We have been having a cool time here at SquashMyCar. Our Noble M12 is currently at Jetstream Motorsport at Bruntingthorpe, Leicestershire getting tweaked and finally sorted – it’s also getting its wheels painted orange! Not long to go to Le Mans which will be the SquashMyCar Noble’s maiden outing in its new livery. See our previous post for full details. Thank you to everyone for sending in your squashed cars, including to our Facebook and Twitter pages – after all, that’s what keeps these pages buzzing and that’s what we do this for, so that you can have a bit of fun with what we all love … CARS! SquashMyCar is now selling on a global scale which pleases us greatly – last week we must say thanks to our buddies in the USA for downloading most apps, followed by the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Spain, Japan and Canada. It’s great to know that the SquashMyCar message is fast spreading globally and we love to know that what we have created and enjoyed so much here in the UK is being enjoyed in exactly the same way so many thousands of miles away.
We pride ourselves on reacting to customer feedback and giving support to the best of our abilities. We don’t just say how can we help … we actually mean it! For that reason if anyone out there is experiencing any difficulties with the app in any way at all just get in touch and we will work our butts off to sort it for you – we promise! Just get in touch here.
We couldn’t sign off without adding a few of our favourite squashes … so here goes and until next time … SQUASH IT! 
In addition to a bit of mechanical work, we have been getting the SquashMyCar Noble up to speed in a number of other ways to, including getting it looking spot on! Part of the enjoyment of creating the SquashMyCar app is getting it out there and seeing people enjoy it. We don’t believe in dry old fashioned advertising. Instead we get stuck in and that means going where car lovers go: to the shows, to the races and the best of all auto events. And if you’re gonna go, then go in style – that’s why the SquashMyCar Noble M12 is being transformed into the perfect SquashMyCarMobile. That doesn’t means we’ve squashed it (not yet at least) but we have given it a great new look. This is how we did it:
We started out on photoshop getting an idea of what we wanted. The Noble has so many scoops, curves and undulations we had to think carefully about where to place the graphics.
Sean Davis at Creative FX produced these great mock ups
Creative FX then turned the vision into reality. All that’s left is the wheels!
All that’s left now is to get the wheels painted and the SquashMyCar Noble will be ready to roll. We can’t wait to travel far and wide in it and if you spot us please come and say hello! This excellent work was carried out by Creative FX www.fxuk.net based in Bromley, Kent, UK and we are delighted with the result. Thanks guys and … SQUASH IT!
To see more of SquashMyCar join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Become part of the SquashMyCar community. SquashMyCar is an app for iPhone & Android created by Speeding Hippo.
SquashMyCar has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to great cars … and especially great squashed cars. But sometimes there is that squash which just captures the essence of great motoring squash pics just perfectly. This week it goes to Subaru and a bit of SquashMyCar tagging to turn the great into the outstanding. SQUASH IT!
On Sunday the F1 season started and congratulations to Jenson Button for leading all the way in a fantastic performance, looking as domineering as Vettel in 2011. Vettel made his luck as usual to take 2nd and Hamilton did not quite reach his promise with third. Webber fought a good battle for fifth and Alonso was a miracle worker getting that ill-handling Ferrari to 6th. It was a great shame to see Pasto Maldonado stick his Williams in the wall on the last lap and another great shame to see Romain Grosjean retire with suspension failure so soon after the start, particularly since he qualified 3rd – now there’s someone to watch in 2012!
It was great to see the cars on track again not only for F1 but also to herald the start of the motor racing season proper across the world when SquashMyCar will get out and about to grand prix and motor racing events across the globe to bring some great images here and to our Twitter and Facebook pages where we would love to see your squashes and hear from you. As F1 fans we have decided to post some of our favourite F1 squashes. Here’s to motor racing and here’s to squashed motor cars, in the nicest possible way of course. SQUASH IT!
For those of you who don’t know, SquashMyCar has a fantastic Facebook page, so fantastic that we’ve been building up a great following of seriously cool squashers who are using our Facebook page as a great place to post their most amazing squashes. We’re very pleased to see the variety of cars and the brilliant squashes you have come up with. That’s why we thought we would share some of the best squashes of the past few weeks from Facebook with you. Why not take a look and like our pages at www.facebook.com/SquashMyCar and remember to post your best stuff. We would love to see it. SQUASH IT!
We have had numerous requests about how to make the perfect Profile Picture for Facebook, Twitter or for use on the numerous car websites and forums that so many of us use on a regular basis. Such is the level of interest on this topic that we thought it was the perfect time to do a SquashMyCar ‘How to …’ guide. So here goes: How to create the perfect auto Profile Picture with SquashMyCar.
1. Open your app and press start! When you hear that engine roar into life you are ready to choose between taking a photo or using an image stored on your device. Here I am using a Ford Focus RS stock image stored on my iPhone.
Move the line through the centre of each wheel then press the green arrow.
2. Now the discs appear. Put your finger on the left disc and move it so that it covers the left wheel. Now move the right disc to the right wheel in the same way. Press the green arrow.
3. You arrive at screen 3/5
Enlarge each circle with your finger so that each wheel and a portion of wheel arch is covered. As you get to know the app you can experiment here – with some cars only a tiny bit of wheel arch is needed, with others they look great when a lot of wheel arch is included.
4. When you press the green arrow the doors will close. They will open to reveal that body of the car has been squashed and the round wheels will appear on top ready to be put in place.
5. Touch each wheel and move it to where it looks just right. Remember, you can put the wheels where you like but they look best if you get all the bodywork around each wheel within the bodywork of the squashed down car. If you don’t you can be left with wheels sticking out like on the screen shot above.
When you have positioned the wheels just right, press the green arrow and the doors will close. When they open you have your final squashed car!
5. Your Squashed Car!
6. Save the image by pressing the save icon (top left). The image will now be saved in your folder.
When you go to the folder and select the image it will look something like this:
7. To turn Your Squashed Car into a profile picture, the best results are achieved when you crop the image down into a square shape. This is simply because the spaces for lots of profile pictures are square. To crop the image you need a cropping tool. There are numerous apps out there which are either free or very cheap which provide this facility. Today I am using Camera+ which carries out the cropping job quickly and easily.
8. Your final SquashMyCar Profile Picture can then be uploaded into Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or any other social networking or internet site you like. Your squashed car is now your proud profile picture. Congratulations and … SQUASH IT!
Both Chris and Steve have regularly travelled to racing and motorsport events, from drag racing at the Santa Pod Raceway in Northamptonshire, UK to Formula One Events at Silverstone to sports car endurance racing at Le Mans. Le Mans has become a regular pilgrimage for car junkies and motorsport nuts and Steve and Chris would regularly travel there every June for that intoxicating mix of partying and burning rubber. In 2006 the party came to an abrupt halt when Steve suffered near fatal injuries in a car accident. He was in the passenger seat of his recently Hayabusa-engine-equipped Chesil Speedster travelling the narrow roads around the Le Mans Circuit de la Sarthe when a people carrier pulled across his path and the lights went out! It was only Steve who received serious injuries. This was one of the few occasions when Chris had not gone to Le Mans; Chris had remained in England due to a work commitment. When he got the call he was informed that Steve was close to death and with his wife Helen he flew out to Le Mans.
Steve fought the good fight and what followed was 9 days in a coma and 63 days in intensive care with a very swollen head and numerous broken body parts. When his friends first saw him they all said to each other that they couldn’t believe it was Steve! They were, in fact, correct. It wasn’t Steve – they had mistakenly gone into the wrong hospital room! Steve had regular visitors doing their best to talk him out of that coma and much mention was made of those skateboarding days as kids at the Palace! Steve then slowly woke up. The French doctors at Le Mans did a terrific job of putting the pieces back together, work for which Steve, his wife Sara and their family and friends remain forever grateful. There followed an extensive period of convalescence. It was during this period of time that Steve got thinking. Steve is, in fact, always having ideas. He was about to have his best idea.
A lot of people have been struggling with F1 car launches this year. Usually you can look at the sleek lines and perfect aerodynamic curves and admire the ultimate combination of art and precision engineering. David Coulthard said that if it doesn’t look beautiful, it won’t go beautifully and, when you think about it, more often than not that’s right. So imagine the collective vomiting this year when the stepped nose was revealed YUCK AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHH. What can be done? Well, apart from regulation changes, the only thing that can be done to seriously improve these cars is to squash them. So using the special powers of the SquashMyCar app we’ve done a few. Just for you!
23rd January 2012. Today is launch day! Squash My Car is now in the Apple app store for iPhone & iPod users and on Android Market for Android users. It is fantastic to be here and we cannot wait for what lies ahead. Squash My Car will be bringing you up-to-date images from motorsport events across the globe and the best squashed car images from all of them. Wherever you are in the world, if you have a smartphone and a Squash My Car app you can share your images with us here on the Squash My Car blog and on Facebook and Twitter #SquashMyCar. We welcome all app users to follow us on Twitter and to like our Facebook page so we can keep in touch with everyone in the Squash My Car community. Send us your best squashed cars, the greatest of which we will highlight here and on our Facebook & Twitter pages for special recognition and a host of great prizes. When you press start and here that engine fire up, you will have started on the terrific journey that is Squash My Car, the newest form of motorsport. Thanks for joining us. SQUASH IT!
