If Porsche Bangladesh would import this
By
Gokhra
Porsche has been
announcing in the papers to hire people for its first ever showroom
in Bangladesh. That alone is enough to set car lovers salivary glands
shifting into overdrive. Never mind whether you can buy ione. Just
seeing it through the display window is enough to set the heart racing.
Possible best seler will be the Cayenne SUV as most rich Bangladeshis
seem to have an affinity for such environmet unfriendly but awesome
vehicles. The BMW X5 sold like hot cakes but now its old news. The
Cayenne is the new got-to-have vehicle.
The
Cayenne is pretty impressive on its own with huge amounts huge stable
loads of horses tucked under the bonnet. Average engine sizes give
out average horsepower ratings of about 250 plus. Now imagine taking
an already awesome car and squeezing out even more juice. Well, don't
imagine just read on. Rinspeed is one of the foremost Porsche tuners.
They take 'ordinary' Porsches and tuned the into monsters. That's
exactly what happened with this vehicle.
Enter the 'Chopster,'
a very special type of SUV. Given that goal the designers of both
companies came up with a vehicle whose ambitious exterior immediately
commands respect. To emphasize its 'I'll-bite-you' look the design
team chopped the roof of the original vehicle by a whopping 70 mm
and added muscular fender flares.
The massive wedge-shaped
side skirts visually reemphasize the SUV's urge to storm forward.
The newly designed front of the vehicle is similarly impressive: The
beefy front bumper features large air inlets for the intercoolers,
an unmistakable sign for the enormous demands for air made by the
600-hp turbocharged engine. Just compare that to your everyday Corolla
with about 90 bhp and you get the idea. Copare that to the Mclaren
F1s 637 bhp and now its more into perspective. This car is gonna rip
the roads.
Befitting
its character the Chopster runs on enormous 23-inch wheels, which
were custom-cast by 'CW Fahrzeugtechnik Vertriebs GmbH.' Low-profile
Continental SportContact UHP tires in size 315/25 provide the necessary
grip. With that amount of power and grip afforded by the vast tires
expect 0-100 kmph times of under 5 seconds. Add to that the high ground
clearance this will eat up the potholed Bangladeshi roads.
The luxurious
yet sporty look continues in the design of the interior. Each of the
four occupants has his own separate sport seat ' either by Cobra Seats
or by Recaro. As typical with the amount of money you will be paying
its got on-board infotainment system with Blaupunkt monitors, internet
connectivity, DVD player and Sony PS2 game console.
'Customers can
individualize the interior of their Chopster to suit their personal
preferences,' explains Frank Rinderknecht. The 600-hp Chopster will
be built in an exclusive small-series production run starting in April
of 2005. It can be ordered from Rinspeed AG starting at about 325,000
euros. That roughly equates to a whopping 26650000 taka. Ouch! Of
course, it doesn't seem likely that this car will be brought over
here but oh what a car.
Tech
info gathered from Car&Driver
Sci-Zone
By
Tawsif
Dawdling around
Katabon a couple of weeks ago, I came across a bull-dog that looked
exactly like I do. I was so fascinated by the utter resemblance that
I decided to take it home. I told my mom about the deja-vu at dinner
that night, sanguinely hoping that somewhere along the lines she'd
be remotely impressed by the fact that I looked like a canine and
grant me the permission of fostering my look-alike. Instead, she gave
a sweet smile and replied that if I ever brought a dog home, she'd
take it in and throw me out instead, because there's room for only
one pet in the family!
The conversation
would have ended there, but my younger sister insisted on adopting
a dog too. Hence, my parents had to join hands into a canine-bashing
lecture which, when summarized, more or less implied the fact that
pet animals are nothing but mere nuisance, and my little sib didn't
exactly need a dog because she had an elder brother to play with!
If my mom wasn't
as good with her targets, or if her forks were at least made of plastic,
I'd have retorted. Instead, I bit my tongue and told myself that being
compared to an animal isn't such a bad thing after all. Come to think
about it, animals can be intelligent as too.
Take <>Gerarda
Prevostiana<> for example. These cheeky serpents are bringing
table manners into the reptile world. Instead of swallowing the entire
prey which ends up giving rise to a protruding tummy, thereby compromising
the hotness-factor in front of the opposite sex, a Prevostiana grabs
its dinner (usually a soft-shelled crab) in its hose-like body, and
proceeds to rip off its legs. Then it goes to dine, using the torn
parts. Nothing short of Byronic elegance!
One of these days,
science is going to bring about a major change in the English vocabulary.
Think twice before calling someone bird-brained, because birds are
definitely more intelligent than they appear. Take Alex for example.
This African Grey
Parrot, along with his other friends, is studying avian intelligence!
In other words, it can name more than forty objects and understand
the concept of 'same' and 'different', 'absence', 'quantity' and 'size'.
"Alex has mastered tasks once thought to be beyond the capacity
of all but humans or certain non-human primates," says Dr. Irene
Pepperberg of the University of Arizona.
Crows, dumb as
they look, don't lag behind either. This one time I saw a crow crash-landing
into the syrup-bowl in one of the "Jilapi" stores in Malibagh.
It was instantly thrown out of the bowl and into the streets. Instead
of just lying on the street and dying out of shame, the crow eventually
got up and started walking across the road rather gallantly- syrup
dripping and all. The entire traffic had to wait while the crow crossed
the road!
If
the syrup wasn't boiling, I'd have definitely presumed that the crash-landing
was premeditated. You can't blame me; crows have shown signs of intelligence
at times and again.
Crows on the remote
Pacific island of New Caledonia, for example, have learnt a skill
which, people once thought, only primates could master, i.e. the use
of tools. These birds use long, specially chosen twigs to spear the
plump grubs that hide underneath the bark of rotting trees.
Ravens are smart
too. They're intelligent enough to solve puzzles such as untying knots,
and determining how to steal fish by diving at different angles...
Scientists believe
that pack animals have a better sense of consciousness than the rest.
Chimps and elephants are aware of death, both mourning when a family
member dies. Elephants even linger over the bones of long-dead relatives,
lost in the philosophy of life and death. Dolphins, on the other hand,
exhibit a keen awareness of status and identity of other dolphins
in the society.
A dolphin understands
its relationship with other members of its group, and behaves accordingly.
Dolphins even recognize their image in the mirror. No wonder they
appear so often in showbiz.
Summing it up,
animals are wee bit smarter than we give them credit for. A chimpanzee
might look silly jumping from one tree to another, but it at least
knows what life is about.
Had the chimps
run for the election in our country, I'd have voted for them instead.
Signing out for
this week.
