The good oil: Salute to Commodore

Salute to Commodore The Holden Commodore is about to celebrate its 21st birthday. And the word on the street is that buyers might be invited to a few "key to the door" parties. The first VB Commodore sedan was unveiled on October 26, 1978. Since then 1.65 million have been built, in 10 models and many variations. They continue to come off Holden's production line in South Australia at a rate of 477 a day. Commodore engines have ranged from the four-cylinder 1.9-litre powerplant in the 1980 VC to the 5.7-litre Gen III V8 in the 1999 VT Series II. The Commodore is descended from a mid-70s German Opel.

Testing in secret


A private road on a farm in Central Otago is becoming a vital part of carmakers' international test programmes. Chrysler and Michelin tested products there recently; so did Mitsubishi. Now the whisper is that BMW is this week testing its X5, the lifestyle four-wheel-drive which is expected to go on sale here next year. As usual, no one is saying much. BMW will be hoping the X5 comes through the test better than its new V10 Formula One engine, which failed after just one lap at its public debut in Austria the other day. But BMW can take heart - the now-dominant McLaren-Mercedes engine did exactly the same thing only a few years ago.

Year 2000 gimmick


Korean carmaker Kia has turned the millennium abbreviation Y2K (Year 2000) to its advantage. Its smart-alec advertising people in the United States came up with the campaign "Yes 2 Kia." Get it? Now it's appearing on everything from brochures to bumper stickers.

Smell of success


While we are on clever campaigns, Honda overseas has been praised for its new print advertisements for the licketty-split Integra Type-R. It has borrowed from the perfume industry's peel-back-and-smell ads. There are no references to the car's go-fast features, just the line "Experience the fragrance of Integra" above a bikini-clad woman. Only the fragrance is far less exotic than the woman - peel back the page and a pungent smell assaults your nostrils. It's "the essential essence of burning rubber brought to you by Integra Type-R," says the line.

Shaken not stirred


The Mini's 40th birthday celebrations this year will be rounded off by a book, The Mini: Forty Years of Fun, by British columnist and former Top Gear television presenter Jeremy Clarkson. It should be available at Christmas and will include little-known tidbits like: the Mini's inventor, Alec Issigonis, was such a lover of martinis that he designed the door pockets of the original 1959 model to fit just the right number of gin and vermouth bottles for a dry martini.

We are the world


* A sign on a damaged BMW in Surrey, Britain, read: "My wife took a turn for the worse."

* Two boys who broke into a roading authority store in Lille, France, and stole diversion signs have been disciplined by a juvenile court. The judge read them the riot act - for breaking and entering, stealing and causing traffic mayhem by placing the signs on roads.