101Carsense

The Governor's SUV It is now a well known fact that the governor of Kogi State was involved in a ghastly Motor accident on Friday 28 th  December. A careful look at the picture of the Lexus SUV he was travelling in and a statement credited to an anonymous family member on facebook who claimed that the vehicle was bullet proof brings me to the conclusion that the vehicle must have been travelling at quite a high speed and that the armour must be partial or something in the lower grade. Understanding car armour (bullet proof cars) A bullet proof car is a defensive armour car that is designed to withstand some level or ballistics. Just as there are different grades of ballistics, so there are different level of vehicle armour. The common standard codes for car armour from the lowest to the highest are T4/B4, T6/B6, T7/B7 and T7. In recent times, even the T4 or B4 grades are equipped with run-flat tires . Something else to know about bullet proof cars is that while a nor...

The Hyundai Jeep you can never have I was moved to write this article after reading a report on a popular Nigerian news website about a Nigerian lawmaker who bought an alleged faulty Hyundai ix35 for his wife. The report can be read here  http://saharareporters.com/news-page/nation-represented-idiots-nigerian-house-reps-summon-hyundai-motors-over-faulty-n41m-car-b . Throughout the report, he kept referring to the vehicle as ‘Hyundai ix35 Jeep’. And that brought my attention to how wide spread and common it is for a Nigerian to refer to any car in the SUV class as a ‘Jeep’. You can hear someone say my friend just bought a jeep, only to discover well you see the vehicle that is is actually a Toyota highlander . It got me thinking what the source of this common misuse was.  That took my mind back to the colonial and early post colonial days when the most common trucks on Nigerian roads (mostly among military personnel) were the Willys Jeep and early Land Rover models....