The Filter

They say moving is one of the most stressful things that you can do and MicksGarage is about to experience it. This weekend we will pack up the Garage, load the truck and head off to our new warehouse and office facility in Park West Industrial Park, Dublin 12. We're moving to a bigger facility which will allow us to further expand our operations. We'll all be sad to say goodbye to East Wall, where we've been since 2004, but such is life.  

The most important thing is that there will be no disruption to the website and it will be business as usual. Our phone, fax and e-mail remains the same and our new address will be up on the Contact Us section of the website as soon as we move. Wish us luck...

This little spurt of sunshine over the past few days has seen a good run in here on roof bars, roof boxes, bike carriers, surfboard carriers etc. It seems that after two monsoon-like summers, the Irish motorist is hoping that this summer will be a nice sunny one. Based on this evidence, you can expect to see more people on bikes this summer than ever before, more surfers heading West to catch some waves, more families holidaying in Ireland with their cars.

In fairness, we have put up with a lot of miserable weather over the past couple of years, even by Irish standards. If God is a reader of blogs - "we deserve a good summer, c'mon it can't all be doom and gloom".  

And what has MicksGarage done recently to lift the doom and gloom, I hear you ask? We'll we've started by reducing most of our roof bars to €99, which is pretty cheap! We do a huge range of roof bars, for pretty much every vehicle. The bars are excellent, car-specific roof bars, so if you're buying a set, they will be designed specifically for your car. 

We're also doing free fitting on any roof bar and roof box combination. And we're doing free shipping on all tow bars and Haynes Manuals at the moment.

I'll let you know of any more offers as we move through the summer...

Have you ever thought that you could design a sustainable motoring vehicle better than the mainstream manufacturers? Well the Dutch are giving you the chance to do so.

C,mm,n (pronounced "common"), an initiative from Stichting Natuur en Milieu (Dutch Society for Nature and Environment) along with the technical universities of Delft, Twente and Eindhoven, provides the open-source blueprint for a sustainable vehicle and invites people to submit their suggestions. The car's blueprints are publicly available under an open source license, so its design can be used and modified by others as long as any derived works are shared with the public as well. More than 800 people are currently involved in c,mm,n.

Besides offering ecological advantages through the application of recyclable thermoplastic surfaces and very good aerodynamic performance the evolving car also offers the means to cooperate on the road. The aerodynamics of the car have been optimized for ”platooning”, drive closely behind each other under control of the car's safety systems. Users in the platoon benefit from sharing air resistance by decreasing fuel consumption while doing other things in your car while it drives itself. The interior of the car is designed to improve communication between people. The system responds to people's orientation, posture and other non-verbal movements by providing information and control suitable to people's mindset. With that it helps people to gain insight in their relation with the community at that time, motivating them to collaborate. The c,mm,n car runs on a fuel cell powered with renewable hydrogen. The energy from the fuel cell is used to power the electric in-wheel motors. These engines can also be used for regenerative braking. The energy that is regained is stored in supercaps to be used again when the car accelerates. An alternative drive train is a mild-hybrid combustion engine on hydrogen that is able to run on two cylinders.

So get contributing! For those of you that might fancy a trip abroad, they even run a series of gatherings or 'garages' where everybody meets to discuss the project. Click here to find out more:

MicksGarage has been shortlisted in a few categories for the Net Visionary Awards this year. Winners are decided by public voting, so your votes would be much appreciated. We're shortlisted in the Innovation Award, Internet Marketer, and Web Developer Excellence categories.

Click here to vote:

More economic woe for us drivers! 

Diesel motorists wont be too happy with the Budget but it could have been worse. The Road Safety Authority (RSA) picked Budget Day to announce that the cost of a driving test is rising substantially. Some commentators have been critical of the level of the increase, with the cost of a car test almost doubling to €75. The RSA argues that the price hasn't increased since 1992. And the Government is also cutting some of its funding for the RSA.

It's important that the work of the RSA continues to the same level as it has and they need to ensure they have the necessary funds to continue with the hard-hitting road safety message. The driving test increase was probably the most effective way for them to do this.  

I'm just back from a trip to Vietnam, an amazing place! In terms of transportation this place is truly astonishing. Motorbikes are the most common mode of transport, with families of five frequently travelling on the one bike. The motorbike is also one of the key cogs for trade in Vietnam and is used to transport any number of items, as you can see from this photo of this chap transporting his baby water buffalo, which was alive!

The Vietnamese are masters of the motorbike and really push it to the limits of what it can do. With the growing traffic congestion in Irish cities, perhaps we can take a few lessons from our friends in the East...