When will it extinct?

Have you ever get the feeling that, in the near future, some of the things we see around us might not exist anymore? May it be things that are good or that are bad.

Paper lanterns were once seen all over the streets during my childhood days. Beautifully coloured and in all sorts of funny shapes and sizes.

But at one point, a kid gets burned and people start making battery-operated lanterns and the availability of paper lanterns slowly decrease. Not those made of full paper and in a cylindrical shape, but those with shapes using clear coloured paper.

Now, when I look at the automotive industry, I feel the same sense of extinction happening.

A lot of people, with deep insight into the industry, predict that one day supercars and hypercars will no longer exist. And they based it on the situations around the world.

The economy crisis. The environmental problems. The endless war on speed. All these factors would one day, in one way or another, contribute to the extinction.

Fantastic machines that push the boundaries of what is possible; in engineering and design.

But as much as we disagree, outside factors can and will influence the development of technologies.

Nowadays, we see manufacturers pushing for green car projects, bio-fuel, electric motors, hybrid engines and solar powered vehicles.

There’s nothing wrong with those developments. We can always be more environmentally conscious. But humans should never stop pushing the boundaries of speed and technology.

But how do you tell that to a parent who has just lost his/her child to a speeding offender and, in the midst of grieve, went on a war path to protest against fast cars and to force the law to lower speed limits. They will obviously win the sympathy of the public. How do we go against such a situation?

Manufacturers are beginning to downsize their vehicles in order to penetrate the much more dense compact car market. And what causes this? The economic crisis drove people to limit spending and space constraints in urban areas make smaller cars an ideal choice compared to, lets say, driving a Ferrari.

People are becoming very practical. And practicality is sometimes bad.

Supercars and hypercars are NOT practical. It’s not meant to be practical. It will not do a perfect reverse park manoeuvre nor will it take a U-turn properly. It will irritate you during traffic (if you’re not good at controlling) and will kill you if you pushed it to the limit and lose control.

Those stiff racing suspensions will give you a sore bottom if you’ve been sitting in it for hours on end on roads filled with potholes and for some hypercars, a radio and air conditioning isn’t a given option. You get fewer luxuries than, lets say, a Mercedes C200 but you pay up to 10 times more.

But a lot of people love that. They love to be insane for that few hours when they walk into a dealer and purchase a really fast car. The speed limit on a highway is 110km/h? Who cares. We’ll do a 220km/h, on third gear.

It’s the adrenaline rush of pushing the finest machines to its capabilities. Much like they do with bullet trains.

If a kid decides to trespass into the tracks and gets killed, will the parents protest to ban trains that travel too fast?

So I say, let some insanity live in this world. Let us not take away things that we have once seen and experienced and leave the future generations without any of such an experience.

Slowly, good things will come to an end. And we are the ones who will bring it to its ending.

Stand up. Be counted.

For those who have trouble understanding the above idiom, you can follow this link.

But let me make life simpler for you.

The meaning of that idiom is to let yourselves be heard. Whether it’s an opinion or a support or a statement.

In our modern society, a lot of Asians are still not willing to stand up for themselves. That is why the Western world branded our stance as always being non confrontational. In simple words, we don’t like to confront people, about anything for that could cause trouble or a scene.

We always choose to keep things to ourselves and best not to be heard by others for fear of shame or respect.

If it were for the reason of respect or professionalism, it is clearly understandable, but up to a certain point.

For instance, although bosses give stupid commands and you disagree, it is deem unprofessional to shout back at his decisions. That is acceptable, as it is widely seen all over the world. But if you do, you’d notice that bosses will stand up for their decisions.

However, things that affects us personally, we have to stand up for that. May it be for such a small matter as a short change or something so huge that it would damage your reputation as a person.

Sure, there are those who may say it’s a childish act to try to defend yourself, but I say, everyone has their pride and their dignity.

If we’re being trampled over and we just let it be, we’d forever be cowards and will never learn to express our opinion as a person who has rights to do so.

I was just reminded of a programme on the radio the other day where the deejays called up an upper class departmental store to enquire regarding their personnel’s arrogant attitude towards customers. They even made such a big fuss of it by contacting the company’s head office to complain to the customer service manager. Everything ended well when the manager took action and gave an apology statement to the deejays publicly.

Some people just don’t like causing a scene. But if we’re always afraid of that, we’d never learn to expect something proper. Something just as simple as a service or a debate.

Sure, we might ruffle some feathers, but it has to be done.

Only winners learn to defend themselves and react. People who are always afraid or think it’s inappropriate to voice their opinions will always end up as losers and be trampled over because they never learn.

It’s a modern society. Opinions matter. Without your own opinion, you’d never stand up and be counted. Like someone once said, you would just be like dead fishes going with the flow.

Learn to stand up for what you think is right and have your say.

Are you going to be a winner today, or a loser?

Skidding with anti-skid

Early in the morning, one of my Director called me on the phone, requesting me to transport a colleague to the LCCT.

Being still sleepy and groggy, I agreed.

The moment I reached the office, my Director handed me the keys to his Mitsubishi Triton, since it was under the company’s properties.

Knowing I can handle a 4x4, I took it and fetched my colleague all the way to LCCT.

It was a wet morning. It had rained non-stop since I left my house.

Me and my colleague joked around in the car and it seemed like it would be a good day.

After dropping my colleague at the entrance of LCCT, I made my way back to the office. I chose to cut off at the Kesas exit instead of ending up at Shah Alam.

Upon going down the ramp, I slowed the pick-up down to about 40plus km/h as the Triton is quite tall.

I thought it would be good enough seeing as the Triton is equipped with ABS, Brake Force Distribution and Anti-Skid technology. But I left the gear in 2x4 instead of 4x4 seeing as I was just on a normal road.

As I was halfway down and the road in front wide open and empty, I didn’t bother accelerating or braking and just let the car slide down to the end of the ramp before accelerating into the next highway.

Halfway down, the Triton suddenly started skidding from the back tyres and took me by surprise. The resulting skid spun my car forward. Here’s some illustrations of the incident. Excuse my simple illustrations though:

The car spun twice and hit the side divider, smashing the front of the Triton. After the car hit the divider, it bounced back and pointed my car TOWARDS traffic. Lucky for me, no cars were heading down during that time.

I quickly drove the car towards the side of the road to assess the damage.

The damage was terrible.

The driver-side headlight shattered, the driver-side fog light broke, the bumper dented, the driver-side chassis dented and the side body pushed inwards.

Some minor parts of the engine area suffered damages as well.

I immediately assessed the damages and called my Director to report the situation.

To my surprise, my Director didn’t blow his top but instead, calmly asked me if I was okay and if the car can still get me back to the office.

A few seconds after assessing everything, another 2 cars coming down slammed into the divider as well. A Vios and a Civic.

The Vios suffered the same fate as the Triton but the Civic escaped with  some scratches and a small dent to his side and front grille.

Seeing that the guy in the Vios had difficulty getting down, I ran across to try to get him out as he was still on the fast lane.

He managed to get out of his car but I can see he was still in shock from the incident.

We talked a little and I even helped him photograph his damage and emailed it to him.

Upon returning back to the office, my Director assessed the damage and only asked me to take it to the repair shop to get it fixed. He even tried calming me down incase I was in shock from the incident. He actually even gave me permission to go off a little earlier to get some rest at home. But I declined.

Freak accident. Lucky I wasn’t in my Myvi. It would have flipped instead of just spinning off.

15? 16? 175? 195? 45? 55?

If you’re thinking those figures are someone’s physical measurements, you’re wrong.

They’re actually tyre profile figures.

Yes, tyres.

In a few days time, I’m planning to change to a new set of rims and tyres for my trusty Myvi.

No, it’s not just for aesthetic sake. Everything I install into my car has it’s purpose. No sense wasting money in buying things that look nice but doesn’t work.

Right now, I’m looking at the stability of my ride. The front and back Ultra Racing struts that I’ve installed are great but the overall stiffness of my car is still not there.

I need more support from the tyres. The rims are just consolations.

I’m planning on changing to wider, lower profile tyres. It may affect ride comfort slightly but provides much better stability on the road.

Most Malaysian car enthusiasts know that the stock Myvi is quite tall for its size and isn’t wide enough to compensate its stability. So, if you’re travelling on an open highway and a cross wind hits your side, the Myvi will be sailing to wherever the wind is blowing.

The rest of the car is quite good. Decent torque, exterior and interior design and decent top speed. It can really use that extra stability. Any faster than 180km/h and your car will really lift off the ground.

So, seeing as this car is my bread and butter, it would be wise to invest in making this car as reliable as possible.

But being quite a rookie at this whole tyre and rim thing, I would need some advise from those of you who have experience in this.

I had some advises around me to get a 15” upgrade with profiles of 195/55 Bridgestones. The current tyre profile on a stock Myvi is a 14” at 175/45 Silverstone. Too narrow and hardly enough grip on a bend.

Plus, how does it connect to the rim sizes? I need education on this.

Also, some suggestions on what type of rims to change to. My Myvi is metallic black in colour:

Multi spoke rims in dark colour to complement the black,

dark silver,

silvers,

whites to contrast my black,

or something in gold?

Useful opinions are great. It would help me speed up my decisions instead of standing for hours at the shop, looking over all the rims and the dealer chasing me out for standing there too long.

All are nice. But unfortunately, I don’t have much to spare in constantly changing til I get one that suites my taste.

Next time, I’ll be looking at the absorbers and springs. It will cost a rough estimate of RM2000 for those.

Then again, a PS3 sounds good as well.

Temptations and low budgets. Sigh.