How Volvo and Jean-Claude Van Damme Performed Split Stunt Video?

How Volvo and Jean-Claude Van Damme performed split stunt? I am sure you watched the video of Van Damme splits his legs between two Volvo trucks. It looks really scary. However, Volvo’s new steering wheel technology called Dynamic Steering system enables to control the vehicle extremely precise even on extreme conditions. And this is proofed by Van Damme, hopefully he didn’t fall off.

So how they did the split stunt video? There is a behind scenes footage and they explain the system and how safe it is for Van Damme. And Volvo emphasises that it will be performed by professional drivers without any automatic systems involved. 

However, I am not that sure about that. Because, the split stunt is extremely risky performance and anything can go wrong. There should be a failsafe system to prevent any accident. For instance, the Volvo trucks may be equipped with a GPS system that controls steering wheel or guide drivers but we are talking about centimetres here. If the truck steers 5-cm more than it should, there will be a catastrophe. So there is another solution, the white lines!

If you noticed, the Volvo trucks are driving through white lines. My idea for the Volvo split stunt video is, the Volvo trucks were following the white lines. It is possible! I am sure you heard the lane assist system, they follow the lines on the road and warns you if you are leaving your lane. I assume, Volvo trucks were fitted with this system and steering wheels were controlled by the software. And pre-programmed to departure for a certain distance from the other truck. 

Basically, cameras under the wing mirrors scan the white road lines and departure to second white line. Software can do this and it is very simple nowadays. As the Volvo Dynamic Steering system is computer controlled, so it is not impossible to perform.

Photos Credits

Volvo Trucks

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Mercedes Benz Nail Polish

Mercedes Benz; the automotive icon, one of the founder of internal combustion engine and now sells nail polish on their merchandise store. Let’s go rewind, Mercedes Benz sells nail polish for women. I heard this from a fashion blogger yesterday and I thought she confused with the brand name. But she was right, Mercedes Benz offers state-of-art nail polish set with three different colours (jupiter red, monolith grey metallic, south sea blue metallic).

Really, who is going to buy a nail polish set from Mercedes Benz merchandise store? I mean this is not Ferrari Store or Porsche Design and they both don’t offer nail polish. So, no one else should offer.

In terms of consumption perspective, the brand should create a tendency to conduct the consumption behaviour. And Mercedes Benz brand does not match well with nail polish market. This is the consequence of extreme brand extension strategy.

I am not a fan of Mercedes Benz but their cars are excellent in terms of engineering. I never criticise commitment to technology. And I am sure many people share the same thoughts.

But nail polish and Mercedes Benz merchandise, this will not work that well sorry. I think many people never heard of this merchandise store and people who heard about it, may not be interested to buy a three different colours nail polish.

So, after this post if you have the motivation to have a buy set of nail polish from Mercedes here is the link, Mercedes Benz Germany Merchandise Store :)

Volvo did the same couple of years ago, here is my post.

Pictures' Copyrights

Mercedes

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Rewind YouTube Style 2012 with Psy and Carly Rae Jepsen

Gangnam Style, I think Psy made the 2012 as the most YouTube involved year of the human history. Thanks to his music video Gangnam Style, which is watched nearly One Billion times changed everything. Basically, each one person out of six on this planet watched Gangnam Style at least once. (However, Microsoft Word still assumes that I made typo by writing Gangam and underlines it as red.)

And YouTube recently made a video called Rewind YouTube Style 2012. It is the mix of Psy Gangnam Style and Carly Rae Jepsen Call Me Maybe songs. And some of the other YouTube sensations were also featured on this video.

And Mercedes SLK! Come Kia and Hyundai, you missed the train on the Gangnam Style video but this time your cars should be have been there! I was expecting to Kia but end up with Mercedes. And this makes the Mercedes SLK as the year 2012’s YouTube sensations as well.

And there is one quite old Volvo S60 is hidden left of the Mercedes SLK.

Pictures' Copyright

Mercedes

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Saab, Volvo, Nokia and IKEA: Management Issues

For many years, we adore the Scandinavian brands. They always had something different than the others! Volvo was the safest car, Saab's technology was transferred from aerospace, and Nokia was the stylish. As you might noticed, I used past tense! Because, they all left in the past. Now Volvo is not the safest car manufacturer, fortunately every brand is safe. Saab has nothing to offer, except being Saab. Nokia is having last good days in mobile phones business and being beaten up by just one product.

Now what is next? Ikea! Just remember the last decades and how all those Scandinavian brands were glamour. But now, they lost all their fame. Okay, Volvo is getting better but there is a huge gap between the other brands and Volvo.

From all these brands, I noticed one thing in common. Scandinavian firms are really innovative and good at design, but ignore the whole world! Your brands may be the best, but we are not living in your region. So, we do not think like you. And Scandinavian firms are not that good at predicting the future and upcoming trends. I think in one decade Ikea can face the similar problems like Nokia and others. I hope they will realize what is going wrong and before things go wrong.

Pictures' Copyrights
EuroNCAP, IKEA

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

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Volvo S60's lovely merchandises

I was planning to write something else for today but my blogger friend Sila sent me something which I could not avoid it :) Actually this is the most remarkable thing about a car :)

It was about Volvo and its lunatic level of brand extensions strategy. Sila is a fashion blogger and she has nothing to do with cars except driving them! As you can imagine the situation is so serious.

Volvo's new "eye-catching" model S60 packed with attitude and driving pleasure (I don't know how you pack a car with attitude and driving pleasure) is offering nail polishes. You didn't read wrong, Volvo S60 has nail polishes as a brand extension strategy and it can be bought from Volvo's merchandise store.

It offers three differently pleasuring colours! 612 R-Design Red, 481 Cosmic White, 704 Vibrant Copper, 487 Ember Black. And they are being offered by a very reasonable price of €18 (£15) but the red is cheaper €10 (£8)!

I don’t have any knowledge on nail polish colour codes but as far as I understood these codes are the Volvo S60's colour codes. And from the press release I can understand that, when you buy a Volvo S60 with these colours you are supposed to buy the same colour nail polish!

"Volvo is probably the first car maker in the world to market nail polish. We wanted to do something a bit different, with a touch of humour and a little unexpected twist for the launch of the new car, while at the same time offering our female target group an unusual product," says Yvonne Hall Tobiasson, Merchandise & Licensing manager at Volvo Cars' Global Marketing department

From this point of view, I can clearly say one thing. Volvo S60 is the best female car of the century :)

By offering nail polish a part of brand extension strategy, Volvo ticked the female section in S60's gender section and definitely avoided many male customers. I really wonder the male "potential" customers’ interpretation of these products :) When you check their website for S60, it is full of testosterone hormone :)

And from old days, Volvo S60 had a very impressive show to press and with these colours we can polish it better :)

White, Copper and Black

Red

Pictures' and Video's Copyrights
Volvo, Wired

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Volvo vs. Mercedes

I didn’t hear from Volvo for long time, it wasn’t that popular on news. The last news from Volvo was it is owned by Chinese company and we all left Volvo on that topic. And now the Chinese officially owns the Volvo Cars. And they have a very big target! Mercedes S Class.

Volvo is planning to introduce a competitor to Mercedes S Class! No, this is not a joke. Volvo is planning on a car which can compete with Mercedes S Class, BMW 7 Series and Audi A8. As far as I see, Volvo’s new management is aware of automotive business or trying to do something impossible. In other words, what Volvo is planning to do is like dying your hair to blonde and applying to Victoria’s Secret to replace Heidi Klum with you. Because, you both have blonde hair! As usual, this is impossible. Everyone knows this. But Volvo doesn’t know it.

The basic of automotive; you cannot introduce a vehicle which is positioned above the brand’s segmentation. Basically, VW cannot sell Phaëton because VW is a car brand with reasonable price with good quality and Phaëton is a luxury car aiming for Mercedes S Class. The product and the brand are contradicting in this condition. This also happened with Peugeot 607 which was trying to compete with Mercedes E Class. Renault Safrane failed also! Also Mercedes failed with Maybach!

There are many cases like this, if an automotive brand introduces a vehicle which is beyond its environment, it fails! Volvo S90 or S (I want to compete with S Class) will fail! Okay, in Chinese market some people will buy it but just some people. Still in China, people respect German cars more than domestic ones!

Will Volvo fail in future with this pointless car? Definitely YES! And they will lose lots of money and we can imagine the rest. Instead of introducing something with high risk, just upgrade the quality of your current products. They are not bad but they are not that good either!

There is one rule in automotive, you cannot compete with Mercedes S Class! BMW 7 Series still struggling but it is much better, Audi A8 has long time eat S Class’s market share. Jaguar XJ and Maserati Quattroporte are offering something different and they are not aiming to be the leader of this segment. So, this game is over for your Volvo.

Pictures' Copyright

Mercedes, Audi, BMW, Volvo, Heidi Klum Website

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No Comment: New Volvo S60 crashed during demo !

New Volvo S60 has a new safety system which fully stops the car under the speeds of 35 km/h. This system was demonstrated to press but it did not work.

Picture are taken from;

Volvo and Wired Websites

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Secret of Diesel

Diesel engine became popular and eye catching like the contemporary designers in a department store. Nearly every car and many brands are offering diesel engine even in their cabrio models, actually Porsche has a diesel SUV! Life without diesel is nearly impossible and hopefully they don't make black smoke and annoying noise anymore :)

However diesel engines have a secret! Diesel engine has a different principle than the petrol engine. Diesel doesn't need to have a sparkplug to make combustion. In petrol engines, sparkplug is exploding the petrol and rotates the cranks shaft. But in diesel, just a high compression is enough to make that explosion. Why I am telling all these thing? Because, diesel has a really unknown disadvantage!

Diesel engine can run without diesel fuel! Yes, that's true. Even the engine oil is enough to run diesel engine. Actually, many people knew this. However the critical point is; any mistake made while filling the engine oil ends up cracking down the engine. If the engine oil is more than necessary, engine will start to run by itself and you cannot control the engine. Unless you put into gear and screw gearbox or until the engine oil finishes! Therefore, diesel engine should have a emergency button to release engine oil in these conditions. Don't think that, this does not happen that often but it happens and when it happens you really don't want to see that! Also, worn out diesel engines have that risk. As the engine oil is involved in combustion, after sometime engine can run by engine oil, you can watch it on video below.

Recently Volvo announced that, some of their diesel engine is accelerating without throttle response. This means, engine oil is on the game! I think Volvo knew this also. Believe this is worse than Toyota's throttle problem. Once the engine starts to run with oil, that's game over!

Pictures are taken from;

Volvo Website

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Future of luxury cars!

Automotive industry started to downsize the engines to reduce emissions levels and offer more fuel economy. Ten year ago, a Mercedes S Class with 2,2lt diesel engine would sound funny and there would not be any demand to it. Also a BMW 3 Series with 1,3lt engine would also sound interesting! Or 1,4lt engine produces 170 horsepower would be impossible. Now all of these things are possible and in near future we will have chance to buy 3 Series with 1,3lt turbo engine, 2,2lt diesel S Class and smaller engines will be revealed.

A few days ago Volvo announced the revised 1,6lt diesel engine for S80 and V70. For those of you who don't know what S80 and V70 are; S80 is the flagship of Volvo and trying to be a competitor for Mercedes E Class, BMW 5 Series and Audi A6. I know it is quite hard to play in that market but Volvo is positioned as cheap and reliable alternative! However, this new 1,6lt diesel engine might be an opportunity for Volvo. This new diesel engine produced 109 horsepower and 240 nm of torque. These figures are the same figures which can found in other Volvo models. I guess, Volvo revised the transmission ratios to use this engine. However, this weak engine would struggle to move Volvo S80 even the revised transmission won't avoid being very slow.

Highway driving consumption will be 4,0lt of diesel as Volvo announced and this car will have a range of 1750km. Sounds interesting but without automatic transmission, there won't be a huge rush to this car. However, in emerging markets with high import taxes this car will be loved!

Future of E and F segment cars will be combination of; Small and Powerful Diesel Engine or Petrol Engine and Automatic Gearbox. E Segment is Mercedes E Class, BMW 5 Series and competitors. F Segment is Mercedes S Class, BMW7 Series and competitors. The one who offers the pocket size engine first will catch the most!

Don't be shocked when you see a BMW 7 Series with 1,3lt turbo petrol engine :)

Pictures are from;

Volvo Website

BMW Website

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New Volvo S60 Coming Soon from China!

Volvo is bought by Chinese company Geely in recent weeks. And Volvo released the pictures of new S60 model. I could say, this is one of the best looking car on market now! I am really looking forward to see the real one. I never felt like this for a Volvo.

I don't know what to say! Ford, why did you wait so long for this car? You could have introduced new S60 before everything turned into chaos.

We could see that, Volvo still has potential and Ford could have benefited from this. As they ignored to revise Volvo's range for long time, Volvo could not have enough money to survive.

Chinese Volvo S60 will be very popular car and like Jaguar XF, there will be more demand than expected. I think Ford is very good at selling brands which have high potentials hidden. An advise to Geely, try to introduce new S80, as soon as possible! Like, Geneva Motor Show on march ;)

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Volvo 中国商品 (Made in China)

Todya Ford announced their plan to sell Volvo to Chineese car manufacturer Geely. This news was expecting to be announced for long time. For nearly three years, Ford was willing to sell Volvo but always denied this fact. As the financial pressure increased this strategy started to rise. As expected a Chineese manufacturer would buy the Volvo, this business deal between Ford and Geely is a milestone for Chinese automotive industry. By this way, Chinese jumped to luxury car maket with Volvo brand. Even though, Volvo is suffering serious problem in competition and could not keep up with Germans, Geely's motivation to enter luxury market will play significant role in following years.

However; there is a very important fact, does Geely has enough know-how to compete with Germans? This is one of the main reason why Volvo lost its competition power as the Germans revealed much better cars with same safety features. Therefore, Geely should also find very intelligent engineers to increase the competition power Volvo brand.

As everyone is concerning, what will happen to platform sharing with Ford? Ford Focus and Volvo S40 are basically same cars and this means, Geely also bought the some of the Ford's know-how!!!

Volvo promises future and right decisions would help to go back to good old days :)

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