SEMA Show 2010: Sneak Preview

Yes. We are still alive. We are back from our overseas trip and brought along a ton of material — SEMA Show 2010, Lucas Oil Off Road Race, OPTIMA Ultimate Street Car Invitational, West Coast Customs (Los Angeles) — which wants to get chopped. Aside from that we visited the Las Vegas Motor Speedway for some oval track sports and dragracing and finally paid Rinkens a visit. 

I bet it will not get boring the next days. Stay tuned.

SEMA Show 2010. We will be there.

Soon we will be back on the road again—we will visit the SEMA Show in Las Vegas. Also we will attend the Lucas Oil Off Road Racing. Yepp. We are hooked on desert racing.

Just shoot us an e-mail if you want to meet us!

Jo Fischer, Heliumcowboy

Jo Fischer, one of my favorite photographers, will present his work at my favorite gallery, Heliumcowboy Artspace.

Via Heliumcowboy Artspace: "We are happy to present Jo Fisher's project "Character" which is the first solo exhibition of the Berlin based photographer in Hamburg. Jo Fischer's photography can be considered as a medium of interpretation and expression, and not as a mere documentary record of visual facts.

Reminding on Richard Avedons "In the American West", Fischer's project "Character" may be understood as a platform of a disremembered society. The photographer himself becomes the mediator between marginal people and the masses, as he depicts people whose normality seems unreal to most of us.

Legend has it that Jo Fischer has decided to become a photographer by drawing lots. After a long and turbulent career in the music business he bought his first camera on e-bay in 2007. In a short period of time he became one of the much asked for commercial photographers up to date, and he assembled a striking body of work including straight-forward portraits which become timeless in black and white.

"Herr Fischer bittet zu Tisch" is another running project by Jo Fischer, one which is known to a wider public. In only a few seconds he depicts his vis-à-vis bringing to view the unique character of the person he just met. 1000 people are invited to sit on his table: the housewife, the children from next door, the rock musician or the burlesque dancer. Altogether they reflect a combination of honesty and a zest of the wicked – a portrait of urban society.

"Character" is as well a hommage to the people: to the people living on the margine."

P.S.: I am still absolutely stoked about the portraits of B.J. Baldwin, Ken Block and Jesse James Jo Fischer did for us during the Baja 300 Powerdays ...

Never Mind the Motorkultur

When we went to Las Vegas earlier this year, we met Klaus Rasch. Klaus is the mastermind behind race-deZert.com und introduced us to the wide world of Desert Racing. In the meantime Klaus became a very good friend and we often share thoughts about the differences between "Motorkultur" in Germany and "Motor Culture" in the States. It is good to discuss those topics with somebody who understands how both cultures are working. 

Klaus just passed me some thoughts he hacked together on his iPad last night, after he just had survived the Oktoberfest. I think his thoughts are definitely worth to share, although they are truly some kind of alarmingly for us Germans. We invented Motorkultur, but act kinda philistine and passionless. Hmm, I think Germany is well known for its cultural background, but what happened to its wheeled culture? Is it too dirty? Embarrassing? Traumatized? It is time for a change. Life is too short for ugly cars.

Enough said. Let me hand over to Klaus.

There is no motor culture in Germany. Obviously a bolt and somewhat false statement but let me explain my thought process further.

I live in Southern California for the last 17 years but grew up in Germany. I'm currently spending the last three weeks in the old Vaterland and get reminded of one of the reasons I left this place nearly two decades ago. The automobile.

Gas costs 3-4 times more then currently in the US. Car registration is based on it environmental impact. The TÜV makes it impossible to keep an older car in operation. It appears that 98% of all cars on the streets are built within the last ten years. New exotic sports cars are rare on the streets. Speed limits are set unrealistically low at some places.

How is all this possible when after all Germany invented the car, they make without a doubt the best cars money can buy? Every major innovation in the automotive world can be traced back to right here. How can they come up with all this go-fast stuff but not have it embraced by it's citizens. Yes the Autobahn in principle has no speed limit and it's perfectly legal to open up going 250km/h in between all the 80km/h construction zones. Yes the roads are far smoother then many roads I have seen all over the planet but how come so many people drive such boring cars?

Kids don't tune their cars and meet every Friday in every city for a little show & tell street racing? There are no local drag strips or local stock car race tracks where you can race on a budget. Nobody lifts their trucks or lowers their sports car nor installs the latest in wheels, paints or decals their car in search of the latest craze. Cars are small 1.x liter 4 cylinder machines mixed up with the 3.0TDI station wagon in between. All bone stock, silver or black and look like they are fresh of the showroom floor. Boring.

I know that there is car culture. I read the German car blogs and magazines. Car culture is not dead it's just hidden, not out in the open. What I like to see is American muscle cars, fast Audi, BMW and Porsche products on the street all the time utilizing all gears, spinning wheels and making noise. Low riders scraping the pavement, Asian imports fast and furious style and Italian sports cars cruising the streets.

There is little public imagination in car culture but then those few that do express their love for the car in public do it well. A revolution is needed that makes me believe that "Fahrvergnügen" is truly a German word.

We have seen the paradise: Contidrom

The German "Youngtimer" Rallye Creme21 brought us today to the test track Contidrom (Continental). We have to come back. Under all circumstances.

Hit one of the images to see more pictures.

Hamburger Stadtpark-Revival: Pictures

After our first coming out in Winsen, the traditional "Stadtpark-Rennen" was the next date on our "GT Scout"-tour. If you ever wanted to know what Maserati, Porsche, Alfa Romeo, Mercedes-Benz or Volkswagen paint our town red, you should visit the Hamburg Stadtpark-Revival. For more classic car beauties visit our gallery. 

Roadrunner's Paradise & Race 61: Photo Sneak Preview

Do I really need to say I want that Mercedes Benz Adenauer 300 Hot Rod? What a bad*ss built — it'll be gorgeous once it's finished!

Just click on one of the images above to start a Flickr slideshow. A full "Roadrunner's Paradise & Race 61" article will follow asap.

General Tire Mint 400: Motor Maniacs Hardcopy

Yep. Sometimes we still write and work on dead trees. Thanks for uploading the images to Flickr, Mr. Pixeleye! Just in case you missed it: Here are some more "General Tire Mint 400"-articles/galleries. And some videos. Enjoy.

Get yourself a copy of Motor Maniacs!

Jo Fischer: Ford GT

Jo Fischer just passed me some beautiful shots he did last week. Damn, Jo, you should shoot more cars! Btw, I love your snpahot of Mrs. Fuel ...

SEO, SMO and Motorkultur. Err ... what?

As I mentioned before, I've just fallen in love with Tumblr. I know—under SEO (Search Engine Optimization) aspects it isn't really clever to share your stuff on several platforms. But as we all just learned: SEO isn't everything, in lieu thereof SMO (Social Media Optimization) becomes more and more important. Especially if you deal with a special interest topic like car passion.

Imho SMO is CRUCIAL if you want to reach the right people. To speak from my own experience: I follow a lot of "trust agents". Which means: I read their blogs and follow their Twitter. In short: Really awesome and inspiring stuff isn't brought to me by search engines. And as my partner Chris philosophizes: "It can't be the interest of search engines that everyone out there is writing/producing search engine "correct". It must be more in everyone's interest that search engines digg really inspiring stuff—which is seldom SEO correctly produced. Or—btw—don't you ever have had that creeping feeling that you only find stuff via search engines which is produced by companies with big SEO budgets? Well, I do. Every day.

Any way. Buzzword bingo switched off. I just changed the template on my Tumblr, and with that new (free!) layout comes a tiny archive button. This function was new to me, but what I found behind that link really blew my mind. It's a thumbnail mosaic of my tumblered articles. Ok, the pages takes a moment to get loaded, but it's a nice little feature which I would love to have on my other—really content heavy—site(s) as well. It just gives you an intutive approach to content, which I actually miss on several sites. Especially when I am en tour with my iPad, where a "nornal" hypertext navigation hits the wall.

Maybe this doesn't impress you, but it exactly matches with some thoughts about an all-embracing Chromjuwelen.com weight-loss program. Also it solves another problem: Thumbnails are language independent, so you don't have to read my German School English any longer ...