RX: "I like old British cars. They remained 'human scaled' a lot longer than ours."This somehow came from a discussion of "trafficators".
Me: "The worst part though was after the war, when the socialists took all their automotive stylists out and made them kneel in a row beside a ditch and shot them. After that, their cars looked like their handguns. The 1950s produced some spectacularly ugly little cars in England..."
RX: "Yes, but they'd been bombed a lot and drank heavily, so some of those cars were the equivalent of waking up in the night screaming."
Friday, September 27, 2013
Overheard in the Office...
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33 comments:
They remained 'human scaled' a lot longer than ours...
Are british humans smaller than me? I've sat in one of those.
Airline seats a palatial monuments to ergonomics in comparison.
That car is so ugly it's beautiful!
Hey, I drove one of those in South Africa in my distant youth! They were cute! Not very reliable, and pretty sluggish, and the worst electronics that the fiendish imagination of Lucas, Prince of Darkness, could provide . . . but cute!
Heh, I think Roberta got it... :-)
Roberta got it indeed. And if that's the standard for "spectacularly ugly", then I have to ask what excuse American car designers had in the 60s, 70s, and most of the 80s.
(No question, American cars of the same era as that Austin looked better than it did. But when not-too-long-after we started producing cars far uglier, and didn't stop for decades...well, best we not throw those stones too hard, eh? :) )
Not bad really, in a Metropolitan kind of way, and better than some of Japan's current models (yeah I'm lookin' *gag* at you, Juke).
And the little thing next to it was (and is) truly iconic.
-chaz-
Well, the Brits can make ugly (Bond Bug comes to mind), but it takes an East German to be able to make a car out of nothing but steel and misery.
gvi
WV: tetsuo. The most disturbing Japanese horror-porn movie ever made (which is a pretty high bar to jump).
... I think the A30 is quite tolerably handsome, actually.
Good, clean lines*.
Now, the size is another matter.
(* I'm of the set that thinks, for example, that the '57 Chevy is overdone - the '56s were much better - and that "old era" American car design peaked in 1964, with the 1970s mostly best consigned to the trash-heap of history.)
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3385/3312707652_b8ffb9fdd2.jpg
Saw one of these in the parking lot for the guest quarters at Casermo Ederle in Vicenza, Italy. That guy in the picture about my height.
gvi
chaz:
where do you think the Metropolitan was built?
wv: nfuture 78. Bad year for cars here.
"Are british humans smaller than me? I've sat in one of those."
Yes. They were still rationing food well into the 50's. On top of which, English food was never very attractive in the first place...
Holy crap! 0.8L engine on 70 octane!
Guess food wasn't the only thing being rationed.
The Brits also made some truly beautiful cars such as the XK 120 Jaguars, E type Jaguars, Most of the Aston Martins. Still equipped with Lucas (the prince of darkness) electrics though.
Will:
Where do you think the Metropolitan was designed?
-chaz-
Roger, the continued use of Lucas electrics is the engineering equivalent of Peanuts' Lucy VanPelt's "If I'm not right, then I'm gonna be wrong at the top of my lungs!".
There once was a woman of fashion
Who was known to be brimming with passion -
She was heard to have said
As she took to her bed,
"Here's one thing the bastards can't ration!"
- British war-era limerick
gvi
1966 was the last year an auto company designed a car with out any input from the government. every year after gov mandates got worse.
"Austin's answer to the Morris Minor." Ah.
Having owned a string of Morris Minors in New England before I understood fully why this was a bad idea, I was disappointed to find that the trafficator recesses held only cover plates.
"The 1950s produced some spectacularly ugly little cars in England..."
And some that are drop-dead sexy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1956_Austin-Healey_100_Roadster.JPG
Curt
70 octane is right. For years after the war, even racing was done on "pool petrol", which was 70 octane. And I can't see that little Austin as being in any way ugly. I'd own one in a flash. But then I also thought a lot of the MG Magnette.
chaz:
I forgot it was only built in England. Designed in the US/Italy. Pininfarina!
Cute cars. Wouldn't mind having one now.
So RX's excuse for ugly post-war UK cars is, "They'd been bombed and were bombed?"
Oh ugly British cars...how I love thee...
I helped my neighbor get his 1988 Sterling (the American import of a POS Rover), the other day. Talk about UGLY, imported for two years, and a complete piece of junk. It took as an hour to get the thing mobile and it had just run the day before.
-Rob
RevolverRob,
The amazing thing about the Sterling is that it's nothing but a British-built Honda (Acura) Legend. How did they mess that up?
I remember reading about a 1950era Holden ( Australian marque) it founded fabulous, seats 6, gets 30mpg, looked decent enough...and the I got to the HP spec - 25 HP.
As my australian buddy commented: Bloody hell, my lawn tractor has more power than that.
0-60mph time? Don't ask.
You two sure have interesting pillow talk.
According to the Wikipedia link that little toy car does 0-60 in 42.3 with a top speed of 67 MPH.
It isn't ugly, but oh is it slow.
Worst looking American cars were the late 50's-early 60's and the mid-70's.
Strange lines and angles abound. Overall best looking ones were the mid-60s to early 70's.
Or pillar talk, anyway.
(I am once again amazed at the amount of ritual hate for Lucas electrics. I've owned two 1973/74 MGBs and an XJ-6 and have had no trouble other than normal wear (and rust-related grounding issues on the MGs, which isn't the fault of Lucas). It's not that complicated. You do have to understand basic electricity/electronics and the very low fuse count makes it unforgiving of mistakes, but it's not as failure-prone as people like to claim. U.S./UK engineering approaches differ, as things like ring mains, switched power sockets and fused-by-default plugs amply demonstrate, but it's not worse, just different, and you can find examples of the latter two right here in the States)
Anonymouse 11:34,
Yeah, lotsa pillows in the office.
Anonymouse here, did not mean anything by the pillowtalk that's just what my roommates girlfriend called it when me an him yapped through the door when she either wanted sleep or lovin'.The Sunbeam Tiger is one car the brits did right and we gave em the motor that made it roar like they gave us the RR Merlin that made the Mustang roar back in WW II.
Roberta:
the pitifull weather-proofing designs of Lucas was more than half of the problem with that brand. I can't comment on their stuff beyond the mid-70's, as I stopped playing with British things made by then.
I suspect that part of the problem was the British regs that mandated home-grown products be used. After those went away, most British companies would have to improve or die. When you ban competition, there is no incentive to do a good job. Just human nature at work.
Throw in unionized workers, and it is a wonder that they survived the war. Incredible how stupid people can be, in a socialized environment. Some of the stories I've read of ww2 factory workers there are stunning. Up through the 70's (at least) they were acting the same.
A buddy of mine had a 1969 Triumph Spitfire. He ended up buying a second one - for parts!
He learned a lot about fixing cars, owning that. That's the good news, and the bad! He now wishes he had back the time he spent fixing the damn thing.
Also, F**K Google Blogger's captchas! If I ever get this posted, it'll prolly be the last thing I post to a Blogger blog.
OK, I lied about the "last comment ever" - because I just remembered "ring mains".
I'm a BSEE and I'm sitting here, slackjawed at that. The explanation from Wiki - that it was in response to copper shortage - just does not compute. They should have just borrowed money to buy more - they were already Socialists.
That there is some screwed up stuff. I don't even want to think about the EMF problems.
From the same people who brought us RADAR, Fighter Control, and many of the features of modern aircraft carriers - the mind boggles.
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