Showing posts with label cars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cars. Show all posts

2011 Dubai Motor show

Posted: Sunday, November 13, 2011 by Stained in Labels: , , ,
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I'm not a petrol head. I don't watch motor sport (saw my first F1 a few weeks back because it was in India) and I don't grip over horse power numbers or turbo sizes. I like to keep a general knowhow of what kind of cars are available in the market and their specifications. What I do generally obsess about is the design of the car and lately its handling (thanks to my awesome Mondeo).

With my foray into photography over the past 4 years, this obsession has quadrupled thanks to my constant visual play with light on sheet metal. So when you put a few hundred cars under one roof i.e. the Dubai Motor Show, I go a little crazy (Read: me standing in awkward positions to absorb the aesthetics of the car). Oddly this year I didn’t go crazy even though I spent a whopping 8 hours at the show shooting videos and photos while listening to the boring and rather long press conferences. I had access to some of the most exotic cars available i.e. from a McLaren MP4 12C to a freaking Lamborghini Aventador to a customised special edition Rolls Royce Phantom convertible but simply put I was bored.

I remember the days I used to cycle down to a car showroom called ‘Classic Cars’ on Salahuddin Road where I’d spent most of my time wiping my drool off my face. I was around 10 years old as I’d watched my friend hug a Lamborghini Diablo while I stared dreamily at the under body of a Ferrari 348. And then there was the Ferrari F40 and I was sold.

Like every other person I have a few dream cars. A Porsche Boxter S being the more attainable one whiles a 1969 Corvette Stingray being the not so attainable one. And then there is the one I don’t talk about much i.e. the Ferrari 250 GTO. Quoting Jeremy when he had a 250 GTO parked at the Top Gear track; "I wish, almost more than anything, I could get into this now, and take it for a drive. But, even though Top Gear is made by one of the largest and richest broadcasting organizations, we simply cannot afford the insurance." Do I really have to say how much a 250 GTO costs?

I have a matchbox car model stashed somewhere that I’ve own for the past 15 years. I love it to bits and got extremely possessive when my niece tried to lay claim on it.

Anyway here are a few pictures from the 2011 Dubai Motor show.

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Dead beach

Posted: Friday, May 06, 2011 by Stained in Labels: , , , , ,
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A person in a Mercedes G class tells his friend (driving a Honda MRV) to watch him drift in the sand while the friend is busy thanking him for everything...whatever that means. A white tinted Altima sits in the middle of the sand with its lights on but unmoved for the past 15 minutes...make out session?? A cluster of cars parked near the fence unmoved as well while a Lexus ES300 crawls by and joins them. A Toyota Corolla trying hard to drift playing ostentatious music leaves and a VW Touareg enters perhaps honking at me deliberating what I'm up to. They drive by again closer this time taking a careful look at me followed by an almost chickened out deep sand session; they managed to not get stuck. A speedboat rumbles in the darkness that seamlessly transfers from the water to the night sky. The only sign of a horizon are those blinky lights doing what they do best. The Burj Khalifa flashes a light as a rally blue Subaru Impreza makes an unflattering entry as the Filipino lady driver wonders what I am. Arabic music plays somewhere in background with the wind whispering in my ears. Somewhere on the palm a car hits a dead end while a Suzuki Vitara that suspiciously looks like an unmarked cop car makes a second round. There's a southwesterly breeze that's managed to give me Goosebumps with the right amount of cold. It's the month of May but this is pleasant almost in an uncanny kind of way. A plastic bag rolls by illuminated by the Altima lights. Somewhere a kid has a conversation with her father and bikers go rumbling by superseded by the growl of a truck. I am thankful that I picked this over the meadow windows even though the outcome is the same. Dead beach...that's what we used to call it in college but that now seems like another life. An Infiniti EX35 floats by fulfilled and here I am using an iPad like my little best friend.

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