There are a couple of adverts online. Confusingly, one of them says "all the S4 Spiders were made left-hand drive..." yet another advert for a "1990 Spider S4" is quite clearly an RHD car.
Hmmm, not entirely convinced by the conversion nonsense!
How does a Series 3 compare in terms of quality? I'll have a look around the AROC website tomorrow and see what more I can find out about the various models.
And blimey, who wants a RHD car with windscreen wipers designed for a LHD and which don't properly clear the driver's side of the screen?
The trouble is, the new Spiders are so *ugly*. They have that aggressive frown-like look that a lot of cars seem to have these days - almost as if the designers are deliberately playing on the anthropomorphic tendencies of mankind, and think it's good to make something that looks positively *angry* rather than elegant and refined.
Yes, I'd read that in one of the AROC pages last night.
Blimey, that's a bit cheap-skate for major producers such as those. It isn't that difficult just to make a mirror image component set for the windscreen wipers and scuttle, surely.
I'm a little bit wary of this LHD/RHD issue with the Spiders as it's fundamentally a *bodge* even if it's done well. However, I'm not sure what else I could look at to get Alena. If it were my choice I'd look for an MG RV8 (at least I would know the engine very well) but that would be 50% more expensive.
Yebbut the right side wiper arm on your car has the goofy double pivot that swoops the wiper blade around and cleans almost all of the right side of the windscreen/windshield.
Yes, but it's virtually the only modern roadster that looks like a classic car. Almost every car made these days is just piss ugly, so nothing with a modern build quality is worth buying.
For example, my wife would like a Spider, but the new ones (about 2007 onwards, I think) are just *ugly*, as I said earlier. Similar cars by other manufacturers are the same. The lines are overdesigned, the front ends are just nasty "snarling faces". Ugly, nasty, brutish....
Like architecture, the styling of cars will be seen as good when there have historical resonance. I bet you that in 50 years time people will still say that the clean, elegant lines of classic cars are just as beautiful as we see them now. Just as Georgian houses will be still beautiful compared to the artless ugly boxes that get built today.
A 50-year Alfa Romeo Spider, or a 50-year old Audi built in 2013 will just be "another piss-ugly car from the 2010s". There may be one or two rare examples of designs from today that stand out as worthy. There were plenty of rubbish-looking cars from 50 years ago which are only "classics" today because they are rare, not because they're lovely. But in my view, something that we see today as a "classic" style will in 50 years still be a classic style. An MG RV8 will look good in 2050. Nobody will care about a 2013 Alfa Romeo Spider.
Let's wait until I'm 95 so we can found out if I'm right or not!
The left hand one wipes right up to the screen edge - the blade is parallel to it at that point. The driver's side has a small triangle at the top untouched. But I've never found it a problem in practice.
The RV8 is not the most beautiful car by a long shot but it's better looking than most things made today, whether or not you think it's not as good as the older car it was based on.
There was an RV8 and an original B at the Ace Cafe this Tuesday, and the original just looked so much better.
The RV8 is a pretty dreadful car - it neither goes or handles well compared to its contemporaries, so I really see no point in it. Other than as a curiosity.
I could see the point if they weren't so highly priced. But that reflects the number of old gimmers taken in by the hype / marketing.
For £5k or so, they'd be an interesting curiosity - but you can buy a significantly better TVR, or even a Ferrari Mondial for the same kind of cash as you'd need for an RV8.
But TVRs are pretty dreadfully noisy inside, and having seen the dreadful box-girder-like chassis they're constructed on, I've always thought they were pretty crude and nasty despite the reasonably well-styled bodyshell on the top.
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