Allan Hill lives in the old Packard Plant and this his amazing story. (Please Allan, try to make it look less messy in the near future.)

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon the great craftsmanship of Sylvia and Daniel Jansen. Some e-mails and a phone call later we proudly present our very first collaboration.

The 877 X strlw keyring. This keyring is a hand made beauty, combining my idea of manly style and their idea of craftsmanship. I love it and you should too.

Get your own keyring at the 877 shop.

Some years ago I stumbled upon the work of Daniel Michaelis and his label Format 67 via his amazing Honda NSX video portrait. I always kept an eye on his stuff since then and recently he has done a lot of amazing stuff.

“We write the Streets” is a great insight into a completely different world of car enthusiasts, perfect to have a look outside the box. It’s a catching and entertaining documentary about the German import car scene. I think it’s about time to stop sorting the car scene by brands or model years. It’s all about passion and that is a great mutuality we can share.

Besides a lot of other cool stuff we we’re promised flying cars. Still there’s nothing like this in sight, but Renaud Marion created this brilliant series of wheelless classics hovering around.

Sometimes you’ve gotta shift down, before you can overtake those in front of you. Right now this seems to be a good metaphor for all the things coming up during the next months. I’m quite excited about how everything developed during the past days and yes, I’m also a little scared of what might come. This is not a Sunday afternoon cruise but some serious racing.

Well, enough obscure sentences for now. I might lift the curtain pretty soon.

It took a couple of weeks, countless phone calls and e-mails and a serious amount of cups of my beloved Nespresso until we’ve made it to this point. The brand new Pike Brothers website is online.

As always there are various things that have to be fixed, some details which have to be sorted and I’m sure some more Nespresso will be involved as well, until we’re really finished. But for now I’m happy and the famous Pike Brothers seem to be happy too.

This is a true story about friendship, freedom and a funeral.

Once again, it’s the time of the year to say thank you, fuck you, hello and good bye. As promised, I started more things in 2012. In fact it was a pretty good year. A few things went wrong some others turned out absolutely great, as always.

STRLW is up and running, finally I started working self-employed, I gave various speeches, millions of good advices and a lot of passion.

I met a lot of great and inspiring people and spent not enough time with some others. I saw fabulous things and places while travelling west, north and south. I’ve learnt a lot of new things and probably lost the same amount of knowledge on the other hand. Thanks to:

Ralf for still being the guy with a good advice. Eric for being the coolest guy on earth and keeping the Swiss railway running. Dylan for having the greatest photos on Facebook. Helge for keeping my busy. Nettmann for being Berlin’s superhero number 1. Moritz for great Sushi and hours with Need for Speed. Max for growing up and kicking some lame bikers arses. To so many more people I met in 2012 for an espresso or a quick chat.

Thanks to all those really nice people, brands and agencies I worked with this year: Häberlein & Maurer, Neumann Luz, Advice, Pike Brothers, Hill & Knowlton and all those I simply forgot to mention. It was a pleasure.

The future is gonna be even better. Some more projects and ideas are in the making for 2013 and I can hardly wait to tell the world about it. I’m gonna be a speaker at “The Hive” in May, this is gonna be awesome. I’ll finish the suspension set-up on my Porsche and probably there will be much more interesting and inspiring things happen. Can’t wait!

Sounds like a great idea to me. I met Peggy back in May and we talked about the possibilities and chances. As a result I was asked to join the girls and I agreed. Now things are getting serious, I’ll be a speaker at “The Hive” in 2013.

Maybe you wanna come around and watch some of the sessions? Of course there are much more speakers and most of them will look much better than me. Come along and spend your weekend at The Hive May, 25-26th 2013 in the betahaus in Berlin. I’m already really excited and this time I won’t talk about cars. Promised.

Recently Volkswagen released the all-new Golf and I’m sure the 7th generation is, like all other generations before, even more a high quality car that proves German engineering is never wrong. On the other hand though, I’m not so sure how future-ready the automotive industry really is.

In their newest TV ad Volkswagen shows how Cover Flow can be used with their „Discover Pro“. Actually I think this is a great feature and it makes perfect sense to adapt it to cars as well. What shocked me is one simple fact. Apple released Cover Flow for mobiles devices more than 5 years ago. How hard can it be to adapt such technical improvements?

Now you could mention it takes ages to develop the new sat-nav systems and while a specific car model is already available you can’t do such technical changes in between. And probably you’re right, but I still think you’re wrong. Because the future is tomorrow and I want all the fancy gadget stuff of tomorrow around me. Not the 5 year old stuff that might be out of date in a couple of months. Think about it!

Thanks for the video, Hunger Karle. The copyright for the photo belongs to Volkswagen.

First, I’m not really attracted by most of the modern cars out there and since a car is more to me, than just a vehicle to get from A to B, I want to be in love with it. It should be something I am really proud of, something I worship the way I worship my wife, something that makes me smile when I see or – even better – drive it. Sadly this is a detail most modern cars just can’t deliver, because they just have no heart and soul. They’re kind of shallow and pale. I want my mouth to get dry when I see it, my heart should beat like a drum and bass party when I sit behind the wheel and start the engine. I want to see the world in a wonderful new light, when I set off. Even if I’m just on the way to the supermarket, because I forgot to buy toiletpaper.

The second reason is even more simple. I can hardly afford a brand new car. Combining both facts brings us to an obvious conclusion.

Old cars are so much better than new cars. These modern plastic buckets are so unbelievably ugly and you can’t fix them yourselves. This is horrible. No one needs new cars. Have you seen the new Opel Mokka? It’s horrid. Have you seen the new Golf? It’s dreary? Have you seen the new … blah blah blah!

The thing is, though, hearing complaints like this almost everyday, leads me to one simple question. Are you aware of the fact, your beloved car companies wouldn’t exist anymore, if they stop developing new products?

I can have discussions like this almost daily, if I’d want to. And probably I would come up with almost the same arguments sooner or later. But we, those petrolheads preferring 30 years old cars over a shiny new Ford Focus with ABS, ESP, millions of airbags and other fancy gadgets, are not relevant at all. Luckily, we are not the majority.

On the other side there are people who do care about a brand new car. (And this is the majority!) They do want heated seats and steering wheels, they lust for a 1.4 liter engine with the most modern fuel injection magic you can imagine, because it’s economical. These people will buy a new car from time to time and they simply do not want to get their hands dirty on a technical thing that can move with a speed beyond 140 km/h.

So please stop discussing about the new Opel Adam, never mind the 2012 Ford Mondeo, simply don’t look at the new Mini and just ignore the Mercedes-Benz A-class, if you prefer that slightly worn out cars without computers and such. It’s fine, because the majority really kind of likes you for driving the same car, their grandfather once had.

I stick with you guys, until I can afford one of these cool new cars, full of fancy gadgets and an unbelievable amount of sensors and computers. You’ll be shocked!

Once again a Porsche 911 becomes the ultimate object of desire and I simply just can agree. This particular 930 looks absolutely brilliant. (Note to self, looking at Jim Goodlet and Magnus Walker, it seems like true Porsche enthusiasts have to have some special hair style. Maybe I should think about mine as well.)

As mentioned before, I’m not a bike guy. I really like motorbikes, but since I’m not allowed to ride them, I’ll always stand a little outside when cool things happen. Like when some of my mates get on their custom bikes to finish a very private story. Luckily Tobias Faust and Arthur Heisler were invited to join them and make a film about the so called “Hemi Ride”. The teaser is already a piece of art …

If you’re German and a true petrolhead, there’s no excuse, if you have no idea who Heidi Hetzer is. The tough and lovely lady did run the largest German car dealership network for more than 30 years and she is also a serious competitor when it comes to automotive racing. At the moment she is planning to follow in the tire tracks of Clärenore Stinnes, who was the first person ever to drive around the world in a car. Christopher Kippenberger did this great portrait of Heidi Hetzer for eGarage.

Hold your breath, because: This! Is! Really! Amazing! Okay, breathe again. The iconic Porsche 962 won countless Le Mans races in the 1980s, no wonder it holds a very special place in each car nutter’s heart. But there is one particular car enthusiast from Japan, who loves this car so much that he can’t keep his own race car at race circuit duties only. Thank some higher force, he shared it with Motorhead Japan.

It took a couple of days, since there were so many other things on my list. But finally the announced new website is online. STRLW is gonna my new place to show my photography. Mainly cars and bikes, but you never know what’s gonna happen next, so maybe there will be some rockets, horses and badly done tattoos on this site as well. I like it.

Having a little too much time I always end up starting something new. Recently I thought about all the car photos I took during the past years and figured out, I wanna share that stuff a little more. So there goes my spare time and a new project is born.

It’s gonna be called STRLW, a made up combination of letters, based on the historic name of the peninsula I live on. But this doesn’t really matter. These days I’m retouching some old photos and I just had a shooting for the new project exclusively.

Probably I’ll never be a “real” photographer, but I’m quite sure this project will become something nice. So here’s a sneak peek of the mentioned shooting and until the new website is up and running you might wanna check the STRLW Facebook page, I already started.

While I’ve been at the Hindenberg Speedway last weekend, I ate a fish sandwich, some burgers and lots of sand. Standing inside and outside of a classic flat track, while some fearless guys have fun with their cars and bikes, is an unbelievably great way to spend a Saturday. Believe me.

This way of dirt track racing is unique in Europe. Either four hot rods or four bikes are racing the sandy oval for four laps. The fastest driver wins, easy as pie. Bloody hell, I really wanna try this myself, hoping not to end up like these two guys who crashed their beauties unfortunately.

Much more photos can be seen at my Flickr set.

Steve McQueen, without any doubt, was the coolest guy on earth. His movies made him famous. But his life, his style and his lifestyle made him the icon he still is. Though he was a little choleric, had to struggle with dyslexia and, maybe that’s the worst part in this text, his favourite song was “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees. You didn’t know this? Well, that’s the perfect reason to read “Mein McQueen“.

Just after I bought this book I got in touch with Stefan Kruecken, he’s running the Ankerherz Verlag, a small but amazingly great publishing company. It took us 5 minutes and we developed the idea for a reading at a historic gas station in Hamburg. To make this project something serious, we just connected Ankerherz and Motoraver.

Stephan Benson, the German voice of Daniel Craig, and Isabelle Fischer read from this amazing book, while around 150 people sat inside and outside the workshop, listening excitedly. We declared this event the world’s first gas station reading, prove us wrong! Having such an awesome location, this amazing book and such talented readers makes it kind of easy to spend a really cool evening. Did I mention all the really nice classic cars, that showed up as well?

© All photos by Celly van Laatzen

After more than seven years of friendship, there’s one thing I can truly say about Ralf Becker. He always struggles to be one step ahead of others and, this is the most important thing, he succeeds. The spirit of Chromjuwelen was always based on authenticity and the idea to fill the term “car culture” with life and energy.

While others printed more or less cool t-shirts and stickers to spread their words, this was never the way Ralf thought about this. Chromjuwelen was developed and grew up with a more sophisticated mindset. So here it is, the most impressive merchandise product I’ve ever seen – Chromjuwelen Motor Öl.

Just to make this sure, this is a dead serious product. Formulated by Mathé Classic, Chromjuwelen Motor Öl is true German engineering. Though nowadays even the cheapest products are of a higher quality than the top motor oils of the past, especially classic cars and show cars need some special treatment. On the road for only a few months per year these cars experience long periods of inactivity and base motor oils are not made for this. To make a long story short, every cold start after a longer period is a material killer. Besides that, the package design is just adorable and I bet a couple of those beautifully designed cans will end up in living rooms and offices.

I am deeply impressed, because this is so much better than a t-shirt, a sticker. This is a genuine car culture product. Now head over to Ralf’s site and pre-order that stuff.