Aquila Online

Suzuki or Kawasaki

// December 7th, 2007 // 10 Comments » // Cars & Bikes, General

Decisions, decisions…. What’s it gonna be? Any suggestions?

Eish She’s Broken

// July 7th, 2007 // 5 Comments » // Cars & Bikes

The most unfortunate thing happened recently. I was driving to Secunda a while ago and was merrily cruising along when a truck transporting sand came from the opposite direction.

As we passed each other a clump of sand shot off the side of the truck and hit the front end of my grille. The knock wasn’t very loud and at the time I was quite unhappy that it struck me, but I didn’t think it damaged anything.

Until I reached my destination that is. Turns out that it took a chunk off the badge and the accentuating metal piece holding it to the grille also flew off. The badge and grille never stood a chance.

More pictures over at my Volvo Flickr set.

Turns out this little incident will cost me R1,700 to replace the full grille and badge unit. Eish.

Axle Grease Oil Slick

// March 20th, 2007 // 2 Comments » // Cars & Bikes, Media

Yep, that’s what happens if you go over to the Hammer & Coop site and enter Aquila Online into the action name generator.

The mini-site for Mini Cooper (mini-site geddit?? hehe) features the new 2007 USA Mini Cooper as the automotive sidekick for a “man with no past” who kinda resembles someone that’s been mashed up between Corne & Twakkie meets Starsky and Hutch.  Nice ‘tache there bro.

Unfortunately there’s not much in terms of interactive elements, in fact, the only real interactive mini-game is the action name generator.   The rest of the site is focused on a series of webisodes staring the talking Mini Cooper S (Coop) and our unlikely hero, Jim Turtledove (Hammer).

Funny…but little longevity.

Worth a visit if you’ve got nothing else to do, like me.

30-second trailer below courtesy of YouTube.

Volvo C30 Launch Disappointing

// March 18th, 2007 // 15 Comments » // Cars & Bikes, Photos

After waxing lyrical about the pending launch of the Volvo C30, the actual event was a huge disappointment.

Maybe I’ve been too involved in organising events like these that I may be a bit too critical, but my fellow attendees (Tripeak and Gino) seem to share the same sentiments as me, the launch was a royal flop.

Taking a step back though, we saw the first glimpse of the new Volvo C30 at Auto Africa back in October 2006. Even then, the car was unvailed with little pomp and circumstance.

I mentioned before, that the Volvo has its eye on the Audi A3, BMW 1 Series, Alfa 147, Mini and the VW Golf GTi market, but it’s going to be a tough sell. We were discussing that at the launch, who is the car targeted at? This wasn’t at all clear from the launch.

I would have liked to see the online campaign translate back to the launch event itself, with the same kind of audio-visual experience. It wouldn’t have cost much for Volvo’s marketing team to give each of the attendees a little goodie bag with the elements to “unbox your Volvo” (go check out the online campaign, it’s really cool).

Also, the crowd who attended the event seemed to translate back to the old fogey image the brand is actually trying to get away from. There were way too many older people and not enough of the young, up-and-coming 20-somethings who I believe they should be aiming for. The hip, unconventional people who know what they want and where they are going and don’t want to conform to the norm.

I came away from the launch with mixed feelings. I love my car and what the Volvo brand could/should be doing, but the launch itself disappointed immensely.

I’m worried that the experience of the launch could have put a damper on potential buyers and lovers of the brand.

Check out the rest of the pictures over at my Flickr Set.

Volvo C30 Launches Tonight

// March 16th, 2007 // 6 Comments » // Cars & Bikes

Gino Cosme over at Cosmedia wrote the post I was planning on doing tonight after the local launch of the Volvo C30.

Rather than rambling on about it too much, rather go read his throughts on the Volvo C30 web teaser campaign.

Briefly though, I have to agree with Gino that this is a brilliant campaign. However, I think they could have included more interactive elements i.e. commenting, asking questions etc. to get that two-way communication between Volvo SA and its target market going.

Tonight, sees the launch of the Volvo C30 in the trendy Design Quarter in Fourways. It’s also an opportunity to meet up with Tripeak and Gino to compare notes and photos of this little beauty.

Watch this space for more…