The Good Oil: Zil inspiration

NZ Herald

12 Dec, 2014 10:00 PM6 mins to read

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The Zil armoured vehicle concept. Photos / Supplied

It seems that Zil - longstanding supplier of state limos and armoured cars to the Russian Government (and Soviet leaders in the "good" old days) - has taken a page out of Good Oil-favourite Dartz Big Book of Crazy for inspiration for their latest armoured vehicle concept that has been commissioned by the Russian army.

Looking like a cross between a cheap science fiction movie prop and something a monkey might end up with stuck to its forehead if you shut it in a room with some glue and several plastic model kits, the unnamed Zil seats 10 people and boasts a series of clam-shell doors and a huge partitioned rear hatch.

Zil says the concept was designed using "advanced 3D modelling" and that there was a special emphasis on creating a psychologically intimidating and menacing look.

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While we're not sure that looking like a recently-concussed metal tortoise can accurately be described as being "menacing", we are pretty confident that the Zil's underpinnings can accurately be described as "old", what with its leaf springs and drum brakes all round.

Transforming KITT and co

It had to happen one day, The Good Oil's new favourite artist Darren Rawlings has done something truly brilliant and combined some of the best movie and television cars of all time with Transformers to come up with a fantastic series of prints called If They Could Transform.

Featuring everything from Herbie, KITT and the DeLorean from Back to the Future, through to the Partridge family bus, a couple of Batmobiles (the '66 TV original and the '89 Tim Burton movie version) and the AMC Pacer from Wayne's World, Rawlings re-imagines the cars as Transformers.

Featuring excellent, instantly recognisable car art and brilliant, slightly whimsical robot art, Rawlings does justice to the original cars and the Transformers concept as well. Shame Michael Bay couldn't have done the same with his awful movies ...

Twitter titter

It seems Vancouver police are dealing with speeders by public shaming and ridicule on Twitter. A 30-year-old unnamed man recently got busted in the city breaking the speed limit in his brand new Lamborghini Huracan, resulting in a CAN$368 ($421) ticket, three demerit points and his car impounded for seven days.

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To make matters worse for him, the Canadian cops took to Twitter to brag about the bust as well, with this good old gem: "Lamborghini - $275K. Excessive speeding ticket - $368. Watching your sports car get towed for seven days - Priceless."

While we doubt very much that the Canuck coppers would do the same thing if it was (say) a common Corolla, the Lambo driver was doing 102km/h in a 50km/h zone - so it does serve him right.

We are the world

• You've probably been playing a little too much Grand Theft Auto when you find yourself stealing an ambulance and attempting to drive it to a strip club, but that is exactly what a 51-year-old from Michigan tried. Paramedics had left the ambulance running outside the hospital to rush their patient in when the man decided it was the perfect form of transport to get him to the Booby Trap Bar on Eight Mile Rd. Yes, really. Cops quickly tracked him down.

• Ferrari's recent decision to sack pretty much everybody has had one unexpected side effect - it has made Gene Haas of the new Haas Formula One Team slightly paranoid. Haas is using Ferrari engines in the 2016 championship. He noted that "whoever I speak to at Ferrari gets fired! I better stop speaking to people ... "

Lego stays away from fast track

Although Lego has made some Formula 1 kits over the years, news has surfaced that the coolest F1/Lego tie-in of all time nearly happened, but didn't.

Autoweek reported that following McLaren's signing of Danish driver Kevin (Ken) Magnussen, Ron Dennis approached Danish companies for sponsorship.

One of them was Lego.

Think about the cross-promotional opportunities for that one - Lego's head helmet designs, car liveries that look like the car was made out of Lego, awesome McLaren Lego sets, a Jenson Button minifig with that brilliant expression he made at the press conference when Nico Rosberg said Lewis Hamilton could just try not driving into him for a change. But, alas, Lego said no, meaning McLaren was left with only SAP on the side of its car and depriving us of the best F1 sponsorship deal.

The only ones that would come close to being as good are when Star Wars sponsored the Red Bull team and all their pit crew looked like Storm Troopers and that time when the makers of Oceans 12 thought it would be a good idea to stick a $300,000 diamond on a Jaguar F1 car - but then Christian Klein crashed on the first lap and the precious stone was lost.

That's a lot of pieces

This Lego kit lets you build your own Le Mans race car from the ground up.

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In more Lego/motorsport news, it seems that while the Danish block manufacturer may not be interested in sponsoring an F1 team, its ever-increasing interest in draining the wallets of motorsport fans shows no sign of slowing anytime soon.

Not if the announcement of the newest Technic kit is anything to go by - the 1219 piece Lego Technic 24 hours Race Car is (like the recent Technic F1 car kit) a generic representation of a Le Mans car, as opposed to a specific model, but that does not decrease its awesomeness one little bit!

Before you get too excited about the idea of demanding this from your family for Christmas, the kit won't be released until sometime in 2015. Which actually gives you plenty of time to save up for it, as the cost will no doubt be an accurate scale representation of the cost of a real one ...