offbeat news
Gjunai Gjursel has probably got some 'splainin to do after his three year old daughter Katarina decided to take a joyride through the Bulgarian town of Beli Lom. The tot apparently hopped into the driver's seat after dad stepped out, she grabbed the keys, turned on the car, shifted into drive and then took off. For a half a mile. Through an outside market. Eventually her skills came to an end and the car came to a stop in a river where she, and the four and six year old cousins accompanying her, were pulled out by locals.
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but could it beat a fiero?
It's impossible not to admire the huevos of that wacky Bulgarian engineer, Velizar Andreev. In the early 80s, he decided that Bulgaria needed to manufacture its own sports cars. Bulgaria being behind the Iron Curtain and firmly in the grip of Moscow's "no fun cars for the masses" ideology at the time, this belief did not go over well with Andreev's tractor-centric superiors. But Andreev persisted, building several prototypes with fiberglass bodies and Soviet VAZ (Fiat) drivetrains and, eventually, some Jeep-esque machines. Unfortunately, the Sofia and its siblings never hit the big time, so we never had a chance to see Sofiaminos roaring down American streets.
Bulgarian Car History: Sofia [carhistorybg.com]
Sofia (car) [Wikipedia]
Related:
More Bulgarian Supercars, Please: The Wildcat Concept [internal]
retro
Yes, it's the Fiat 124, the car that didn't outlast the Beetle or the Mini, but nevertheless jumpstarted a number of automotive industries, including those of
the Rodina (Lada Riva), Spain, (SEAT 124), India (Premier 118NE), Bulgaria (Pirin-Fiat) and Turkey. Meanwhile, we're really missing that prepackaged, boil-in-pack Indian food we found abandoned in our Apart-Hotel room in Paris, and hating the construction workers across the street who are using something that sounds roughly like a TIE Fighter
sans Doppler effect. If a gat were handy, a gat would be at hand.
– Davey G. Johnson
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concept cars
Bulgarian design group, I2B Concept considers its Wildcat study a prospective middle-range supercar. That means it's derived to face off against the Lamborghini Gallardo and Ferrari F430 in the $150,000-$200,000 range. To their mind — and engineering calculations — the low-slung, radically designed exotic will weigh less than 2,646 lbs., about as much as a Ford Focus, and be powered by a 460 hp, turbocharged V8. The group is planning to have a full-scale model of the Wildcat ready by March 2007 for wind tunnel testing, with the first prototype scheduled to arrive by the end of 2008. Investors invited.
– Mike Spinelli
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news
In an effort to cramp the style of organized criminals in Bulgaria, officials in Sofia have decided to start investigating anyone who drives a car worth over 100,000 euros. Apparently, this is largely due to a customs agent known as "The Cigar." Ah, the emergence of the former Eastern Bloc into a Westernized marketplace. Kinda makes you all warm, fuzzy and giggly, dunnit? Wait, maybe that's the 'shrooms and cognac we had for brekky.
– Davey G. Johnson
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news
Owners of older cars in Sofia, Bulgaria are playing havoc with the city's traffic as they line up for new EU-approved license plates, in some cases waiting in lines four hours long and creating hazardous traffic conditions. Brilliantly, in a city of nearly 1.4 million people, authorities have set up
one station where the plates can be obtained and then cut the deadline back by 9 months. The communist system may have fallen apart, but y'know, bureaucrats
always learn to adapt.
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Jalopnik
'even
