Fast and cheap classic?

These things (and Evos and anything with a stupid-looking spoiler fitted by the manufacturer) are all driven by Darren, a 34 year old regional sales manager for a photocopier company. He has two children and a wife whom he may let go back to work soon.

He does almost all his driving on motorways, going to clients. The only sort of overtaking he can do is to pull out, accelerate, pass, slow down, and pull in. He needs a spare lane to do this. He has no idea how to overtake on single carriageways.

I see 'em all the time. Normally getting smaller in a 30 year old rear view mirror.

Ian

Ian Johnston ( snipped-for-privacy@btinternet.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Not *ALL* of them are driven by Darren.

Some of them are driven by Darren's identical twin and colleague who fancies himself as a bit of a Schumacher, and does track-days whenever the missus lets him. He thinks he's *IT*, and knows EXACTLY what'll happen when he plants it, because he'll do so at EVERY opportunity. He'll happily overtake as long as the road's wide enough to not actually physically clash mirrors as he does so, and as long as there's not actually an oncoming vehicle within - ooooh - about 10yds of a head-on when he does the overtake.

Second that, the after-market Weber on my delapidated 240 Estate does the same - AND the slushbox hangs onto the gears until the last minute (5800 RPM with redline at 6K !). Nice click though, as it is cut in, but boy is it thirsty if you use it often - not to mention the cloud of smoke out the back*

• I'm sure this is not oil, the old girl rarely requires a top-up. It just has to be poorly combusted fuel ...

:)

I think there /are/ some around here which belong to the rally boys (bois yr rali?), but that one may have come up from the N. Wales coast...

Some of them are driven by Dazza, Darren's illegitimate offspring from a college tryst some 15 years ago. If he can get his ankle tag off for the night, he likes nothing better than a quiet drive. His girlfriend Traace helps, as she knows how to wriggle her ankle chain off single-handed when it gets caught on the back seat coathooks.

After a nice bit of parking on the front at Portishead, Dazza likes nothing better than to thrash the "borrowed" Scooby up and down at 2am, outside my fecking house !

It's not the sound of racing riceburners that I mind, it's their crappy music and the searchligh of the heliplodder shining in through my roof windows.

I once wrote to customer sales, support, whatever at BL, complaining about the brakes on one of my 2600's. They didn't want to know. As far as they were concerned there was nothing wrong with them. So regardless of what you or I thaught of the brakes, they were actually OK. Mike.

Errr....

I drove an Astra van, white one too, across the North Yorks moors in the snow in the mid-90's. All I know is that it didn't go below 60, even round the bends, mainly because I was very, very late to get home. I did the trip in a third of the time it took the usual van driver in good weather. The bonus was that nobody else was stupid enough to be on the roads that day.

David

Hell, I just enjoyed - yes, really - a drive to Edinburgh and back in a Mercedes A140. I was expecting it to be underpowered, slow and painful. In fact, it's remarkably capable - you have to /drive/, of course, you can't forget about gears and such, but it's still quite a capable machine.

And that's without considering the crude, 1.6 Vitara I made some poor rep in an Audi A6 Avant TDI (03 reg) feel rather stupid in, after he dithered around behind a bus for several miles, only to have me shoot past him and the bus because - not tailgating said mobile roadblock - I could see the road ahead was clear. However, that probably didn't make him feel quite as silly as, having driven like a nutcase to pass me (nearly hitting oncoming traffic), he held me up through a series of bends whilst driving on the wrong side of the road. Not that he wasn't trying - those Audis must really understeer.

Richard

That's because Darren cannot steer and accelerate/brake at the same time. Deep down it's because he's scared of doing so, but he will never admit this to himself. He internalises the inadequacy and takes solace in his spoiler.

He dreams of one day owning a BMW. It's a driver's car, and he's a driver.

Ian

"Willy Eckerslyke" wrote

I once drove through Oxford with an advanced police driver who managed to go right through the place without stopping. He was able to anticipate traffic lights and slow down or speed up accordingly. In fact he rarely used the brakes at all.

I insisted this performance had to be a fluke, so he turned the car round and did it again going the other way.

Not stopping is a remarkably rapid way to get around and does not require an especially powerful car.

"Ian Johnston" wrote

You can spot Darren by his excessive use of accelerator and brake in an overtake. Darren floors it and keeps accelerating until his taillights have actually passed the headlamps of the car in front. Then, and only then, he notices that he's about to crash into the car in front of the one he's just passed. So he slams the brakes on.

At no time does Darren come off the gas mid-overtake and decelerate gracefully into position ahead of the car he's passing without use of the brakes. No sirree. Darren needs to stamp on that brake, even if the gap he's aiming for is 200 yards long.

As a police driver (not a particularly advanced one) in Southampton in the late 60s and early 70s, I also used to do this. Only in the small hours though. It was more a case of knowing the traffic light sequences and timing than dealing with traffic. For extra grins, we'd also do it without using the clutch, which needs a bit more smoothness.

Austin Cambridges, Morris Oxfords, Mk 3 Cortinas and Mk 1 Escorts mostly. The Ford synchromeshes were definitely better than the BL ones.

I remember that the accelerator pedal return spring on a Morris Oxford broke one night and the pedal fell to the floor, unleashing all of the, what, 50(?) horsepower in second gear. Took me a second or two to react and kill the engine. I looped 2 or 3 thick rubber bands together and strung them between the pedal and the choke knob to get back to the nick. Them was the days...

| | Same would go for Jensen-Healeys and Jensen GTs, possibly even more so.

Oh, I don't know. I've had a Jensen GT for the past seven years and it's hardly cost me a bean to kee- oh, hang on, where's the shirt gone off my back?

David.

Unless he was overtaking, it's no faster than starting/stopping.

Then the return spring on the SU carb was broken too - if it fell to the floor.

Maybe that was it, all I remember is that the pedal just flopped onto the floor. It was a long time ago... I was very proud of my jury rigged rubber band solution though.

"Dean Dark" wrote

Interestingly, doing this impresses female passengers a lot more IME than driving through town centres at 90mph. You'd think the Darrens of this world would have sussed this out, to their advantage, but it seems not.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote

And he was. We would get passed by people accelerating towards a red light.

30 yards from it they'd hit the brake and be at a standstill as we went through as it changed to green.

If you think how fast you'd need to be going through an urban area in the moving phases while starting-and-stopping at an average speed of say 15mph, it's probably faster than the limit.

The other thing I remember - a habit I still have - is of pressing the button on the handbrake before applying it. OK, so the ratchet only costs

50p, by why knacker it prematurely? Likewise engine braking. This bloke didn't do it on the grounds that wearing out the engine is costlier than wearing out brake pads.

With you there.

But not there. I really, really can't see how engine braking can possibly cause any significant extra wear on an engine, compared to the wear it gets when producing power. Same with gearboxes: at the most it will give a minute amount of wear on the opposite sides of the teeth fom normal.

Ian