if the Obama Presidential Limo is “The Beast”, would our beloved (i mean that with all the sarcasm in the world) president’s Mercedes S-Class be “the Punso”? heehee

since it’s been quite obvious that, like most grown-up boys, i’m into cars. and having seen Obama’s new limo, i got interested with our own president’s state car. From the picture i grabbed from the net, it looks like a S-Class Mercedes Benz.

according to our favorite online source, Wiki, the government keeps 2 Merc state cars — both bulletproof.  but on Wiki, they’re both W221 models. from the picture above, it’s just a W140. hmmm… so which one is it, really? anyone working at the Office of the President?

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Update: from a Youtube clip of the President in a convoy, looks like she keeps one of each. one W221, and one W140.

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whichever it is, if you want to feel like a President but can’t get a limo, get a S-Class Merc. *cough* Mercedes-Benz Philippines, are you listening? this isn’t a paid post so… *wink, wink* i’d like mine black, too. LOL

i was hoping to add to the more ‘famous’ list of legendary supercar makers those that have been developed only in recent history. plus these supercar companies make really really pretty supercars, by my standards. the Pagani Zonda, the Ascari supercars and the Koenigsegg from Sweden. because of their relative ‘youth’ to the great Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Porsche brands, they are also making names for themselves. car logo history is thus difficult to obtain from such young car makers. probably will just interpret them according to what i see and read. save for the Koenigsegg, though.

Koenigsegg

The company was started by Christian von Koenigsegg in 1993. the logo for the company (or emblem) is based upon the original ancient Coat of Arms of the medieval Koenigsegg family from Schwaben, Germany. The original is a single field of golden diamonds surrounded by ornaments. Christian von Koenigsegg, founder of Koenigsegg Automotive – can trace his lineage back to the late 12th century when his ancestors became Knights of the German / Roman Empire.

When the logotype of Koenigsegg was created, it was quite clearly a derivation of the original family coat of arms. At the top end you recognize a crowning ornament – a golden monogram on blue – representing the letters KCC for Koenigsegg CC. The Koenigsegg logotype was created by Jacob Låftman, a highly talented grafic designer who unfortunately passed away in 2002. Jacob was a close friend of Christian von Koenigsegg’s; the two grew up in the same neighbourhood and went to school together. (from the Koenigsegg website)

However, the logo that appears on every Koenigsegg supercar is more than the company emblem. they have placed on it a phantom or ghost in honor of its workers’ history.

Fighter Jet Squadron nr. 1 of the Swedish Air Force was based at the present Koenigsegg HQ before being closed down by the government in 2003. Their symbol, a ghost within a circle, now adorns the CCR and all future extreme versions of the Koenigsegg CC. This is both to honour the predecessors and to show that the Koenigsegg crew feels they continue the legacy of Squadron nr 1. Several of Koenigsegg’s employees previously worked with the maintenance and repairs of the fighter jets.

Pagani

I can’t seem to find any history or explanation of the Pagani’s emblem. My guess is that it traces it to its beginnings from its Horacio Pagani, an Argentina-born Italian, who formerly managed Lamborghini’s composite department and founded Pagani Composite Research in 1988. In 1991, he established another company because of the great demand for his design, engineering, and prototyping services. hence, the quite ‘industrial’ feel of the emblem (with rivets i suppose) plus the design of the script of P of Pagani.

Ascari

One of the nicest-looking cars are made by Ascari (by my standards at least). I love how the KZ1 looks, sophisticated, civilized but has a secret to tell. I also like how their emblem/logo looks like. Unfortunately, once again, there isn’t much on the internet on its design history and origin. All I could see from their website is their goal of providing “a feeling of freedom in which the race and “relax duality” of life is integrated into a personal, exclusive and exciting experience.”

well are those flames or badges? so they come as a pair, is this the ‘duality’ their talking about? hmmm… i can only guess…

to continue my going ga-ga over cars and batman, here’s my second post on the batmobile. browsing through the web, it seems that there are a bunch of batmobiles that came about in the history of batman, whether in comics, animated series or in movies. so just to be clear, i’m going to show batmobiles that have been actually driven by people — working batmobiles. of course, the gadgets and gizmos may not.

the next batmobile made it to two films: Batman and Batman Returns (i think this was with Michael Keaton). anyway, this is one of the more gorgeous batmobiles ever. look at it!

isn’t that beautiful?! it’s already beautiful showing it off but it’s better if you show off INSIDE it, right? want to own one? gawd i’m so~ jealous of this guy:

konting historya muna: This was the first car (i think) after the longest time to be manufactured as a real cat that was to be driven by an actor. this made its debut in the 1989 Batman movie and made a reprise in Batman Returns both starring Michael Keaton.

The batmobile was designed by Anton Furst, the production designer for Gotham City in the movie. He built the car by joining two Impala chassis together. the car was powered by a Chevrolet V8 engine which made a huge gurgling noise but was music when revved. The body was fabricated, and the whole thing rides on a set of Mickey Thompson racing tires on custom wheels.

the bat-mask was gone entirely from this new design, which had been pretty prevalent in the comics. in its place, the retracted nose shows a large jet turbine intake with mandible-like front fenders on each side. cold air intakes for the afterburner were mounted ahead of the rear fenders. the rear of the car had a rounded, heavy look that was influenced by cars of the 1930s, set between a pair of relatively short sculpted fins. and good lighting and a little steam/smoke to set the mood and you get something intimidatingly inviting and astonishing!

with my current obsession for car logos and anything mostly car-related, i’ve come to the conclusion that this is my way of letting out my frustration of not having a car to drive. at first i just dreamed of riding bikes since it’s more economical, healthy, and environment friendly.

and then two years ago i got my student driver permit. and eventually ended up having my non-professional driver’s license. and a whole lot has changed since then. specially when i was allowed to drive alone, by myself, going around the streets then go to the mall and come back home. aaaaahhhh… te freedom of driving!

now i dream of owning my own car. and sa ngayon, napupusuan ko na ang Hyundai Getz. i don’t know if it’s the best car. frankly, i don’t care… i just like it. i feel like i fell in love with it already — the way it looks and the image that it has formed in my mind. it would be my ideal car. it would be MY car.

but what would be my real dream car? i guess i answered that already in a previous post. now it’s going to be about my dream fantasy car. and no other car has ever caught my fancy as great as the Batmobile!

the batmobile has evolved throughout the decades. but i would like to consider first the ‘original’ or classic 1966 batman batmobile. through google, i’ve found this history about it… that it was originally a concept car — a car not meant for production. It was the Ford 1955 Lincoln Futura.

The Futura was designed by Bill Schmidt after his encounter with a shark during a scuba-diving trip to the oceans. He visibly influenced the car to look more of a marine animal rather than a flying mammal — with fins and its large, flat front grille and hooded headlamps.

too bad the conservative people of the 60s could not appreciate the beauty of this new concept car. it was too harsh, rash and really unpleasantly intimidating. and so, the poor thing was disowned and handed over to George Barris. whether he had foresight of the car or not, he gladly accepted it since he was soon commissioned to create the batmobile for ABC’s Batman series. “But because the show was about to go into production, he had only three weeks to build it. He quickly realized it didn’t take much work to modify the Futura for the part. While retaining the chassis and the basic shape of the car, Barris overhauled the nose and tail with numerous bat like shapes and references. Barris in ‘66 would assemble 3 more Batmobiles using bodies based on the prototype mold and built on a production car chassis.”

and the legend was born. this is the most familiar batmobile to everyone i know. my mum and dad would definitely quickly identify it and be in much awe seeing it. imagine pulling out of your garage and, for everyone to see, you drive out with batman’s batmobile. just like these folks:

ahhhhhh…

boredom in the office hits a median during fridays. it’s a mix of getting things done for the weekend and realizing you’ve actually done nothing this whole week and cramming everything you can do before everything piles up. at syempre, dahil nagmamaganda ako, itutuloy ko na yung seryeng sinimulan ko…

Alfa Romeo

There is only one thing consistently said about its logo: it’s from Milan. legends surround the logo. however, i’m sticking to the more ’symbolic’ and not much into the story really. A.L.F.A. comes from the Italian Anomina Lombarda Fabrica Automobili (Lombarda car making company) and the original badge has ALFA written over the top of the badge and Milano underneath separated by Savoy dynasty knots. The logo is split in half and contains the emblems of Alfa’s hometown Milan and the one of the great Milanese ‘Visconti’ family.

On the left is the red cross on a white background, which refers back to the days of the First Crusade, when many Milanese soldiers were amongst the Lombards who followed Giovanni of Rho to the Holy Land. The red cross was their symbol, whilst the white background symbolised the white shirts they were forced to wear under their armour to protect them from the fierce Palestinian sun.

In 1920, five years after the take over by Nicola Romeo in December 1915 the badge changed to read Alfa Romeo above with Milano across the bottom. When the famous P2 Grand Prix cars won the first ever World Championship in 1925, the badge was encircled with thick silver laurel leaves in embossed metalwork. Over the years, these leaves lost their prominence and became less luxuriant, and when the monarchy was abolished and Italy became a republic, the Savoy dynasty knot was replaced by two wavy lines. It was not until 1972 that Milano was dropped with the opening of the factory in Pomigliano d’Arco.

BMW

Bayerische Motoren Werke (Bavarian Motor Company) AG is the full name of the BM. Its logo represents its beginnings. The company was established in 1913 and based in Munich, Germany. It started out as an aero engine manufacturer, hence the company logo. The logo comprised of four quadrants of alternating white and blue color. It is a stylized representation of an airplane propeller spinning against the clear blue sky. It reflects the origins of BMW as a maker of military aircraft engines during WWI. Also, white and blue are the traditional colors of Bavaria.

Audi

This one has a particularly beautiful history. The Audi badge the ‘Four Rings’ is the emblem of one of the oldest car manufacturers in Germany. It symbolises the 1932 merger of the four independent motor-vehicle manufacturers: Audi, DKW, Horch and Wanderer. Together with the NSU brand, which joined in 1969, these companies are the roots of the present-day AUDI AG. This badge was used, however, only on Auto Union racing cars in that period while the member companies used their own names and emblems. The technological development became more and more concentrated and some Audi models were propelled by Horch or Wanderer built engines.

After the war the Audi name – which is Latin for “Hear!” – disappeared, but was revived in 1965, using the four rings as a logo. Also, the name is sort of a pun on ‘hoerch’, German for ‘hear’, name of one of the founders. The company itself is more than a century old.

The four rings in the logo have nothing to do with the Olympic rings.

heto ngayon ang malaking problema: na-tag ako… oo, na-tag ako. at since may pagka-newbie ako sa kaguluhang tinatawag na pagbblog eh wala ako pagpapasahan ng tag na ito. pero i might as well post what was asked of me:

i try to keep my desktop neat and tidy. and that’s the wonder of that little bar at the top does. it’s Aquadock and i downloaded it for free! yes, free! mas prefer ko siya over Quicklauch buttons sa taskbar ng Windows. cool din kasi parang sa Mac eh. plus i have Yahoo Widgets installed. i tried gunning for the Vista look using skins and wallpapers from InterfaceLIFT. oo, XP pa din ang operating system ko.   at dahil nga gumagamit ako ng skins, minsan eh nag-a-ala Mac ang laptop ko. ehehehe.. (madami naman akong naloloko)

the easy part is done. ngayon, sino ha-hunting-in ko para ma-tag? tsk, anak ng tinapang bangus talaga…

*krus, dasal* sana sumagot sila…

chigo, iska, jam at kate (since nagbblog ka na ulit sa multiply!)

just to mention it, nahihiya ako kay miss toni. ahehe… avid fan pero di kami close.

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My Desktop Free View Instruction

A. Upon receiving this tag, immediately perform a screen capture of your desktop. It is best that no icons be deleted before the screen capture so as to add to the element of fun.

You can do a screen capture by: [1] Going to your desktop and pressing the Print Scrn key (located on the right side of the F12 key). [2] Open a graphics program (like Picture Manager, Paint, or Photoshop) and do a Paste (CTRL + V). [3] If you wish, you can “edit” the image, before saving it.

B. Post the picture in your blog. You can also give a short explanation on the look of your desktop just below it if you want. You can explain why you preferred such look or why is it full of icons. Things like that.

C. Tag five of your friends and ask them to give you a Free View of their desktop as well.

D. Add your name to this list of Free Viewers with a link pointing directly to your Desktop Free View post to promote it to succeeding participants.

iRonnie
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rose
beng
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jeprocks
jon
vegan momma
r playground
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dicey
thomas
kk
aunt jackie
emmy rose
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AZRAEL
M A R U
JeanGrey
Kengkay
Kiko
TinTin
jojitah

bursky

with my addiction with Top Gear episodes, i just became curious about the logos of European (mostly, the Italian) cars. With this curiosity, Wikipedia became my primary source. So para lang mai-share ko ito…

What are the most famous of the supercars? I’ll be taking three: Porsche, Ferrari, and Lamborghini.

Lamborghini

The Lamborghini logo sports the raging bull or Taurus — Ferruccio Lamborghini’s birth sign. Most of the company’s cars have been named after famous fighting bulls (oddly though, most have been Spanish bulls, NOT Italian). It also shows his passion for bullfighting.

Stories say that once upon a time, Lamborghini went to see Enzo Ferrari to have his Ferrari 250’s clutch troubles. Lamborghini owned a tractor factory then and so Ferrari shooed him away telling him he wasn’t in a position to criticize a racing car.  Outraged, Lamborghini set of to make Ferraris better than a Ferrari.

Ferrari

The prancing horse or Cavallino Rampante is Ferrari’s adopted logo and is usually with the letters S F (for Scuderia Ferrari), with three stripes of green, white and red (the Italian national colors) at the top. Ferrari has used the cavallino rampante on official company stationery since 1929.

One story says that on June 17, 1923, Enzo Ferrari won a race at the Savio track in Ravenna, and there he met the Countess Paolina, mother of Count Francesco Baracca, a legendary asso (ace) of the Italian air force during World War I, who painted it on the side of his planes. The Countess asked that he use the horse on his cars, suggesting that it would grant him good luck.

The original “prancing horse” on Baracca’s airplane was painted in red on a white cloud-like shape, but Ferrari chose to have the horse in black (as it had been painted as a sign of grief on Baracca’s squadron planes after the pilot was KIA) and he added a canary yellow background as this is the color of the city of Modena, his birthplace. It is worth noting that the Ferrari horse was, from the very beginning, markedly different from the Baracca horse in most details, the most noticeable being the tail that in the original Baracca version was pointing downward.

A similar black horse on a yellow shield is the Coat of Arms of the German city of Stuttgart. This horse motif comes from the origins of the city’s name: it comes from Stutengarten, an ancient form of the modern German word Gestüt, which translates into English as stud farm and into Italian as scuderia.

and the mention of Stuttgard brings us to our last car logo for this entry, the Porsche

The emblem was initially put together out of elements from the history of Württemberg-Baden, as the political region was still called at that time: Stylised antlers and the state colours of red and black. This was intended as a clear commitment to Swabia, the Porsche family’s second home.

The centre of the crest shows a black horse rampant, an expression both of forward thrusting power and a derivation of the city seal. For Stuttgart, established in 950 as the stud farm of ‘stuotgarten’, has had horses in its coat of arms in varying designs since the 14th century. Through the use of the steed and the word ‘Stuttgart’, the team at Porsche were giving a clear sign of the bond they felt with the town in which they were based. The crest has the outer contours of a shield, while the word Porsche as the overarching signature, the roof over the whole, as it were, crowns the highly effective composition.

not that i own a car. i just want one.

as a big kid earning for himself, namimili-mili na rin ako ng mga bagay na gusto ko. siguro eh habang binata pa at walang responsibilidad eh i-eenjoy ko muna ang pag-gasta ng sarili kong pera.

i’ve been a sugar daddy for over a year and i guess now that i’m “retired” eh nagkaroon ng certain effect saken ang paghawak ng pera. di ako sanay na mahawakan ng buo ang aking suweldo. i mean i was used to eating SkyFlakes and coffee for lunch para lang makapagtabi para sa aking sinusustentuhan. and then nung tapos na ang lahat, medyo nalulula ako sa pera sa kamay ko. i have this compulsion to spend, spend, spend until i’m left with money to barely last me til next payday. at yun ang mahirap.

di ako ‘big spender’ at lalong di kami mayaman. di rin naman ako takot o galit sa pera kaya inaalis ko to sa ATM ko whenever i get the chance. it’s just that after almost 2 years of working, i have finally reaped the fruits of hour after hour staring blankly at monitors, managing excel files, racking my brain and squeezing it for every last juice of information.

nakakapaglaway na ako sa mga gadgets and gears for the boys. dati i was preoccupied with thinking how i could save up para may ibibigay akong pera when she needed it. at ngayon eh nare-realize ko na yes, i am a yuppy. the typical yuppy who wants to buy every new gadget that comes out, listen to his iPod and play games on his PC and buy new clothes every paydad and go out on weekends, spend on drinks, coffee and cab fares.

or drive home (sober) in my Aston Martin V8.

yeah, i’m still a boy in (fat) man’s body.