Stutopia

A taster from my recent two weeks touring round Norway and Sweden. Sorry I seem to have gone on a bit The Route I had big ideas of driving most of the coast of Norway (as far as Tromso) and it’s mountains and the coast of Sweden, the reality of all that mileage soon set in and the schedule had to be cut down So the final list was cut down to: Copenhagen Gothenburg Oslo Flamsbana (Flam Railway) Bergen Trollstigen Pass Innvik Molde Levanger Rognan (Arctic Circle stopover) Kilmpfjall Umea Stockholm Malmo Not bad for two and a bit weeks road tripping The receipt from Hertz says we did 5147 kms (3198 miles). The Transport My grand scheme for a few of us to rent something a bit special soon went pear shaped as the numbers dropped down for the trip. All the interesting cars have 100km per day distance limits, with between 40p and 80p per km supplement. I did some quick maths and a Range Rover Sport for the trip would have been over £3k - and just me to pay the bill :scare: All the fun limited km cars were then out: M5, GT86, RR Sport, Porsche Macan, XKR, not even a measly 911. That left me with either a Volvo XC70 or a BMW X3, I plumped for the X3 as it looked a nicer place to be inside. Landed a 3.0D V6 Twin Turbo with X-drive and poverty spec, no parking sensors, no shat nav, no electric seats for crying out loud. Just me and CB radio (our own). The other two on the trip were taking a 640D all the way from England, I was picking mine up the X3 at Copenhagen airport and shaving 4 days off the trip. I did briefly toy with taking the Zed but the extra time off work, the salt and the thought of RWD and snow all put me off. Not to mention sticking 6k on the clock and I discovered out there that there isn’t much Super to be found. I was a bit disappointed at first to get the X3, having my plans downgraded from more exciting options, but I was pleasantly surprised. Firstly, compared to the Zed the auto box and nice high driving position made it easy to drive in the first half hour getting used to driving on the wrong side and in a city where apparently everyone cycles and has right of way over cars. Your Danish cyclist will think nothing of passing on your blind side even if you are signalling to turn off, though he may think twice next time! (no contact was made). They also have the same rule as some other countries where both pedestrian crossings on side roads get the green light at the same times as the traffic, so you go green but still have to look out for pedestrians stepping out! Scando Lesson - cyclist and pedestrians are used to the extremely patient motorist, they will go out in front of you, without looking, safe in the assumption you’ll stop! Once I got out of the city, she was fun, initially I didn’t fully appreciate the difference that flipping the box to Sport made in addition to engaging the Sport button. She was more than quick enough for Norway’s hardcore speed limits and I never struggled to keep the 640D behind me On the down side, I don’t know what BMW do differently to other cars on the power steering, but it feels so far disconnected from the wheels it’s untrue. Totally fine for town and motorway but once the roads opened up I couldn’t really tell what the front wheels were up to, I could have had loads of grip or been on the limit . It didn’t help that the suspension is set up as a Chelsea Tractor either, but happily grip didn’t run out until we hit the slow switchbacks on the mountains and the Arctic snow. All in all, I really liked the X3, much more than I expected, and it was perfect for the roads, speed limits, weather and sheer volume of cruising miles we did. It did get a bit hairy when the satnav sent us off down a dirt road for 20kms and I flipped off the stability stuff and got down to some Colin McRae - gravel driving at reasonable pace was a whole new experience for me and the surface is all kinds of fun. I’d love to do it properly in a rally experience. The Best Bits Ski-doo razing in the snow was simply superb. It’s not just the petrolhead thing, though going super fast across a frozen lake, driving up mountains in fire breaks and burning down snow swept valleys is obviously amazing, but there were also some tremendous views. Unless you’re an arctic regular, simply being out there in the snow and sun and blizzards and mountains is an experience in itself. To top it off, our guide was superb. He’s a bike stunt rider, who does shows all over the place. He let us check out his place and all the awesome looking snow and ice driving vehicles, he even gave our very filthy cars a quick power wash… … and still had time to give us a couple of autographed pics. Here’s the main man’s stunt bike and Sune Anderson in action. Linky to the website for any of you ice petrolheads (google translate to English) https://translate.go...t.se&edit-text= Scando Lesson - the snow is often much deeper than you think and will all of sudden collapse and leave you up to your thighs I would give serious thought to trying to organise a Forum Trip over if anyone was up for it next winter, ideally groups of around 6-10 give a good balance of ice time and trying different vehicles apparently. The usual deal is a couple of days tooling about on ski-doos in the mountains, with some fishing and then a day on the ice ragging Volvos round the ice track. Speaking of Volvos, here’s an ice prepped drifter. They use Volvos as they are RWD, parts are cheap and these old one’s have no driving aids to hinder your progress on “track” Other Ice Toys - these weigh nothing and have bike engines I think Proper Winter Rubber Bergen Segway Tour Bergen is a stunning, small city on the west coast of Norway, which is ideal for viewing by Segway. I’m not gonna lie, I wasn’t all for this. Riding a Segway is the best way to look a tit, throw in a giant helmet and a hi-viz vest and you can’t help but feel a berk. That soon wears off though as you battle the thing all round the city, through town, down the roads, up paths in the park and along the harbour. So much fun and you can fit 4 hours sightseeing into 90 minutes, with half an hour to just tool about on the Segways, which seem a hell of a lot faster on them, than they look for a spectator If you’re going out there, you’d be mad not to do it - http://www.bergensegway.no Volvo Museum, Gothenburg Though they may not be the most exciting car manufacturer, the museum is worth a visit and shows off some of their more elegant historic designs and some concepts. Slammed Volvo LCP4 Slammed Volvo Truck First Ever Reverse Cam Trick Rims! Lego Volvo Some rather nice classics… Loved this one… …particularly the rear end! Older readers will remember these from BTCC! I remember being blown away that they had an estate out there in the Championship

Air con bomb it! Even if it's something else, it's worth trying for a tenner. Not tried the BH one, but the rest of their stuff gets good feedback. http://www.bilthamber.com/air-con-bomb-citrus Pop up a review if you get one

Stayed up to watch, wasn't a great one by any stretch For the life of me I can't understand how Mayweather won by such a margin, he didn't go forward at all in the whole fight. I'm not saying that shouldn't be allowed, countering is effective but boring if that's ALL you do for 12 rounds. If two fighters did that for the whole fight, there just be two people stood at opposite ends of a ring with nothin' to do and no show for the fans

Wheels could do with a refurb

I wasn't thinking testing, I was thinking a UK distributor would need a Jason Rose type figure...

Sounds like an opportunity. If only I knew someone who knows all about detailing, could do product demos and handle detailing questions, whilst also having my own small business already in place....

along

Great to catch up on this thread after a few weeks away. AMMO Skin rules! Having just done 3198 miles in a black car, I could have done with taking some of these LSPs for a cold weather test All she got was a quick 5 minute pressure wash (by Sweden's premiere motor cycle stunt rider mind you!) by which time the bead had well a truly failed Glad the interview went well mate, fingers crossed for you.

Posh boys always do. Don't confuse 'authority' with 'sense of entitlement'.

Studies show idiots are good at getting top jobs, they have confidence because they are too stupid to see their own shortcomings. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

Worth a watch it you don't! Cool vid.

I like the idea of the article, it could be funny, but he/she's made a monkey's breakfast of it. It's almost like automatics don't exist for the purpose of some lame gags about getting it moving

I'm a green according to the tests I keep doing online, but none of them have any questions about large engined, petrol cars just healthcare, education and other such minor issues Going Labour as they are 1 degree more to the left than the Tories and I'd like to keep them out of my constituency. Until SNP go UK-wide, I've got no other choice!

Holly shitballz! Glad the guy is ok. Those Ditchfinders working over time!

I hope not. From someone who has never done a track day, and still wondering if I should or not, this video has put me right off! As the others have said, don't be put off. If they were all like this, no one would surprised by the level of attack and sheer numbers out on track. Do what I did, go on a club day with a mate who has a pestige marque. I went with a Jaaaag club trackday and because my car was worth less than two of their panels, they were much more scared of me than I was of them

Genius

That's mental! I was shitting it just watching on youtube!

It wasn't called birth mess, that was my name, it had a more arty name which equated to the same thing

At the risk of a it's not all boozing and bhp on a manly road trip round Sweden and Norway. Today was art day, Sweden. So this is some of the "modern" kind. Hmmmmm.. Birth mess. Wheel stool. Best one was this, which looks like it's going away from you... ...but is actually coming right at ya! Ok, there was a little bit of petrol in there too Thoroughly enjoyable and the rest of Stockholm is not too shabby either, so many Swedettes, so little time....

Cool vid. Looks a bit more manic into the bends than the couple I've been on! I was bricking it in my daily, which I'm sure you can relate to I quite like the look of those two ladies...

Bastardos! Hope the fix is spot on.

I did enquire at my local nissan steeler before painting mine, I can't remember the exact price but it was 3 figures and enough to persuade me hammerite was the way forward

Colour looks good and we all know that gunmetal is worth +15 bhp