn that it doesnt take a supercar to run around the classic ’Ring if your car is balanced and setup well for it. Dont think we will see this ”edition” being available from factory, but its more or less a statement of what potential the new WRX STi has. Message delivered Subaru!

 

I wish there was more of this and especially Japanese brands overall, but we hope all the news from FRANKFURT are still intriguing you.

 

Guess for a blog mostly dedicated to the Swedish JDM-scene we can only feel good about mixing it up a bit here in the beggining of fall… 😉

SELECTED: Tuning-special (Mansory, Hamann, Techart Carlsson & more) @ Frankfurt 2011

Sinking our teeth into Hall 5 at the FRANKFURT IAA 2011 EXPO we got all the über-premium tuners under one roof with brands like Mansory, Brabus, Carlsson, Weissman, Techart, Hamann and more & more…!

We were not as enchanted as our GUEST BLOGGER SIR PIERRE, but did return more then once to get a closer look on some cars. Its with some regret I did not give even more time to these astounding supercars who have gotten and even sharper edge to them with labour of the absolutely highest degree.

There will be another write-up by Pierre who is much more familiar with these big dogs of the aftermarket $$$-sccene; but right now Martin BILBILDER.SE Perssons pictures will give you more SELECTED GALLERY wisdom to entertain your eyes with…

(English exterior tuner MANSORY brought their A-game to the expo and had probably the second largest presence in Hall 5 after Brabus. They had a themed matte white/carbon thing going and you had supercars from around the world to look at. What you see here is not just an Audi R8 but a custom Golf cart (!) as well, moral of this story is that a certain Horacio Pagani was eyeing it live in front of me while I was there. Hmm?)

 

(Carlsson has been tuning Mercedes forever it seems, and they put a lot of focus on their own wheel collection which I found very appealing. If its one thing the Germans be it ultra-premium tuners like these guys know; its how to keep it simple and classy when it comes to wheels.)

(The exception (!?) to the above statement is another tuner who has been around for a long time; Hamann. They do something some of us more fans of subtleness would call ”boy racer” things to car costing well more then what we are used to. I found the toned rear lights quite out of place on this Bentley Continental GT and the wheels are borderline tacky as well. Still giving credit to that they have not cheated in quality anywhere and Iam sure its a matter of taste as well…)

(More from Hamann and interesting to see this type of carbon with larger ”squares” in the weave. In Sweden we call it Textreme and we have actually in MajoR Aero done some work with it. Quite expensive and hard to work with, but more unique then regular carbon- and thats what people want to pay for when it comes to spending money on their supercar?)

(Front ”canards” have suddenly become all the rage here; wheter its from factory supercars or what these premium tuners are offering their customers. I thought this design for the Porsche Cayenne by Mansory was pretty unique, although I have to figure out the aero functions behind it fully…)

(Techart is a highly respected tuner who does more then just ”style” their cars, its even more about the performance then perhaps some of the other brands in this gallry. This is a sick close-up of their ”smurfy” Porsche GT2 RS that we liked so much we did a 100 SECONDS OF..” videoclip of. So enjoy these close-ups and expect that the feature will give you a more fuller experience of this awesome car!)

(Got stance? Already did mention that the Germans leave nothing to chance when it comes to taking this seriously. I would be tempted to lower it even more,but I doubt its cool to scrape the streets in your city cruiseing while driving your Carlsson CK63 RS…)

(One more shot of the highly favoured brand in this gallery (Mansory) and their insane Ferrari 458 Italia which was stuffed with more carbon then a epic mealtime turkey is with meat!)

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Most of these cars are perfectly fine from factory, and we feel its 50/50 when it comes to taking advantage of that and just refining those lines- while the other half just goes nuts in trying to add any single detail which will give the car even more attention. Which route is the best to go in your opinion?

Todays ”tuning-special” is all about spoiling you guys. Drop off a comment below if you like what you see, and be sure to check out MARTINS FACEBOOK as he has a habit of shooting supercars for a living as well. 😉

VIDEO: 100 seconds of Brabus CLS Rocket 800 @ Frankfurt IAA 2011

When I mentioned that the DACIA DUSTER had 850HP it was probably among the most powerful cars of the expo. Well, here is another one with German tuner Brabus showing their CLS Rocket 800 which has… yes indeed, 800 ponies and torque well enough for a proper truck under the hood!

The entire Halle 5 was dedicated to the different tuners of the world (mostly German = The elite) and we will share a SELECTED GALLERY (teaser below) with you from that as well as some expertise blogging from SIR_PIERRE. Its just tuning at another planet then we are used to, although there was a lot of common ground to find with a technical manager of Brabus who said it was the same trial and error as with building any other tuned car.

Gotto add that they were utter class at Brabus, and the best honest complement I could give them is still valid: In a hall which has a dozen tuners with plenty of $$$ client cars in their disposal they were the biggest and best with ease. Their closest competitor Carlsson had nothing on them- and thats a fact and not an opinion.

Keep up the good work Brabus, and make sure to watch this video showing the classiest snob with a total meanstreak around. Some quite interesting facts like its 0 – 300km/h time is brought up. Can you guess it before watching the video? 🙂

VIMEO:

Frankfurt IAA Auto Expo 2011 – 100 seconds of Brabus from Superior Media on Vimeo.

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YOUTUBE:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIk9jHYzTn4

Cant imagine riding in more class then that, but still feeling confident in what I got as soon as I give it a little push on th gas-pedal anytime a factory supercar rolls up next to me in the autobahn… 😉

See ALL THE CLIPS from the FRANKFURT EXPO 2011 and drop a comment or two, we really appreciate it!

VIDEO: 100 seconds of Jaguar CX16 concept @ Frankfurt IAA 2011

For being one of the most liked concepts of them all by Team A (Martin & Me) we are dissapointed that we couldnt give a better angle of the Jaguar CX16 concept that was at FRANKFURT IAA 2011 EXPO.

 

Not only that the angle was poor, seems quite obvious that sometimes we were a little bit rushed to make the features (see them ALL HERE) and I couldnt even get the names right at occasions. Ugh… But still worth less then 100 seconds of your time- so check it out!

 

VIMEO:

 

Frankfurt IAA Auto Expo 2011 – 100 seconds of Jaguar CX16 Concept from Superior Media on Vimeo.

 

YOUTUBE:

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I5q1y-YVUk

 

Cant believe we got 17 more of these to show you, this expo was everything we expected in size and things to offer for the eyes…

VIDEO: ”100 seconds of 100 seconds” – We explain the concept!

Time to explain our mindsetting behind these small features (SEE THEM ALL HERE). We know some of you are finding them boring as hell compared to our regular videos, but the idea was to for the first time go volume and offer plenty of everything instead of doing just a few in depth looks.

 

FRANKFURT IAA is such a gigantic expo, that its impossible in two days (make that one, since it takes a full day just to ”get the hang of it” and finding your way) get a quality look of everything. So we hope this compromise and at some occasions quite predictable type of reporting is still good enough for around one minute of your time… 🙂

 

VIMEO:

 

Frankfurt IAA Auto Expo 2011 – 100 seconds of 100 Seconds from Superior Media on Vimeo.

 

YOUTUBE:

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNkBu9_S3_o

 

We will ask for your feedback and have a bit of an incentive to rank all the clips, so we can see which one was the most popular.

 

Its important we know what we did right and wrong so the next time we do something like this will be even better! 🙂

SELECTED: Always ambitious Audi @ Frankfurt IAA 2011 Expo!

In the shadow of the two giants BMW and Mercedes we have the always ambitious VW brand Audi doing their best to keep up. They had setup their own built from scratch call in the middle of the whole expo landscape, and offered a cool design with car being testrun ”around us inside” (hard to explain).

Among the news this year were a bunch of new S-models and facelifts of their normal car, also the top of the line Audi R8 GT Spyder. We liked their thinking and probably got their deserved attention for their efforts, this gallery represents a bit of the flair…

(With a bit of a compromise, at least Audi did bring some of their racing livery to the expo. But they did not get a seat inside the fancy built from scratch building, instead they stood in their loneliness outside a bit scuffed away. Still giving them props for showing them, the Audi A5 DTM is new for this upcoming season…)

(Here is a great shot of how it looked inside, as always with this borderline pretentious brand- we got a lot of ”piano white/black” surfaces and nice tinted glasses. From this angle you dont see that there was a very small track built ”around” the structure where cars passed by from time to time. The TT-RS and GT Spyder made some nice noise sometimes…)

(A concept I myself was looking forward to seeing was this new Quattro which is a revival of the 80’s where Audi as we all know ran Group B and such. Sadly it seems this wont get much further then being pushed out in the open next to the ”priority B” racecars. Good or bad idea by Audi to scrap it from production?)

(Another concept that is aimed towards really compact cars with attitude to roam the city with. Martin got quite attached to it on location, I just get colds shivers down my spine thinking about fitting in such a car- the future seems like a rough place for guys like me who are aroun 2m tall…)

(The oh so popular Audi A5 got its facelift and even sharper lines seems to be the melody of current trends at the moment. I have a soft spot for the A5, but being totally honest here; its because its like a ”poor mans Aston Martin” or something like that.)

(In the ”100 SECONDS OF AUDI R8 GT SPYDER” VIDEO we did point out that the class of carbonfibre was among the highest of the entire expo on Audis cars. Just an amazing mix of perfect weave with the right balance of clear coat to set it off totally. Surely it was among the cars that gave the most ”want one” cravings looking back…)

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And thats Audi for ya, I think there is a pic somewhere on how the structure looked from the outside. Martin said in some naughty fashion it looked like a giant pile of whale-crap  dressed up in fance white or something like that??

This gigantic expo is killing me, never realised that two days could give so much to write about. And we still skipped over around half of what was shown there since it only gave a mild rise of the pulse passing it by… 

VIDEO: 100 seconds of Rolls Royce Phantom Coupé @ Frankfurt IAA 2011!

Still keeping the tempo up on all the ”100 seconds of…” clips we did at FRANKFURT IAA 2011 expo, and next in line is the magnificent Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupé– possibly the biggest in sheer size world premiere shown at the expo!

Would have been fun to get a glimpse of Rowan Atkinson aka ”Mr. Bean” aka ”Johnny English” who was present during the pressrelease of the car (its featured in the new JE movie) but aparently it was quite stale.

Not sure what I would call my own performance being a prick about Rowan, but as always its more about giving a quick glimpse of the many spectacular cars we ran through down there (and he is a multi-million $ per movie actor, while Iam…)… Lets not finish that!

VIMEO:

Frankfurt IAA Auto Expo 2011 – 100 seconds of Rolls Royce Phantom Coupé from Superior Media on Vimeo.

YOUTUBE:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToLZpNlO_qg

We’ve seen everything from exotic concepts, to standard cars getting their world premieres to some true supercars. I hope you like the mix so far, find ALL THE CLIPS HERE and browse around to find your favourite, and if you must- give me a good healthy dose of heckling as well since at times Iam… terrible. 😉

Friday coming up here and have some catching up to do on the office, but more SELECTED galleries from both Gatebil Rudskogen and FRANKFURT IAA will come your way…!

VIDEO: 100 seconds of the new Porsche 911 (991) @ Frankfurt IAA 2011!

We all know we are getting older each time Porsche release a new generation of their 48 year old long standing classic 911. At FRANKFURT IAA EXPO we got to see the newest one dubbed 991. They are taking a step away (?) here from sportiness and have done it a bit longer and sleeker in look, do we like it…?

 

I would say yes, but perhaps its a little questionmark wheter the car is loosing more of its youthfullness and being even more geared towards a mature audience? Not sure, check out the video and give us your own opinion?

 

VIMEO:

 

Frankfurt IAA Auto Expo 2011 – 100 seconds of Porsche 911 from Superior Media on Vimeo.

 

YOUTUBE:

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J4IILOIl9s

 

Looking at it again it really does look modernized and more of a gentlemans car rather then a sportscar but… Iam sure the more performance oriented RS-models will cure that quite easily once its their time to hit the market…

 

Always have to mention we got all the ”100 seconds of…” clips stashed nicely HERE if you got a few minutes to kill listening to my hesitant english; but looking at all the fantastic cars most importantly.

 

Dont forget all the awesome SELECTED GALLERIES with plenty of blog texts to enjoy! Do it! 😉

SELECTED: Ford Evos & Cadillac Ciel concepts @ Frankfurt IAA 2011!

Two quick mentions of cars that made some impact at FRANKFURT IAA EXPO 2011, the Cadillac Ciel and Ford Evos concept- showing that there is an even playingfield and the americans are far from behind when it comes to the thinking for the future.

 

We already did the ”100 SECONDS OF…” VIDEO of the Ciel and we also got the Ford Evos coming, both do sooo well in live media then i pictures; but this mini-gallery by Martin BILBILDER.SE Persson is still good enough for a minute of your time. 🙂

 

 

(Ford has been doing well in recent years, but never achieved anything thats considered ”spicy” enough for more hardcore enthusiasts as ourselves to sink our teeth in. I still consider this concept a very clean rather then wild one at first glance, but looking closer you got a lot of things to enjoy in every aspect of it. Can we say it could be one of the most balanced and in a whole most ”well made” concepts of the expo?)

 

 

(Call me a nerd here, but I think even more could have been achieved here with an even more agressive sort of stance of the wheels. Iam not talking about doing a proper ”Hellaflush” look, but the Ciel has every single bit of potential needed to be the absolute overlord of all VIP-cars if it really wanted. How are you guys feeling the colour BTW?)

 

 

(I cant confirm this, but could it be the worlds first ”dual gull-wing” doors ever…? And the fact that such a ridiculous and unnecessary idea is pulled of in 100% fashion is… ace work by the design team! Gotto love those wheels which could also compete for the ”best of” in that category at the expo, and lets also mention the colour which was one of the more vibrant candy/pearl paintjobs I have ever seen in my life!)

 

 

(And the highlight of the car with a former dreamcar of mine *in MUCH younger days* giving inspiration to the rear of the Ciel —> Cadillac Eldorado. It never crossed my mind that this colossus was actually a true convertible, which is quite exclusive for any concept. So much retro going on though, everything from the brown/reddish interior to the ”controlled vulgarity” of this car takes back fond memories of the 50-60’s…)

 

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This was just a quicke,  but we did say that no corner of the FRANKFURT MOTOR SHOW would be left unturned by us. Right…?

 

…no, we actually didnt say that but still hope you like the variation of cars we’ve offered you so far. Think we are two thirds down the road in released material = much more to come! 😎

VIDEO: 100 seconds of Alfa Romeo 4C + hot Italian babe! @ Frankfurt IAA 2011

Going the shameless route of promoting that there is a very hot lady in this video featuring Alfa Romeo 4C concept at FRANKFURT IAA 2011 MOTOR SHOW. Actually, its needless to plug it this way because this car was in its natural beautiful self worth taking a long look at!

 

Not sure where to put Alfa Romeo as a brand right now, they seem to struggle losing that permanent label of being a ”designer brand” with ”fance engine sound” before something you would actually buy judgeing by simple common sense. If they can keep the pricetag down on this one though, I would really like to see many of the on the streets…

 

VIMEO:

 

Frankfurt IAA Auto Expo 2011 – 100 seconds of Alfa Romeo C4 from Superior Media on Vimeo.

 

YOUTUBE:

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJPotqu0DoA

 

I have looked on this clip several times, and I think there is a clear connection to my slightly (even more then usual) confusion and the things that the camera catches. So go have a look yourselves, and see if you can forgive me. 😉

 

Going to try and push the pace even more so we can have ALL CLIPS (CLICK!) gathered from the expo very soon. I hope the around 100 seconds each one is in lenght keeps you all to keep watching them, not much time to ask for! 🙂

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