Winter is Coming!

If you forgot what happened during last winter, don't worry you will remember it again in couple of months. Hopefully, Continental revealed a footage to remember what happens when you use your summers tyres during the winter. Just watch the footage and you will realise why you need winter tyres!

Published at: http://uygarr.blogspot.com http://carsandlife.net

From rubber to fashion P. By Pirelli

Today I saw something which really surprised me. I didn’t see ten Bugatti Veyrons at the same time. What I saw was more interesting than that! A terrible consequence of extreme brand extension strategy by Pirelli marketing team. This is the same Pirelli which produces tyres and calendar (I still could not understand the point of calendar’s impact on tyres). Let me tell you what I saw today, Pirelli branded shoes! Yes, they are shoes for humans and sold in Selfridges (Department store in UK) with a very “nice” price 210 € or 175 £ or 285 $.

These shoes are the extreme edges of lunatic brand extension tactics. Company thinks, we can expand our brand to everything and make products which never fit with the brand. Pirelli is a rubber company and mainly focused on vehicle tyres. Everyone perceives Pirelli as a heavy industry firm not a fashion firm! As a result of this perception nobody expects to see a Pirelli in department store.

Unfortunately Pirelli thought we should be in fashion business, because we publish a sexy calendar each year. So people may wish to wear a tyre brand :) Or they might think; we have lots of extra rubber let’s turn them into shoes and sell them. Whatever they thought is not working that well. Nobody was looking at Pirelli shoes or I have never seen Pirelli shoes on any fashion magazine. I think main reason for this, people used to see Pirelli on their car but they are not used to see on their feet! And this is the minor point Pirelli may accidently skipped!

I did some research on internet and I found out that it is worse than I thought. Pirelli has women section also! They also have high heels for women! I have never seen a woman who desires to wear a pair of Pirellis.

You can see the women and men collection of rubber producer Pirelli. I think they have more thinks but I could only found these on Yoox.com

The shoes I took pictures were named as PZero and here is the real PZero! And the Pirelli’s fashion brand called as P. By Pirelli. Don’t miss the dot after the P :)

A typical fashion conversation;

-Where did you buy your shoes? From Pirelli.

-Really I have just bought four winter tyres from Pirelli also.

Autumn Winter

Pirelli Women Collection

Pirelli Men Collection

Spring Summer

Pirelli Women Collection

Pirelli Men Collection

Autumn Winter (Women) 

Spring Summer (Women)

Autumun Winter (Men)

Spring Summer (Men)

Pictures' Copyrights

Pirelli, Yoox and Me

Snow vs. Germans, I mean German cars

Today I was planning to write totally something else but when I consider the weather today in UK, I decided to publish these videos. There are four luxury vehicles placed in same position for snow climbing test. The test was conducted in Russian and I have no idea what they are saying but I can understand, all vehicles have their winter tyres on. The first one is Mercedes-Benz S500 4MATIC, second one BMW 750 xDrive, third one is ab old Audi A8 4,2 Quattro and the last one is Porsche Panamera. I don't know the exactly model of Panamera but I did not hear any turbo sound, so it could be 4S!

All these vehicles have four-wheel drive systems but each of them have different technologies. Mercedes calls it 4MATIC, Audi calls is Quattro, BMW calls it xDrive and Porsche just names it as "4". Basically their four-wheels have power from the engine but the distribution and functionality is totally different in each car. 

Mercedes 4MATIC: Front %45, Rear %55

BMW xDrive: Front %40, Rear %60

Audi Quattro: Front %40, Rear %60

Porsche: Constantly changing, no pre-determined split

Explanation; power from the engine goes to forty percentage to front wheels and fifty five percentage to rear wheels in Mercedes. But the electronic systems ASR, ESP constantly changing the power between wheels to increase traction. However, all these vehicles are near more than two-tonnes, so don't expect a great performance !

In my opinion; all these cars are showing great performance. Mainly they are not designed for this kind terrain, they have huge wide tyres which reduces the pressure on snow and they are very heavy.

Pictures' CopyrightsAudi, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, BMW

Don't buy Winter Tyres!

Winter tyres, in UK this sounds a bit weird. What is it for? Many people are saying this and they are right. For eighteen years in UK history, they did not see proper snow so they did not have a solid reason to buy winter tyre. However during last two years, the white thing that comes from the sky became a huge problem. And people started to wonder, is there something for snow?

Continental tyres UK Twitter page is working really hard to increase the attention towards winter tyre and my journalist also publishing posts in twitter to increase the awareness. But the result is not very satisfying, I talked with many people and they all say “it is expensive”. Yes, car is not something expensive and you bought it from one-pound store. And winter tyres perceived as expensive. This sounds interesting but it is the ugly truth.

Similar story happened in Turkey also, many people were saying a tyre cannot change the way car goes on snow. And they ignored, after many bad incidents now everyone is rushing to replace their tyres on winter.

I can understand financial pressure of buying four extra tyres and people did not see the real difference between winter tyres and summer tyres. Instead of trying to increase their awareness for winter tyres, let people learn by their selves! For that reason I would like to share the “advantages” of not to buy winter tyres!

First of all; if you have problem with manual cars and stall your car all the time don’t buy winter tyres because you don’t have to worry about the clutch in snow. You will just leave the clutch and car will not go anywhere despite the engine is still working!

One of the other important advantages for avoiding winter tyres is to understand the meaning of friction. Because; while your car is sliding nicely without responding to your controls, you will learn the friction differences between snow and dry!

This sliding opportunity will also help you to make new friendship. Forget Facebook and Twitter, they are for summer times :) When your car started to slip with no control, it will hit somewhere. This is very basic, every objects hits somewhere to stop! So, sliding will not last forever and you will hit to a vehicle or an object or some other places. In the end some people will come to help you or the other drive come to express own nice feelings to you. But you will make this friendship instant, no private message, no wall posting! Directly, face-to-face. But I cannot guarantee how long and how will last.

As a result of sliding and meeting with a new people, you might need to call some numbers. Of course, not for reservation in a restaurant. You will be calling emergency number to report the incident. And you will be able to calculate how quick an ambulance can arrive after your phone call in winter while you are shaking from cold. Also you will experience the privilege to attend a car with siren and colourful light and that is called ambulance. You will be the fastest moving vertical person on street!

If you are lucky, you will have a nice conversation with the insurance company and then call your “new” friends and then go to service and this will repeat for quite long time. If you are not that lucky, you can measure the love of your friends through their visit in hospital. And also you will have chance to taste hospital food, learn about the problems of health system.

If you do not wish to experience this stupid story, go and buy winter tyres. They are much cheaper than all of these and it will help you to make better friendship with no anger involved :)

Pictures' Copyrights

Continental, Mercedes

Olive Oil vs. Winter Tyre

I am in UK nearly for two years and I noticed two things; first there is no olive oil in pubs and second nobody uses winter tyres. During last two winters, we could not see the impact of global warming and it snowed. This white thing dropping from sky was quite unusual for UK, nearly for 18 years it did not snow and they had no idea how to drive in snow.

The first time nobody was aware of winter tyre and they suffered really badly. The good part of driving with summer tyres while snowing, you can make new friendships. You don’t need to have a Facebook account to know the driver in front you or the one who is going to hit you from the rear. Thanks to summer tyres inadequate traction on snow, you can meet with anyone on street. But I said you can meet, I did not say you can be very close friends. Most probably both of you will crash in an ungentle way and the results of the collision will be remembered for a quite long time.

Now it is going to snow next week and I did not see any car with winter tyres. By the way, there are no olive oils in pubs. If you are lucky, you might find an olive oil in a pub but you have to search for that place, however there is no chance to see a car with winter tyres despite the last two years’ experience. I can predict only this, British people love to meet people while driving or skidding! Continental’s UK Twitter page is providing very useful information for winter tyres. These rubber things can really change your life! If you don’t wish to join pub from hospital, try winter tyres ;)

Pictures' Copyrights

Autocar, Continental