am i having a mad elder like moment?

With BL they probably dipped it by accident.

Reply to
Depresion
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Hah my mate had one of those, in chocolate brown!

Reply to
Abo

single 40 with a big bit of the bulkhead modified :)

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Reply to
Rob

Sorry but you are confusing "car" with "youth".

That happens quite a lot: we had to remake, literally rebuild as new, a Citroen 2cv. The man who ordered it had fond memories of it, just like you had with the Escort.

When we delivered, he immediately paid in cash (5 times the orginal price), loaded up his wife and they went for a spin.

The restored 2 cv was spotless, but they were back half an hour later, hugely dissappointed. The car was there again, it was the same but their youth didn't return.

You wouldn't accept now to receive a car as badly build as the Escort, the Mini or similar. But when you are young (and with little or no money), everything is great: sleeping on the ground, shagging in a half repaired tent is adventure.

Yours was an Escort, mine a FSO Polonez "Limousine"...

I'll let you into a secret, my dear chap: nobody has a soul. The whole "soul"-story is all made up.

As to "British thing"... Is that the Britishness as in Topgear where JC almost gets an orgasm if he can shuffle words like "c*ck", "arse", "f*ck" in? Or is it in the 1000-s of Donner Kebab, Indian Tandooris or Chinese take-aways which have replaced every "Fish and Chips"?

You are clinging on the an idea of "Britishness" but sorry, this is 2007 soon to be 2008: TVR is bought by a Russian and then went belly-up; Mini, Rolls and Bentley are German, British Leyland no more than a faint memory, Rover has become Roewe, even Lotus is not Lots Of Trouble Usually Serious anymore but Malaisan-owned.

It seems like the Empire has been taken over by the Krauts and its former colonies. So much for Britishness.

Happy 2008!

Tom De Moor

Reply to
Tom De Moor

Last time I saw 1 UKP = 1.36 Eur

A 36% devaluation is something to be avoided.

Tom De Moor

Reply to
Tom De Moor

And Proton is in even more bother. At least they were back in June when they were in talks with VAG for funding.

Reply to
Elder

All for the same reason: if a car manufacturer doesn't provide a decently build vehicle which runs close too error-free for 150-200 kmiles, clients will sue him and sue him succesfully.

Seems that only Germans and some Japanese have sufficient stamina to obtain this goal and once they reached it, will search to improve again.

Think about this example: Rolls-Royce claimed to build the best cars in the world. Why then could they not provide 1 car without an oil leaking engine untill BMW arrived?

The times when a customer accepted a lousy car, are over: there is choice and the means of attacking the car companies.

Tom De Moor

Reply to
Tom De Moor

I agree with almost all your posts Tom, but you seem to be talking out of your Belgian arse at the mo. Of course you think "Britishness" is dead, you don't live here, you live in Belgium, possibly the country with the biggest identity crisis in Europe.

Yes, we british like "toilet humour". No, we haven't lost all our engineering expertise, just have a look at F1 and work out what percentage of the cars are designed/built in Britain. True we don't have a motor manufacturing business to speak of anymore though..

Just because we don't all dress in tweed, eat high tea and drink earl grey with our pinkys out doesn't mean we're not British anymore, it just means "Britishness" has evolved.

I'm English, I have no identity crisis, I know who I am and am proud of my roots, the fact that I can buy a kebab at 3 in the morning doesn't change the fact that we have thousands of years of "Britishness" to draw on :)

You need to understand that Britain is the same as it has been through history, fixed borders for the last few thousand years lends a permanance that few other countries have experienced, we're still that damp island off the north coast of Europe and proud of it ;)

Reply to
Tony Bond

I totally do sometimes :-p I usually think something like "having an old MG to go hill climbing in would be a right laugh" at the same time. I'm not even kidding here. I'm a bit weird.

S'cos we're better than everyone else. Especially in Yorkshire. Gods chosen people. Or something.

Reply to
Iridium

:))

The identity crisis in Belgium is not because of Belgians not knowing their identity but just because the majority becoming to know and appreciate it fully. And there is a small question of big money that goes along with it.

There are no Belgians, Sir... there never have been.

Furthermore I don't have to live in the UK to appreciate Britishness. I luckily visit the UK quite often, about 4-8 times a year.

There is nothing wrong with it but the very quality the Brits were proud of, is lost: the way of the understatement. Go and count how many times "f*ck", "c*ck" and similar go per Top Gear-show: it is getting boring.

Brits were proud of tradition but you've lost the edge. You had *all* the expertise but it seemingly was impossible to evolve, to keep improving. The Mini contained 30 years after being launched still errors that should have erased after the second year of existence.

An example of the opposite? The new (BMW) Mini. In about 5-7 years it allready has received more updates and evolutions than the original one and that while it was vastly better from the start.

I have been recentely in a McLaren F1 and what did it feel like? Dated. No evolution. It was build and that's it. 10-15 years later competition has picked up and depassed it by the proverbial mile.

The fact that F1 and most motorsports are based -still for the moment because you are loosing that too quite fast (McLaren is actually owned by Mercedes, while BMW opted to leave Williams and do it themselves) - is because at a certain moment in time you had it all coming together: ex-aircraft specialists, a lot of circuits (all ex-airfields), a more free legislation than on the European mainland, etc.

That industrie has created its own momentum but then again: knowledge, style and design have no boundaries anymore. The headstart you had, is gone and the Germans, bombed to the stone age by the Brits, do now the dealing in F1, in engineering and anything else...

Sorry to be rude: wake up and prove otherwise. I always taught -and still do-: "Brits = capable of the best, capable of the worst".

As I have been confronted with the horrible underpinnings of a TVR Tuscan (you need to undo bolts to get to the engine, the chassis is a laughing stock), we have had the worst.

Next visit to the UK (feb 2008) is the Ultima factory/workshop in Hinckley, Leicester. So don't say that a bloke from an indentity-striken smallish country doesn't give you credit!

Best for 2008!

Tom De Moor

Reply to
Tom De Moor

But you still don't understand the nation?

Humourless lot, you Belgians, aren't you?

You obviously don't understand the British at all, if you can't 'get' the joke in James May saying 'c*ck'.

People kept buying it and loved it, why change a winning formula?

No, the 'new Mini' always was, and always will be an overgrown tart's handbag.

It's not clever in any way at all - granted, they drive well, but it's just a modern, retro-styled hatch.

It was always meant to be a one-off 'look what we can do' project - McClaren have no plans to enter full-scale car production.

Ron Dennis has the majority shareholding in the team, so you're wrong there.

BMW went it alone because that's the way F1 is going - they were joining the Ferrari / Renault club.

But most teams have a UK base for design and manufacture.

The German economy is rapidly disappearing down the pan, too.

But still, a much better attempt than anything Belgium has ever built.

TVR may have gone under, but they were building cars with Porsche eating performance for half the price.

Reply to
SteveH

Well it was 1.50 a year ago. And with lots of BoE rate cuts on the way it wouldn't surprise me if it gets close to 1.00.

Reply to
Tom Robinson

I had a '93 mini cooper on carbs, which I modded over a couple of years before stuffing it through a wall. I loved the thing, and it NEVER failed to put a stupid grin on my face, but I will never own another. On the 1.3 engine, I used to get about 40mpg, and fairly poor performance. I built up a stage 3 1380cc engine, which gave just over

100Bhp, making it a hell of a lot nicer to drive, and with improved fuel economy to boot!

So, yes, it may be cheaper on fuel than the BM. Parts may also be cheaper, but the problem is that you will need lots of them. Lots and lots. Over the nearly 3 years I owned mine, I averaged £25 a week on

*parts* for the thing. Some of them were tuning bits, but the majority were just to keep it on the road. I was doing the work myself, so if you were to get work done at a garage it would cost you a naffing fortune.

One cold and damp morning, the passenger side track-rod end failed, resulting in me sliding sedately off the road and through a dry-stone-wall. I'm very very glad that I was going pretty slowly, and took the impact with the passenger front-side, 'cos if it had been the drivers side, I may well not be walking today - there is no crumple zone!

Whilst I have a major soft spot for the mini, I can't recommend that you get one - whilst it will make you giggle constantly, it will cost you a fortune, eat up most of your spare time and possibly maim you.

Reply to
Albert T Cone

Sorry, where's the down-side? :-)

cheers, clive

Reply to
Clive George

Heh, I'm getting old, aren't I?

Reply to
Albert T Cone

Cars that can kill you are cool - cars that can maim and leave you broked aren't as cool ;-)

Reply to
Iridium

"Cuts heal, bones mend, and chicks dig scars". The slightly softer option to "Live fast, Die young and leave a beautiful corpse"

Reply to
Elder

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