Ambitious But Rubbish

My Italian is probably terrible so apologies for that, but the first batch of the new Fiat 500s due to arrive in Canada is already spoken for, as they sold out in less than 12 hours since midnight yesterday. The car is staggeringly popular in Europe but it remains to be seen whether it will [...]

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I took a bunch of photos and videos at the Grand Prix last weekend and figured they might be of interest. I didn’t have good seats for photo purposes so there isn’t that much, but here are the locations where they can be viewed. Videos: http://www.dailymotion.com/clevershark/ Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/clevershark/GPC2010

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Tonight’s show started with two hot hatchbacks — the Focus RS and the Renault Megane R26R — and entertaining as it was I couldn’t help but think, where are the hot hatches in North America? I won’t ask where the Megane is — Renault hasn’t been in North America since the 80s. But what’s Ford’s [...]

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Imagine for a moment, if you will, that you’re in Montreal and fancy seeing the expensive, touristic area of Mont-Tremblant. Naturally you’d just take the 15 North and keep going until the exit to Montée Ryan, which leads to the village. I mean, it’s a no-brainer, right? Well, not exactly. Not if you actually like [...]

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This is a copy of a letter to the editor I sent to the Montreal Gazette this morning. Hello there. I, like thousands of others, rely on Montreal roads to get to work and back, and I have a few question and comments to people who decide what gets done when, and also those who [...]

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One of the things I find a bit funny in writing about these promotional events is that by the time I’ve done my write-up the event is long finished, so whoever reads it can’t take advantage of it. Frankly by about 2 weeks before the event even takes place all spots are eagerly snatched by [...]

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Here’s an interesting little comparison which is just about all I can think about until Wednesday morning. In the market for a new car I’ve narrowed things down to 2 candidates: an Audi A4 Quattro and a BMW 325i. They’re both 2006s, both have similar mileage, both have the sport and premium packages, a manual [...]

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A little over a month ago I started a little experiment to find out what was happening with Canadian car prices, which remain hugely inflated compared to prices for the same make & model cars in the US. All but one of the cars on the reviewed list were imported from either Europe or Japan, [...]

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One of my recent pet peeves has been the discrepancy between car prices in Canada compared to the situation in the USA. It seems an especially good subject to write about these days, as the Loonie has (for all intents and purposes) reached parity with the US dollar. While this has provided much of Canada [...]

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Living in Canada has its advantages. For one thing I don’t have to worry about having to declare bankruptcy if I get hit by a bus while crossing the street or fall ill; I have decent health insurance which is paid by my (fairly high) taxes. That being said, can anyone explain why buying a [...]

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