The major and minor misadventures in 10 years of Zwischengas
Zwischengas turned 10 years old yesterday, and we not only revamped our entire website for the big day, but also published special reports and put together an anniversary quiz with a competition.
Over the last ten years, we have achieved a lot as planned, but from time to time we have also had minor or major mishaps. Mostly this has always happened during test drives when taking photos with old cars. But our server, which we used to provide the online platform, also crashed completely in August 2013, but after an interruption of several hours we were live again. And since then without any major interruptions.
But back to the minor and major accidents during hundreds of photo shoots. There were several petrol breakdowns, the worst of which happened to a Ferrari in Hergiswil when the twelve-cylinder car stopped in the middle of a road with one lane of traffic and traffic lights on both sides, with the result that cars then drove into the roadworks from both sides. And we were in the middle. Not a nice situation.
And there was the Maserati Ghibli that slowed us down without gas (picture above). We then filled up the wrong tank, whereupon the Maserati, which you can switch manually from tank 1 to tank 2 if you know how, still wouldn't start.
On another Ferrari, the ignition key broke off in the lock during the photo drive, and on another exotic car the key could no longer be removed. Both engines could neither be stopped nor restarted without the key.
We also came to a standstill several times with a flat battery, sometimes pushing the engine helped, but mostly we had to look for starting assistance. And an Italian classic lost almost all its engine oil on one trip. Only towing helped. In any case, we sometimes had to be towed by a younger car when the technology was no longer up to the job, for example when we were traveling in a Citroën 2 CV.
The photo equipment didn't always cooperate either, for example the flash system failed or the cameras refused to work in the heavy rain. Only blow-drying in the hotel saved the SLR.
And then there was the avoidable accident when a delivery van at the Red Bull Ring completely overlooked our photographer's BMW, which was stationary and waiting for us, and at a speed of 30 km/h or more, it was a total loss.
On the whole, however, we always got off lightly, so our application has been running with over 99.97% availability for the last 10 years. And somehow we always managed to get back up and running even after car breakdowns. You can't complain about that.
We have also immortalized a few of our memories of the more than 1000 photo shoots of the last 10 years in our current anniversary quiz . There's even something to win!
