Celebrity Life

A space-themed project marks the luxury automaker’s entry into the wild, wild west of NFTs.

The post Lamborghini’s first NFT will (literally) be out of this world appeared first on The Peak Magazine.

Cadillac has presented a slew of futuristic concepts at the CES 2022 which showcase what the future of motoring looks like. Cadillac says the future car would be autonomous and also fully connected with a raft of software-infused cabin details. InnerSpace also adds to the Halo Concept line-up of Cadillac while laying down the path […]

The post Cadillac InnerSpace Provides a Glimpse into an Autonomous Future appeared first on Upscale Living Magazine.

Shanyan Fok Koder and Richard Bassett explain how a Hong Kong art entrepreneur joined forces with a former special-forces soldier to launch a health and mental wellbeing app, Mentor360.

"Mental health and mental fitness are universal concerns," says Shanyan Fok Koder. "And regardless of your demographic, social status, your job or your age, it’s something everyone has to deal with."

Shanyan Fok Koder & Richard Bassett on Mental Health App Mentor360

The Mentor360 app dropped on World Mental Health Day in October, the cumulation of the last 20 months of work and conversations (usually across continents over Zoom) between former military man Richard Bassett and worldly art advisor Koder. A month later, I’m sitting with both in a North London café talking over slices of pizza.

Their app, they hope, offers everyone a holistic 360 guide and framework to “finding your formula” for mental and physical wellbeing. It uses a hybrid approach, with a core layer of clinicians and professional Mentors and then celebrity Ambassadors (who’ve publicly shared meaningful life stories) critical for building noise and momentum.

"I’d been in the military for a long time. And there were a couple of incidents in my life that made me want to create something," Bassett, the CEO, explains. "Firstly, it was my father committing suicide. Then my son had a bit of misdirection. And several of my friends in the military had PTSD issues or adjustment disorders."

"The biggest issue is why people wouldn’t come forward and say they’ve got a problem?” he asks.

“Unlike some apps, we’re not trying to get people hooked. Come on to it when you need it”

— Richard Bassett

The answer often lay in culture, lack of education or concerns about privacy that prevent many from seeking help. With that came Bassett’s idea of creating an app that functions as a “non-judgmental toolkit” with content validated by experts – who include coaches, performance psychologists, mental health-specialising nurses and a clinical psychologist.

Basset’s link with Koder came when his best friend, ex-special forces colleague and TV star Jason Fox, sat next to a pregnant Koder at a charity fundraiser for Born (which researches to prevent premature birth) in late 2019. As the pair talked about their passions for mental health and children’s wellbeing, the connection to Bassett’s idea became quickly apparent.

"Foxy told me that I have to meet his friend, Richard, who’s building this app," Koder recalls. "I was always wanting to support things that are very meaningful and close to my heart … and now Jason is actually our key mentor. The partnership between Richard and I was almost like two parts of a jigsaw puzzle come together."

Although some might go to the app for help with stress, trauma or even resources to help with suicidal feelings, Mentor360 is designed specifically as a three-dimensional offering that will also encourage fitness, workouts, performance and meditation or more clinical matters.

"We wanted to maintain the human factor as a constant throughout. So it feels like somebody has given you some advice rather than some process-driven machine learning," Bassett adds.

The co-founders might come from two different worlds, but the unlikely partnership speaks to the ubiquity of the issues at hand. Bassett’s 25-year military career saw him being appointed the first ever Command Sergeant Major within the UK Special Forces military group. "It was at that stage where I was asked if I wanted to run defence,” he says. “At that point, I thought, I’ve kind of had my fill of the military now, it’s time to move on."

Koder meanwhile grew up in Hong Kong and the UK as the daughter of Li Ka-shing’s "right-hand man" Canning Fok, carving out a career in the arts and taking over her family’s impressive collection. As a female art entrepreneur and mother, her challenges would be different.

"When I had the misfortune of losing three babies to miscarriage and dealing with that emotional fallout, it led me to want to support this as a cause," Koder divulges. "If there’d been something like this app available to me, I don’t think I’d have suffered as much as I did emotionally. It’s a topic that’s still very taboo, even in this day and age … and while you eventually find your own community, at the very beginning, you do feel very alone."

Both were clearly driven towards the app through deeply personal experiences. Bassett saw first-hand how soldiers who’d done several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan suffered – his best friend, Fox, had left the forces with PTSD. Perhaps machismo or fear of institutional repercussions meant that the issue was often ignored or hidden in the military – but he hopes that Mentor360’s holistic approach can gently lead people to explore mental fitness alongside physical performance too.

The male-female perspectives of the pair offer a well-rounded, powerful tool. And while the wellness space is already crowded, Mentor360 stands out by being so broad, human-focused and non-prescriptive.

There’s been exciting traction too. Since its launch, the app has been downloaded in more than 176 countries, with the UK, the US and Australia leading. British schools have reached out and it’s one governance board away from being trialled within the National Health Service (NHS), which means added clinical risk management in the app. That has been an important validation, says Bassett, "especially when an institution like that has picked it out from a huge spectrum of apps on the market today."

Covid-19 and lockdowns have helped throw light on mental health, taking the conversation more mainstream. The timeliness has hit home; as Bassett says, “there’s a lot of people now struggling with the transition between Covid and normality”.

Koder tells us that the plan is to serve individuals but also institutions such as the NHS and the military. There’s also the option of “white labelling” it, so the app can be packaged and tailored to certain industries or corporate employees. In the future, might they look more global, with different languages and translations? Absolutely, the pair say, but they’re taking it “slow and steady”. There’s been interest from American corporations and Koder says that she’s keen to push into Asia very soon. Although going truly global might mean translating for languages, cultures and tone, as well as working with diverse psychologists, it remains a future ambition.

Mentor360 may be extra helpful in cultures where mental health is still relatively taboo. As Koder says, "I think, coming from our Asian culture, it speaks volumes to me – so much of our culture is about still performance or hiding a lot of what you’re feeling."

"Unlike some apps,” Bassett adds, "what we’re not trying to do is create a hook or get people hooked. Come on to it when you need it, and if you don’t need it for a while because you’re good, you can just put it away … We’re starting to see those patterns in the trend analysis."

To get a little personal, I ask what works for them individually to keep a healthy mind and body. Bassett’s formula revolves around daily exercise, time with the family, dogs and good sleep – even the occasional glass of wine on the sofa in front of a crackling fireplace. Koder’s happiness hacks centre around motherhood, being content and at peace in her skin, and looking at life with a certain romanticism: "I always love to see the poetry in my day,” she says, "and I think it’s important to just pause throughout the day, check-in and acknowledge that I’ve achieved these things and I should be proud of myself, rather than just rushing on to the next thing."

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This month, we forsake the driving seat for the front row in a multiplex, as we reel through some classic film automobiles...

In 1886, the German inventor Karl Benz patented his first motor car, an event that’s generally regarded as marking the birth of the automobile industry. Nine years later, in Paris, the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière held a public screening of 10 short films, an occasion that’s widely accepted as the beginning of commercial cinema.

Fast forward another 10 years, to 1905, when the Nickelodeon Theater in Pittsburgh was showing a daily programme entirely composed of films. By that time, the Oldsmobile company had already begun manufacturing motorcars on the world’s first production line, an innovation further refined in 1913 when Henry Ford introduced the moving production line at his factory, a system that remains widespread in motor manufacturing to this day.

The automobile and the cinema not only grew up in tandem, but both were also to become defining aspects of the 20th century. Just as the car transformed society, broadening physical horizons and liberating people by enabling them to travel where, when and how they wanted, the explosion of the moving image so redefined art and communication that the cinema – and later, of course, television – can plausibly be regarded as the art forms of the last 100 years or so.

Given that they grew up alongside each other, it was almost inevitable that a deep mutual love affair would develop between motors and movies. Whereas the automatic washing machine was another transformative invention of the last 80 years, it’s hard to recall any films in which a Bendix, Hoover or similar domestic appliance played a key role.

Cars, on the other hand, have figured prominently in so many movies that they might almost be considered among the main protagonists – indeed, in the case of the 1968 comedy The Love Bug (’63 VW Beetle), the 1977 horror pic The Car (a modified 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III) or the more recent Fast and Furious and Cars (far too many cars to count) franchises, the automobiles are the stars.

A Deep Dive Into Classic Film Automobiles

So what exactly constitutes a car movie?

The obvious choices are, of course, the films in which autos play a key role and, from those, I’d suggest that the 1985-90 Back to the Future trilogy – which isn’t really about cars at all – features as a central character one of the most interesting machines ever captured on celluloid. It is, of course, the infamous DMC DeLorean, a two-seat coupe with gull-wing doors of which some 9,000 were built in the early ’80s. (The infamy derives from the fact that the company went spectacularly bust, after which its founder, an American engineer of the same name, was arrested and charged with cocaine smuggling. He was eventually acquitted, but by that time his reputation had been ruined.)

Although interesting in appearance (the body styling was by the great Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro), the DeLorean in real life was underpowered and a mediocre performer: the former Top Gear script editor Richard Porter went so far as to include the “dismal” coupe in his 2004 anthology Crap Cars. However, the combination of novelty and notoriety helped give it a new and rather dazzling lease of life by appearing in all three Back to the Future films where, instead of travelling stylishly at speed on the highway, it transports its occupants Christopher Lloyd and Michael J Fox backwards and forwards through time.

With the long-awaited premiere of No Time to Die, the 25th James Bond film from the Eon Productions company, images of 007’s Aston Martin DB5 have been almost as prevalent as those of its star, Daniel Craig. Indeed, in the public imagination the Aston has become inextricably linked with Bond since it first appeared in 1964’s Goldfinger – the car, BMC 216A, has even outlived its original human co-stars Sean Connery, Honor Blackman and Gert Frobe.

Although the DB5 was the first of many Astons to appear in Bond movies – the latest outing also features a DBS Superleggera and a pre-production Valhalla – one can’t help wondering what the character’s creator, Ian Fleming, would have thought of it. Fleming, who was somewhat ahead of his time when it came to branding, was absolutely clear about the products his character would use. Thus, the literary 007 drove not an Aston but a 1931 4.5-litre Bentley with a Villiers supercharger (though he did once borrow a DB3 from the MI6 car pool), followed in later novels by a Continental, just as he drank Smirnoff, Gordon’s, Taittinger and Veuve Cliquot, smoked Morland cigarettes and wore a Rolex (and definitely not an Omega) on his wrist. (Aside from a brief mention of Miller High Life – of all things – in Diamonds Are Forever, his preferred brand of beer isn’t mentioned in any of the novels, though I doubt it would have been Heineken.)

Astons excepted, among the more interesting cars to have appeared in the cinematic 007 oeuvre are the Lotus Esprit, a lightweight British mid-engine coupe of the mid-’70s that, in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), dives into the ocean and transforms into a submarine, and a gorgeous prototype BMW Z8 convertible driven by then-Bond Pierce Brosnan in The World Is Not Enough (1999), as part of a three-movie deal with the German manufacturer.

Bond aside, car chases have become an indispensable component of the action-movie genre and though many are dull and predictable, the best are capable of wrenching both metal and guts. Director John Frankenheimer’s Ronin (1998), starring Robert De Niro and Jean Reno, is among the finest, featuring no fewer than three, whose realism can partly be attributed to the fact that genuine racing drivers were employed to drive the cars.

In a lengthy sequence on the streets of Paris, De Niro commandeers a Peugeot 406 to chase Natascha McElhone and Jonathan Pryce’s BMW 5-series down footpaths, and through tunnels and oncoming traffic, culminating in the Beemer’s demise off the end of an unfinished flyover. Later in the film, a chase in the hills and streets of Nice involves three cars: a Mercedes 450 SEL, a Citroën XM and an Audi S8, the latter one of the great German muscle sedans of the late ’90s.

Interestingly for fans of the Mercedes 450 SEL, another great over-engined luxo-barge from Germany, a 6.9-litre V8 version is the unseen star of the short 1976 film C’etait un Rendez-Vous by the French director Claude Lelouch (probably best known for his 1966 movie Un Homme et une Femme), which depicts a car bumper’s view of a high-speed, early morning dash on a 10.5km route through the French capital, the destination being Montmartre and a date with a young woman. It’s said that the car-buff Lelouch did the driving himself, at speeds of up to 200km/h, then dubbed the engine sound and gearchanges of his own V12 Ferrari for increased dramatic effect.

Indeed, Paris has been the setting for several classic high-speed chases, including the sequence in The Bourne Identity (2002), in which Matt Damon drives a Mini through the city while pursued by police cars and motorcycles, most of which come to the inevitable sticky end. Arguably even better is the chase through Moscow in the 2004 follow-up, The Bourne Supremacy, this time with Damon’s Bourne character at the wheel of a Russian GAZ taxi – an unlikely vehicle for such a scenario if ever there was one – and the villain, played by New Zealand actor Karl Urban, driving a Mercedes G-wagon. No need to guess who comes off best, even if it is a close-run thing.

And talking of Minis – the proper Mini, I mean, not the current bloated pastiche – it’s arguable that the three Cooper Ss filled with loot that escape through the sewer tunnels of Turin (though the sequence was actually filmed somewhere in the British Midlands), were the real stars of the 1969 heist caper The Italian Job, rather than Michael Caine, Noël Coward, Benny Hill and Rossano Brazzi. Among other memorable scenes in the movie is the Mafia bulldozing of a Lamborghini Miura into an Alpine gorge, an act of apparent wanton destruction viewed with horror by auto buffs everywhere. In reality, the car had been seriously damaged in a previous accident and was deemed irreparable; other classics also supposedly wasted in the film (but weren’t) included a pair of E-Type Jaguars and an Aston Martin DB4, which was also seen being pushed over a cliff.

I could go on, because a history of cars in cinema is almost a filmed timeline of the automotive industry itself. There were ridiculous cars, such as Herbie, the racing VW Beetle in The Love Bug, and the appalling AMC Pacer, one of the worst automobiles ever to have come out of the United States, in which Wayne Campbell (Mike Myers) and Garth Algar (Dana Carvey) memorably rock out to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” in Wayne’s World (1992), not to forget the flying vintage car created for the fantastical 1968 musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Little-known factoids are that the latter auto was named after a real machine raced by one Count Louis Zborowski in the 1920s, and the film was based on a children’s book by James Bond’s creator, Fleming.

There were racing cars, too, including replicas of 1960s Ford GT 40s and Shelby Cobras, as well as Ferraris galore, in the critically acclaimed Ford v Ferrari (2019), starring Damon and Christian Bale, while almost half a century earlier the Hollywood star Steve McQueen, whom in reality wasn’t a bad racing driver, attempted to capture the action and atmosphere of the 24-hour race in the 1971 movie Le Mans. Unsure as to whether it was a drama or documentary, the film succeeds as neither, though the sequences of Porsche 917s racing Ferrari 512s are admittedly superb.

And there were also cars to swoon over, such as the exquisite, boat-tailed red Alfa Romeo Spider driven by Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate (1967), and the equally beautiful Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder that featured – and was destroyed – in the 1986 teen comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Again, it wasn’t a real car that was demolished in the movie, but a replica.

For me, though, if there’s one film that typifies the “car movie”, it must be The Yellow Rolls-Royce, a 1964 romantic drama with a script by the celebrated English playwright Terence Rattigan and an ensemble cast that includes Rex Harrison, Ingrid Bergman, George C Scott, Shirley MacLaine, Omar Sharif, Jeanne Moreau and Alain Delon. Set in the 1930s and the early years of World War II, the narrative follows the lives of three very different owners of the car – a genuine 1931 Rolls-Royce Phantom II Sedanca de Ville, which still exists today – in locations as diverse as England, Italy, Yugoslavia and the United States. According to The New York Times, the film was “a pretty slick vehicle, that is pleasing to the eye and occasionally amusing … One is reminded of the now-classic Rolls-Royce advertising slogan, ‘The loudest noise comes from the clock.’”

Which is exactly how we want our cars to be these days, isn’t it?

(Hero image: Three Mini Cooper S Models were arguably the main characters in the 1969 comedy-heist movie, The Italian Job, image courtesy of Getty Images)

The post The Car’s The Star: A Deep Dive Into Classic Film Automobiles appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

The latest hybrid version of the Bentayga Luxury SUV eschews outright performance and roadability for refined comfort and moderate gains in fuel economy.

Two months and two posh SUVs, one from Aston Martin and this month’s car from Bentley. You could argue they’re almost dead ringers for each other: both are from archetypally British brands with a reputation for luxury and sportiness, both have considerably more than a modicum of German engineering beneath the skin, and both occupy roughly the same price point – if you want to nitpick, even their logos are similar. But after driving both, I’d argue they could hardly be more different.

You see, the Aston Martin DBX we reviewed in the September issue of Prestige was fettled with an old-tech, purely petrol power unit, whereas the Bentley Bentayga Hybrid you’re reading about now has been partially future-proofed through the hefty and eco-friendly wallop of electricity that accompanies its traditional hydrocarbon-burning engine. Thus, it represents a modest but significant first step towards the total electrification of the entire Bentley fleet, a goal the company’s VW owners have fast-tracked it to achieve in just nine years. And that means we’ll soon be waving a tearful farewell to the magnificent W12 and smaller nut hardly less impressive V8 engines that have delighted us over the past couple of decades.

It’s an ambitious target, especially as the company only embraced hybrid technology a couple of years ago, though as the Brits can draw from an enormous bin of parts produced by its Porsche and Audi stablemates, it’s by no means an insuperable one. Indeed, in the case of this hybrid Bentayga, the solution was right there in the form of a turbocharged 3-litre V6 engine mated to a powerful electric motor, a combination already in use on other SUVs from the VW group, namely the Audi Q7 and (whisper it) the somewhat less patrician Volkswagen Touareg. We’ll get back to that a little later.

I was last behind the wheel of a Bentayga more than five years ago, on its media launch in Southern California to be precise, and as I watched my latest test car being gently unloaded from the flatbed transporter used to deliver it for my drive, I suddenly recalled just how massive the Bentley is. The relentless desert heat aside, what had stuck in my mind from that trip were the uncanny dynamic abilities the car displayed both on-road and off – we even drove our behemoths to a small racetrack out in the sticks, where they behaved with far more aplomb than a luxo-truck has any right to. Well, that and an interior more sumptuously palatial than I’d ever seen in an SUV (though more recently, Rolls-Royce has raised the ultra-SUV bar even further with the Cullinan). Perhaps being in the United States, where many road vehicles are the size of reasonably sized dwellings in other parts of the world, had blinded me to its size, but the Bentayga’s vastness had slipped from my mind almost completely.

Since then, Bentley has treated the car to a mid-life massage both outside and in – we’re told it involved more than 1,000 upgraded components, though the most obvious differences from launch models are the revised front grille and lights, tailgate, oval rear lamp cluster and new wheel options, all of which are intended to align more closely with the current Continental GT, as well as a more up-to-date infotainment system with a larger and more legible touchscreen. In most other respects the Bentayga is as regal and ridiculously opulent as ever, with acres of top-quality swathed across almost every visible interior surface – and those few that aren’t covered in animal hide are agleam with highly polished wood veneer or metal.

On its introduction, the front end of Bentley’s SUV housed a twin-turbocharged 6-litre W12, whose 600 horsepower and 900Nm of torque were responsible for performance verging on the unbelievable – or at least for a vehicle weighing considerably more than a couple of tonnes. However, with a combined 443bhp and 700Nm from its V6 and electric motor (the latter is mounted between the petrol engine and the eight-speed dual-clutch gearbox), and
a hefty battery pack that raises the car's weight beyond 2,600kg, the Hybrid’s straight-line performance is inevitably less rapid, though neither its 5.5-second 0-100km/h acceleration time nor its maximum 254km/h top speed can be considered sluggish. In any case, focusing on outright performance does rather miss the point.

As a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), the Bentayga’s battery is considerably larger than a normal hybrid (HEV)’s and permits a greater electric-only range – in this case, it’s around 40km, which is perfectly adequate for average daily urban use. Unlike a regular HEV, though, a PHEV’s battery can’t be completely charged while being driven, so the Bentley requires plugging in for a couple of hours or so to top up with the full whack of electrons – much as if it were a fully electric vehicle. The beauty is that it can theoretically be driven in town every day without using a drop of gas, but won’t leave you with range anxiety on longer journeys; the downside, of course, is in the emissions produced when the combustion engine cuts in.

On the whole, the Bentayga’s hybrid system works well, with three drive modes – from “EV” to “Hold” – and a further menu of “Comfort”, “Sport”, “Bentley” and “Custom”, which match the settings on a normal petrol-powered car; all can be selected via an elegant console-mounted dial. Driven on electric power only, the SUV accelerates smartly and drives even more silently than any self-respecting Bentley should; theoretically, it can reach speeds in excess of 130km/h without the assistance of gasoline, though in practice you’ll be drawing on the V6’s extra punch long before that – and especially on hills, where electricity simply isn’t up to the job. Yet when the battery is close to depletion and the V6’s relatively meagre 300-odd horses are doing most of the work, the engine’s limitations in terms of noise, smoothness, pulling power and fuel economy become hard to ignore. In other words, the Bentayga Hybrid is at its most refined best when it isn't being hurried, and driven thus – as a large, relaxed and extremely spacious luxury cruiser – it's very refined indeed.

To sidestep some of the compromises that inevitably result from its complex powertrain, Hybrid mode features a clever energy-saving function working in tandem with the sat-nav, which plots any given journey and decides how best to utilise electricity or petrol, even showing how well you’re doing on a real-time display. Obviously for the most economical results you won’t be exercising the V6 too energetically, but then nor do the car’s additional weight and the absence of active roll bars (which obviously has a negative effect on handling and body control) offer much incentive to press on either.

Indeed, for all its advanced technology, the Bentayga strikes me as a Bentley of yore: a lovely cocoon of beautifully made and sumptuously appointed luxury in which to be wafted from point to point in perfect calm and silence. Treat it as such and, whether your journeys are long or short, it will reward you in abundance. But if your idea of a car with the Flying-B on its flanks is one that gobbles up countries and even sizeable chunks of continents with ease, you’ll be looking at a V8 or even – God forbid in these eco-conscious times – a W12. Because for now, at least, you do have the choice.

BENTLEY BENTAYGA HYBRID

ENGINE Turbocharged 3-litre V6 and electric motor
TRANSMISSION Eight-speed
MAX POWER 443bhp
MAX TORQUE 700Nm @ 1,100-4,500rpm
MAX SPEED 254km/h
ACCELERATION 0-100km/hin5.5seconds
KERB WEIGHT 2,626kg
PRICE HK$3.5 million

The post The Bentley Bentayga SUV is a Luxury Hybrid that Delivers Refined Comfort appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Black is a unique color and somewhat associated with luxury cars but Roll-Royce has embraced it with its line-up of “Black Badge cars“. Introduced in 2016, the Black Badge line-up brought in a different kind of Rolls-Royce and has been immensely successful with its unique black-based styling and performance enhancements. However, Black Badge is not […]

The post Here’s a Look at Why Black Badge Rolls-Royce Cars are Steeped in History appeared first on Upscale Living Magazine.

The BMW 318i Sport is not the most practical car price-wise, but it does make the heart race.

The post Car review: BMW 318i Sport appeared first on The Peak Magazine.

The BMW 318i Sport is not the most practical car price-wise, but it does make the heart race.

For more stories like this, visit www.thepeakmagazine.com.sg.

The marque has released the Countach LPI 800-4 to celebrate the 50th year of one of motoring's most iconic cars.

The post Lamborghini celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Countach with a limited edition hybrid version appeared first on The Peak Magazine.

The marque has released the Countach LPI 800-4 to celebrate the 50th year of one of motoring's most iconic cars.

For more stories like this, visit www.thepeakmagazine.com.sg.

Lamborghini is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Countach with a special edition LPI 800-4 model debuting at this year’s Monterey Car Week. In celebration of the Countach’s 50th anniversary, Lamborghini has unveiled a special limited edition Countach LPI 800-4 as a futuristic tribute to the poster car of the 1980s. While sharing the same name […]

The post Lamborghini Reveals Countach LPI 800-4 Revival appeared first on Billionaire Toys.

Plus, other car news for this month.

The post For the first time in 32 years, the Mercedes-AMG SL roadster will be a 2 + 2 seater appeared first on The Peak Magazine.