{"id":21140,"date":"2011-06-04T14:12:23","date_gmt":"2011-06-04T20:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=21140"},"modified":"2011-06-10T05:59:35","modified_gmt":"2011-06-10T11:59:35","slug":"zoom-zoom-zoom-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/04\/zoom-zoom-zoom-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Zoom-zoom-zoom"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
A Fiat Doblo (not ours)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The vehicle I was one of the official drivers of was a Fiat Doblo<\/a> — nicknamed by us “The Toaster”. \u00a0It’s a fun essentially-mini-van vehicle, seating five, with huge cargo space. \u00a0It was comfy, pleasant to drive, 6-gear manual with good performance, a diesel engine, sliding rear doors, and a nice stop-and-go feature (when you are at a stop and in Neutral, the engine turns off, then turns back on automatically when you shift into gear).<\/p>\n

It was a great touring car, and something that would make for a good US mini-van substitute<\/a> (if we could get over our memories of early-generation diesel engines, or fears of foreign vehicles). And, in fact, it’s scheduled to appear in the US under the Dodge “Ram” brand, in 2012<\/a>. \u00a0Neat!<\/p>\n

I admit, one of the cool things about traveling abroad is exposure to brands and models of stuff we just don’t see back home (sometimes for good reason, but often out of commercial fear or consumer pigheadedness). \u00a0Cars rate right up there, and while there are a lot of cars I’d just as soon not see in the US (Fiat Panda, I’m shaking my fist at you from behind as you putter up the autostrade at 50 kph), there are a lot of others that would work perfectly well in the US market. \u00a0The Doblo is one; the Peugeot 5008<\/a> (the other vehicle in our expedition) is another. \u00a0(And the plethora of Smart cars around Italy is another sign to me that it’s a brand that should be getting far more attention in the US, too.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The vehicle I was one of the official drivers of was a Fiat Doblo — nicknamed by us “The Toaster”. \u00a0It’s a fun essentially-mini-van vehicle, seating five, with huge cargo space. \u00a0It was comfy, pleasant to drive, 6-gear manual with good performance, a diesel engine, sliding rear doors, and a nice stop-and-go feature (when you … Continue reading “Zoom-zoom-zoom”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cars","category-travel-italy-2011"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/fiat-doblo.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":15890,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/09\/30\/zoom-zoom-zoom.html","url_meta":{"origin":21140,"position":0},"title":"Zoom-zoom-zoom!","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 30-Sep-09 10:34pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday, when I headed off to karate in our Subaru Impreza, the CHECK ENGINE idiot light was on. Hrm. Being a Lawful sort of guy, I find these sort of OMG THE SKY IS FALLING idiot lights to be compelling. So when I got home,\u00a0I consulted the owner's manual. Which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cars"","block_context":{"text":"Cars","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/cars"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4244,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/10\/09\/car_update.html","url_meta":{"origin":21140,"position":1},"title":"Car update","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 9-Oct-03 9:35am","format":false,"excerpt":"More things I've learned about our new Subaru: The cup holder situation definitely sucks. There is only one of a decent size, a CD-tray sort of affair in the dash,...","rel":"","context":"In "Cars"","block_context":{"text":"Cars","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/cars"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5425,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/03\/14\/no_need_to_worr.html","url_meta":{"origin":21140,"position":2},"title":"No need to worry about Terminators … yet","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 14-Mar-04 10:55am","format":false,"excerpt":"The DARPA Grand Challenge -- sending 15 privately-designed and built robots off-road on a course from Barstow to Vegas -- has ended with all vehicles disabled early on in the...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":40811,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/14\/zoom-zoom-zoom-3.html","url_meta":{"origin":21140,"position":3},"title":"Zoom, zoom, zoom","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 14-Jan-14 11:49pm","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a faboo zoom in\/out widget that shows the scale of stuff from the Observable Universe down to the Planck Length. \u00a0Fun!(h\/t Randy)\ufeff Embedded Link APOD: 2014 January 12 - The Scale of the Universe: Interactive A different astronomy and space science related image is featured each day, along\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":677,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/09\/01\/fuzzy_dice.html","url_meta":{"origin":21140,"position":4},"title":"Fuzzy dice","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 1-Sep-01 8:30pm","format":false,"excerpt":"We have fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror of our mini-van. Our friends find this most amusing, so they tell me. They originally came from Margie, who I assume, in...","rel":"","context":"In "Personal"","block_context":{"text":"Personal","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/personal"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11816,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/01\/28\/zoom_zoom_zoom.html","url_meta":{"origin":21140,"position":5},"title":"Zoom, zoom, zoom!","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 28-Jan-08 6:26pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Creepy Google Maps ... (via Google Blogoscoped)...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}