Dear Fifth Gear. You suck. You tested seven different polish and waxes for protection of the precious paintwork on your vehicle. The most expensive was £1500 (yes, one thousand five hundred pounds!) down to £500 for a professionally applied protection. You then had 4 cheaper waxes including Auto Glym, Mer, NXT and one in a yellow bottle.

Who the hell do you think watching the show will be able to afford £1500 for wax?? I drive a Mini. £550 I paid for it. I am not, no matter how much I love my car, spending three times its value on wax.

What I want to know is why you couldn’t take a decent look at the Auto Glym, Mer and NXT? I have used all of them at different stages and know which one I prefer, but it would be nice to see an opinion from a TV Show with supposed “experts” such as yourselves. Why did you cut the report off seemingly before it had finished??

The only redeeming feature about tonight’s show (as with most other shows) is Vicky Butler-Henderson in tight pink biking trousers. Oh, and the MINI against the Scirocco. I’d Still have the MINI though! Not quite Top Gear, are you. Got to have a competition to get people to watch.

I must also mention that your website isn’t exactly a flyer either is it. My little blog runs faster than your website, which for a major TV company isn’t a good recommendation.

In all of the photos that I have taken of cars in general and Minis in particular, this one photo has to be my favourite. The shot was taken in 2005 using my Bronica ETRs medium format camera with Fuji Velvia (I think!) slide film.

I just love the “pop” of the blue, where it’s so “in yer face”. The angle (if I remember rightly – the first time I tried the angle) suits the shot perfectly. There was no cropping or colour adjustment on the photo after scanning, just a little cleaning of scan marks.

Yes, I know it’s an old photo, taken around the same time as the Stonehenge one in 2003. I still love though and bring out for an airing every so often!

Nothing too special to report, averaging 17 visitors per day at the moment, it looks like I will have to pimp more! Any suggestions?

Anyway, I was looking at the traffic sources for the search engines and noticed this on the MSN results

:

Look at number 7. Um, flick the switch next to the big slidy control underneath the heater/fog light/hazard switches?

Not difficult is it!

Almost as good as the vehicle collector who came to collect a Mini from my house the other day. My wife had to:

1. Show him which car it was.
2. Tell him to turn the alarm off.
3. Show him the correct key to use to unlock the door. He was using the ignition key.
4. Turn the alarm off as he hadn’t and it disturbed the whole neighbourhood.

I can only think it was because he is used to collecting Mercedes, not 10 year old 10 foot long cars with no self-start or central locking…

Mum brought her Mini to my place today so that we could change the rear and side window seals. I removed the windows and then took the rear seat out. Under it was a puddle of water. Having mopped that up I looked at the rear shelf and that was soaking wet too.

Out came the standard Rover speakers and the rear shelf lining. I told Mum that we’d have to leave it in the garage overnight to allow it to dry out. While we were stood around I remembered that I had the Infinity Reference 6012 speakers (link for pics) in the garage waiting to go in mine. I dropped them into the rear shelf holes to see how difficult it would be to replace mine.

Knowing that mine are a while away from installation I offered them to Mum and she could replace them with some we could order from eBay. 20 minutes later, the holes were drilled, the speakers plugged in and listening to Jean Michel Jarre‘s Oxygene at much higher volume that previously.

Even without the rear window in you could hear the difference from the driver’s seat. The bass is stronger and the treble much clearer. For £31 including postage these are probably the easiest and cheapest upgrade you can do to your ICE and I guarantee that the results will not disappoint!

I’ll get a couple of piccies later and make a post on the Mini Blog.