Atle

Happy New Year all! Can't wait until spring, nowadays its around minus 5-10 degrees Celcius here in Oslo, really icy and no way of taking any Esprit out from any garage. Had dinner at my brothers, with family and kids and all; I drove. Returned home 10-ish to put the 1,5-year old to bed - he was blasted. At midnight we met with the neighbours outside for fireworks. Suddenly all of them, including 6 visiting Icelanders, were sitting in our living room with the table full of bottles and glasses including aquavit. What started as a quiet event ended as a real blast at about 5 am. New Year's day was gone! ps jeez, Kimbers - one just does not hit girls or anybody for that matter. Any chance of finding the culprit and putting (hitting) him right?

Merry Christmas to all! With three kids, there is no peace but their faces when opening presents (mostly cars ha-ha)- are priceless..

Hi Mike, way cool presents! Any pics /scans of the "stuff"? Where to get them? Under the Christmas tree was for our part the Autoarts' 1:18 and 1:43 Esprit V8s -respectively, direct from Speednation (or Santa Clause for the six-year-old). The gleam in his eyes when he opened the package realizinig he would get the big one and dad the small one (I already have the big one) was priceless... Big one was missing a mirror - guess it willl be sorted out...

Nerdy hobbies? Well - building models is nerdy in itself but I also keep my used airplane boarding cards. That's pretty nerdy. Dunno how it started but once you get going its hard to stop. Must have about 800 now, since 1995. Buggers, sometimes you don't get a boarding card now, all electronic... I also log my flights on FlightMemory.com. Started to input my flight history from my job travel accounts and known vacations, but gave up after a while. There must be better ways of killing time!

Well, I was there after they had cleared out the cargo - only 1500 tons of smelly mud left in the corners - but I saw some pics. They were incredible. Cars in heaps, crushed against the bulkheads with bulldozers sitting on top of them. Not much left! There is a video on youtube, but I have not found the best one. Then there is a photo of me on the bridge, discussing the dinner menu with my wife.... Then I spotted a this hub-cap left in the mud, with a very, mysteriously familiar design...

Holy smoke, some ordeal. And I thought my brother was struggling because of his au-pair freaking out. I guess when you run a place like that (very nice by the way) sooner or later you will encounter "funny people"...more of them around than you think. Maybe you could eventually write a book? Fawlty Towers-type stories... Good luck!

Good event Kimbers, great that your company invests in such social events. For the first time in my 7 years in current company, we had to pay for our own after-dinner drinks at the Christmas party. Not that we are doing bad, it was out of solidarity - show-time. Eventually got pissed anyway, stumbling home at 6 am. But that is another matter...

The wreck of the Ro-Ro vessel Repubblica di Genova, taken in Antwerp harbour November last year after they righted her. She capsized fully loaded in port, laying on her side for 9 months full of shovel trucks, Toyotas, tractors and every other thing - before she was pulled upright with cables. You can see the waterline on the superstructure (and crane arm), what part stuck out of the water. Did a due-diligence inspection for a potential buyer, one of the weirdest jobs in my life. Next one is the radar mast on the Royal Caribbean 90,000-tonner Radiance of the Seas (with shipyard plaque) WOW, WITH THIS POST I GOT MY "T" in Esprit!

Don't worry, it's not your memory. It's the Big Part and Tool Eating Monster (the big one) striking again the moment you turn your head away. I know him very well. Pour pig's blood in a circle around where you are working, and strew a really cheapo-supermarket-housewife type set of tools outside the ring. You can supplement with some honkey parts such as cup-holders, steering wheel wraps, plastic chrome wheel-bolt covers, fuzzy dice and the like. It hates that. Hear that helps.

Bear in mind that green cars are politically very correct these days. Even the entire US automobile industry is clinging to the hope that green cars will save their business - and the planet come to think of it. Go green!

As a naval architect, I declare the only mechanical thing that should be assigned a gender is a ship. A ship is a "she", a one-of a kind. A car is an "it". Mass-produced. Feel pervo calling my car a "she"..... or giving it a nick-name...

Gosh I am a lucky guy (ref. Dave)! When I found this Esprit for sale in Zurich my wife, 10 days due to give birth, smiled and suggested why don't I just fly down tomorrow and check it out? "I will be fine", she said. "Still time, and if anything should happen in the meantime, my sister will help out!" Who can match that?

Happy birthday Owen, have a good one! Belated happy birthday too Travis, hope you had a good one!

My wife took my newly born son on his first flight, from Oslo to Nice 6 years ago. Suddenly she recognises a face at the departure gate and it is........Roger himself! So my son's first flying experience was with James Bond. Another story goes at work when a colleague went down for breakfast at this horribly crowded hotel restaurant in London. After filling his tray he spots a single vacant seat at a table for two, the other seat occupied by an elderly distinguished man. Asking if the place is free, the man politely affirms. Colleague sits down and starts eating - and small-talking. About the crowd, the weather, work, the train strike, whatever. After a while colleague stretches out his hand and says "Well, nice talking to you. I am Knut from Norway". Table mate shakes his hand and replies "And I am Roger Moore". He didn't see it!

I have had more or less noticeable cars since the early eighties, but compared to the Spitfire, the Beta Coupe and the Alfa GTV6 driving off in the Esprit opens the door into a sort of second life. I am too grey haired to pretend I am Bond but say (without further comparison), Karl Lagerfeld or even Martin Scorsese would fit with some imagination. Like a celebrity, people keep looking at you all the time. Yeah, have some sort of poser addiction with a well recognised tendency to play up some performance at annual office parties etc. I try to stop but the force is too strong. Anyway, our offices are located in a remote park. About 2000 people there so we have an employee afternoon bus service to the city every 20 minutes I think. Not that I have come as far as jotting down the departure times to sync it with my end of work drive home (I do not take the bus) - since we have flexible work-hours I leave at my own convenience. Now it so happens that this bus stop is right outside the tunnel up from the underground parking area. So, if I "hit" the right time, 60 apathetic colleagues are lined up waiting for the bus to go home just when I roar out of the tunnel, close the pop-ups, turn on the curb lights and blow-off-swoosh past awarding the audience a 270-degree show-off. Their stares, and heads turning with the car - it's just such a hell of a kick every time! I can't help awarding myself a smirky smile seeing them off in the rear view mirror... I am a ham, for sure.

Hi Adrian, This summer I spotted a dusty, white G Turbo 1:18 in the bottom corner in the window display of that hysterical Tabac in Monaco, on the corner of Rue Princesse-Caroline and Boulevard Albert 1, that have 2 million model cars for sale only in the window. I wanted it, Ohhhh yeah but the price---a good 70 pounds it was. Walked over to the Ferrari (Formula 1) store instead, leaving one hour later 300 Euros lighter with the terribly expensive 1:18 Ayrton Senna 1985 Lotus/Renault, another insane-priced red/gold Lotus Formula 1 from the sixties in 1:24 (forget which one right now), a pair of mind-boggling, highway-robbery costing fingerless Ferrari driving gloves, a pair of well, reasonable T-shirts and a poster...might as well have blown a few more bob on the white G-car... Autoart maybe?

Yeah, Jerry - the money schmacked into my bank account only yesterday...including 20 pounds in lost interest! Good to have some extra these days, even though I spent it on a new camera...OK I can sell it... My neighbours are from Iceland and they keep popping in asking for a cup of sugar, yesterday's newspaper and a pair of old woolen socks now that the winter is here... No, just kidding - they are doing good and the Icelanders will get back on their feet. In fact I just saw him (my neighbour) on Top Gear an hour ago - he was the one who provided the trucks, pulled out Jeremy and James every now and then and set fire to the tire on the North Pole run. It was quite tough he told me. Very nice guy, fixed my de-mobilized alarm in minus 5 last winter, in 5 minutes. Feeling the recession more and more here, yet another crisis package from the government today. Not affected much myself so far - and some oil helps.

Beautiful wheels and the colour, my wife would kill for a car in that orange. I like it too.... ps really cool plates - unless you live in Norway where "spy" means "throw-up". Ooops....

Well, went there today to sort things out, they would still not admit anything and argued there are a multitude of S-line design suppliers that all may be classified as "replicas", and the fact that they are made in Italy and were available in the warehouse bartered for Audi quality. I still do not fully believe them! So what did it end with? A full set of brand new top-notch 5-spoke Cantonas at no cost, 4 new Continental winter tires at net cost readily fitted on car at no expense; and an apologetic handshake. End of story. Not bad, how many car dealers would do that?

Hi Andy, We have the same legislation here, and with Audi being a premium market supplier heavy on the imagery (Forspr

Hi all, March 2004 I became the proud owner of a brand new Audi A4 1,8QT with a lot of extras. Did the usual wheeling and dealing including trading in my 2 year-old 2,0, agreeing on a good price. Car cost me 73,000 USD or 56,000 Euro.... All well, great car. So last spring, running on winter tires, I ran into a hole and dented my front right alloy inner rim. Air started leaking out but spring was coming anyway so I changed to my summer wheels. Now 2 weeks ago it was time to change to winter wheels again, so I popped down to the local Audi dealer in Asker (and they are big) to ask if they could fix the wheel or if I needed to replace it. These are RS4 9-spoke alloys. Cool. I thought. The Audi parts guy checked out the wheel serial number, grunted and suddenly started to pound the keyboard on his computer, shuffling through brochures, running around the office, went up to sales and returned: "Uh... these wheels are replicas.... They are not on the list of approved Audi parts, and the Italian supplier went broke three years ago! These cost a fraction of the originals. You are entitled to a full set of real wheels, however since you bought it at the Oslo centre you have to go there and take it from there. Had you bought your car with us instead of Oslo, you would have avoided this!" Flabbergasted, I drove to Oslo and got hold of the original salesman, now promoted to sales manager. He pushed it away to the parts manager, claiming he had no idea of such matters and there were 5 suppliers of RS4 wheels so.... 5 days go by, discussions back and forth by phone and e-mail but no formal statement answering my question: Is Asker centre right? Are they un-authorized replicas? Finally parts manager calls me and proudly announces: We have sourced one identical wheel for you, in Denmark, they are hard to find. We have also sourced a tyre with the old pattern you have. Hurrah. I call the Audi import manager, whom I know, asking for help. Even he is wishy-washy and promises to call the sales manager. But he reassures, if you hear nothing from me its OK. The wheels can impossibly be pirate wheels... So I accept the replacement, getting a 35% discount on new tyre and rim. So I fit the wheel and guess what? Yeah, its not the same as the other three. Looks like it from a distance, but the design is subtly different and has a different hub cap. So today I called back to Audi with the bad news. And then he starts, "remember you got a good deal on the wheels when you bought the car"....I could not believe my ears! Of course they are cheap! My contract says S4 wheels and what the h**** do i care what internal accounting you guys do? What a jerk! The new wheel is an original factory wheel, I have now found out because the hub cap is different. The replica ones I have are cheapo chrome plastic as opposed to brushed stainless steel. So jerk calls me back one hour later and asks, OK.....you get 4 new wheels....what design would you like?" Getting there, but still no admitting and he still asks me to pay the difference between the "real S4" at 35% and the new design - for one wheel. What do you think? Is this a scandal or not? Should I pay, should I advise the motor magazines and the consumer organization? Who else out there have bought 80,000 dollar cars with fake wheels? Comes with the story, my old 2,0 was delivered with the wrong rims, and my new quattro was delivered with the wrong specifications and summer wheels - I had to complain and defend my contract....but failed at the time to identify the fakes. Long link below to the wheels I got from Audi.... http://images.google.no/imgres?imgurl=http...l%3Dno%26sa%3DN

Hah! I have the exact same car and the models but not the house! I may be a freak but I felt jealous....

Hahahaha, LOL. Yeah, its not like Shanghai here! But we all have wooden houses and - well drink a lot at celebrations. Uh, at any weekend really... Bunch of drunks if you ask me. Personally I think the ban is sad. But you should see how the Vigeland Park looked like New Years Day. Holy Moses, like Saipan January 1945. Nobody tidies up. I will miss the spectacle this New Year. We will have to compensate by drinking more, until we hallusinate fireworks. On another note, the police are experiencing a massive loss of constables. Tonight for example, there are four policemen on duty in the capital, however one had to stay at home with sick child and another had to go on a trainee course. So we can fire away with little chance of going to jail. Happy Guy Fawkes BTW!

42. Got the tetra, tesla, teta, tet a tet wrong and the Indian and one Chinese wrong. Been to China 3 times this year, India last year. Shame on me.