Tag: cars

Cars, Cars, Cars in February

Though a lot of cars come and go through the Kim household due to my work, I don’t usually blog about them. February so far has been an interesting car month though – interesting enough that I thought I might share a few here.

2010 marks the 25th year of AutoPacific being in business…and I have been at the company a total of 9 of those years! So, we put on a birthday party of sorts at the office, inviting clients, potential clients, and even some members of the media to showcase our unique office that doubles as a consumer research space. I even gave two out of the seven speeches, the first about the state of the auto industry today and over the next five years, and the second about what the car companies can learn from non-automotive consumer brands like Apple, Target, and H&M.

We asked several car companies for some cool cars to use as props throughout our office, and Ford, Hyundai, and Kia happily obliged with some of their latest and greatest. As they arrived a few days prior to the event, I even took a couple of them home.

Let’s start with the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500! Some of you probably remember the awe-inspiring Shelby Mustangs from the 60s. This new one hearkens back to those, but also packs a 5.4L supercharged V8 with…wait for it…540HP. Yes, 540HP!


Pretty mean looking car, isn’t it?


I couldn’t get enough of that color too, called Grabber Blue.


I love these vertically striped seats with the horizontal stitching.

The car was so powerful that I wasn’t even really able to experience the car’s full acceleration until I went out to a deserted road (not many of those in Southern California) out in the foothills of Irvine. The car is scary fast, able to lay rubber even shifting up to third gear. When starting off from a stop, you actually have to be gentle with the gas pedal or else the back wheels will start spinning and losing traction due to insane power. Yes, this is probably the most powerful car I have ever driven, and I’ve driven a lot!


I leave you with this shot of the gauges. Yes, red, white, and blue. It’s so campy given what the car is that you gotta love it.

And now for something completely and totally different, the Ford Fiesta. The car has been on sale in Europe since 2008, but now that Ford is integrating its global operations and because there is now a bigger focus on fuel efficiency in America, Americans will finally start having more access to the very cool smaller Fords available in Europe. The Fiesta goes on sale this summer, but Ford lent us a European-spec model (complete with metric calibrated gauges and German language in the readouts) for the event. That was truly exciting for yours truly as many of you know that fun little cars are my favorite (my own car is a Mini Cooper).


I just absolutely love the styling. It’s dynamic, exciting, and fun – certainly a lot more interesting to look at than most entry level cars.


The American version will have a slightly different front end than seen here, with a smaller grille and a slightly longer bumper for better protection in parking lot speed impacts.

I’ll leave you with a few shots of the setup of the event, which went great!


The Fiesta and Transit Connect (another European Ford that has made its way across the pond to America) in the research showroom space.


We even got the all-new 2011 Hyundai Sonata to display on our turntable! Yes, it’s a Hyundai. Great looking, isn’t it? You’ll be seeing a lot of these on the roads soon.


All the tables and chairs, along with the stage and screen where we gave our speeches. We had nearly 100 people come! As a bonus, lunch was catered by the In and Out burger truck. Yum!

Another Sunday Funday in Los Angeles

This past Sunday we headed up to Van Nuys for the annual Best of France and Italy car show. This show was basically Ed’s dream – it featured French and Italian cars mostly from the 1950s-1980s. It was not your typical car show! I have learned quite a bit through osmosis just by being with Ed for so long – so I must admit, I really enjoyed it too! Many of the cars you just wouldn’t see here in the States, and we were impressed by the variety and condition of the ones on display!


This little number was one of our favorites – a 70s model Citroen DS21! Ed and & I LOVE these cars. They look so space-age and so unique. Just a bonus that this car was red!

The DS models have these really cool lights on the back and just don’t look like any other car! We’d love to own one, but they are really tough to find stateside, and they are waaay out of the price range!

This is a fun 60s era ad for the Citroen – so space-age!
citroen2

Some other favorites were this Caravelle Convertible …

And, who could forget the Renault “Le Car”?!?

Then, as if Ed’s morning couldn’t get any better, he unexpectedly spotted his favorite car ever – an East German communist Trabant! These are extremely rare and even more random – this car had Hungarian plates!

Ed stands happily by the Trabi

After leaving Van Nuys, we decided to do something completely different – we headed down to Culver City to see Sanrio’s Three Apples art exhibition, which was celebrating 35 years of Hello Kitty!

three_apples_top

Hello Kitty was such a staple for girls in my generation growing up … the pencil cases, stickers, lip gloss, you name it – every little girl coveted their Hello Kitty stuff, and she’s certainly maintained her staying power through the ages! Three Apples was cool because in addition to showcasing TONS of HK merchandise throughout the years, they also had a lot of favorite low-brow artists showing work inspired by HK. The space was impressive and we had an awesome time!

Here are a few favorite art pieces from the show:

(L): Mermaid w/Hello Kitty by Gary Baseman, (R): Awesome Velvet Hello Kitty Elvis!


Tara McPherson’s HK piece


Loved the colors and “classical” twist to this one.


Crazy Lady Gaga Hello Kitty Portraits!


A darker side to HK

As I mentioned earlier, the show also did an entire product retrospective. All the stuff they had there was amazing! Our pictures don’t really do it justice – there were entire rooms just filled to the brim with stuff – but here are a few:

Notice the dress made of stuffed HK’s!


An obsolete “plug in” phone I would’ve loved as a kid! And, lots of HK sweet treats.

Just when our day couldn’t have possibly gotten more fun, we had dinner plans with our dear friends Britt & Wade. Wade was making us dinner – and when he cooks, its ALWAYS amazing! He ended up serving a beautiful salad and the tastiest beef stew we’d ever had!

Salad with greens, avocado, yellow and red tomatoes, onions and toasted walnuts = YUM!


An amazing Beef Stew to welcome the fall – who cares if it was 90 degrees that day? :)

And that concludes another Sunday Fun Day!

Ed on Fox Business News – successfully handles a curve ball!

Ed was asked to appear on Fox Business news again to talk about Ford and future automotive trends this morning. However, once he got to the studio, all Brian Sullivan wanted to talk about were union negotiations with Ford!

It’s a good thing that husband of mine is so smart, maybe he was not as prepared to talk about that, but he did just great! As Ed said this morning after the interview was over, “That’s show biz!”

Check out the video here:

If you have trouble with the video player above, click this link to watch on the Fox Business news site.

Southwest Roadtrip Day 2: Route 66 Roadside Towns

Rte66pstcrd01

Today’s leg of our trip focused on all things Route 66! There was plenty to see and do – and we couldn’t wait to hit the road!

But, first things first – keeping in line with our kitschy theme, we had to hit up The Pioneer in Laughlin for breakfast before starting our day.  What can we say – the Pioneer was a goldmine of kitsch, and we thoroughly enjoyed the Old West theme!

In Ed’s words, “When you’re in a gamblin’ kind of place, you gotta have a shrimp cocktail, no matter how early it is” – so here is my happy guy with his Shrimp Cocktail:

I chose to stick with coffee and pancakes. :)

Route 66 Roadside Town #1: OATMAN

Oatman is quite a place – and yes, you read it right – the sign mentions Wild Burros. As you walk through the main drag in town, there are tons of donkeys just cruising around unattended! They are descendants of all the pack animals brought to the tiny town by miners back in the day. You can buy a bag of carrots to feed them for $1, so of course we did!

Another big claim to fame for the town is the Oatman Hotel – where Clark Gable & Carole Lombard spent their honeymoon! The actual suite is undergoing renovations, but here is the entrance:

Oatman is a cute little old west town, and it was fun to take a few shots of all the old signage.

After leaving Oatman, we made a few stops along the way to take in the scenery.  A man was even nice enough to take a picture of the two of us!  Here are a few shots, but man – it really doesn’t do things justice!  One thing we both agreed on was that it was during this stretch of the road that definitely seemed the loneliest, and definitely most forgotten …


We even drove by the infamous Cool Springs Mobil Gas Station, which is an icon of stops along The Mother Road:

Route 66 Roadside Town #2: KINGMAN
We got into Kingman, which is one of the better known roadside towns. It was home of the Route 66 Museum, so we had to make a stop inside to check out all the memorabilia.

Also in Kingman is Mr. D’z Route 66 Diner. We were holding out for another place to actually eat at which was a few towns away (more on that later!), so we settled on a milkshake at Mr. D’z.

We didn’t have too much time in Kingman, because we wanted to make sure to get to the Grand Canyon Cavern in time to check it out before it closed. On the way, we passed through a TON of open road, some Hualapai Indian Territory, and the teeny tiny town of Peach Springs.

Route 66 Roadside Attraction: GRAND CANYON CAVERN & CAVERN INN

The Cavern was so awesome! We were glad to make it in time for the last tour of the day (they don’t let you go down there unattended). We took an elevator 21 stories down underneath the ground with 4 others and our tour guide, Johnny. Tough to capture – but here we are in the Cavern!

Also on site is a ton of other fun stuff, like dinosaurs & the groovy old sign at the Inn!

Route 66 Roadside Town #3: SELIGMAN

We hightailed it out of the Cavern as soon as the tour ended en route to Seligman – where the fictional town of Radiator Springs (from the Pixar movie Cars) is basically inspired from. There were promises of a pretty extensive (and wacky) mega gift store, as well as the diner we’d really been holding out for all day – The Snow Cap Drive-In. We are bummed to report the Snow Cap was CLOSED by the time we got there! However, they had lots of pictures of cars just like the ones in the movie Cars – so these pics are for you, Facey family! :)
Look at the eyes they put in the windows:

We were really disappointed, the Snow Cap just seemed like the ultimate place to stop … SO old school!

They’re most famous for their “Dead Chicken” – and we didn’t get to find out what it was all about!

Route 66 Roadside Town #4: WILLIAMS
By the time we got to Williams, the sun had already gone down – but this was the most bustling of the roadside towns. Don’t get me wrong – its still teeny & quaint – but the lights were on, the Old West vibe was strong, and there were lots of people milling around. This is the Route 66 town before we left the Mother Road to head to the Grand Canyon.

To finally quench our ultimate Route 66 diner quest, we had a bite at Cruiser’s Cafe 66.

That wraps things up for day 2. We gotta get some rest – we’re planning a big day of hiking at the Grand Canyon. We both can’t wait to see it, we’re getting up early!