BYO (Bring your own)

I was reading TJ13′s blog the other day, there is a question over the new Caterham exhaust which has a gas guide vane in exit channel after the exhaust pipe itself ends. However in order to test the legality of this it will require careful measurement to establish whether it lies inside or outside the invisible cone which must be clear of bodywork from the very end of the pipe up to the rear wheel centreline. The easiest way to measure this (in this case) is to use a template/gauge. The ID of the exhaust pipe is probably the maximum allowed, so a template having a straight section of say 74.5mm width and 100mm length should fit into the pipe, then the cone can be added on the same axis. If I were doing the job I would probably use a flat template in 2 or 3 pieces. A straight-edge can be laid on the cone part in order to establish interference at greater distance.

However what this actually brought to mind was my early days at Pioneer, when on only my second day I was told I would be at a meeting with Alfa Romeo at Ambrosetti to discuss the installation of our (Pioneer) head units (radios/cassette combination units though Pioneer always called them “Stereos”) in all Alfa Cars imported to the UK. They would be installed at the import centre of Ambrosetti at Richborough opposite and just a few yards up the road from the power station, which had huge cooling towers. (demolished last year I think) Also about half a mile south of Pegwell Bay where the Hovercraft used to roam and was, maybe still is, home to a colourful Viking ship. Also not far from Sandwich. (nor from The Huntsman pub, Whisky and lemonade for Gordon, Perrier for Murdo and a pint for me, yes it was that long ago, when one could still have a drink at lunchtime, in fact it was quite normal if with customers)

I should set the background to this as follows:
This was a time when car radio was an optional extra when you bought a new car, but some manufacturers were starting to include a car radio/stereo in the car spec as standard or as a standard option. Around 80% of head units sold were as part of the car sale or within one month of car purchase.

Car radio/stereo was the highest value accessory the car dealer sold, and was a major profit source when margins on cars were very tight, indeed most only made any money on the car if it was a large or top end one, apart from that it was what was called “dealer support” than kept many going. So having it already fitted in fact robbed many dealers of a good income, BMW dealers in particular.

The regulations governing what could be fitted in a car differed according to whether it was OEM or aftermarket. This came down to whether it was part of the car spec (requiring Type Approval) or not. (Aftermarket came under “construction and use” regs, very rarely tested, though in theory any car on the road can be stopped and checked) In this case it meant that our head units, which were known for their flashy chrome knobs and levers, suddenly had to pass homologation including the internal protrusion regulations, something very far from the mind of their designer in Japan.

I cannot claim to remember the detail of the internal protrusion regulations but in general they specified that things in the car which could be contacted by either a “kneeform” or a 100mm dia ball must not be sharp. ie It must have minimum contactable radius. If contactable by the headform and having a protrusion of over 3m (I think) then in addition it had to be of a minimum cross-section and remain of said cross-section on application of a load.
The dashboard, where in each car the head unit was to be mounted, fell in the “headform” contactable area and was thus to be assessed using a “headform” To my knowledge at that time the DOT who carried out the tests did not possess a headform, in fact there were only two in the country, both owned by major motor manufacturers.

With more than a nod to the general panic of Italian organisation that I came to have an affection for in later years, the cars had to be homologated by a date only 4 working days away. These dates are usually dreamed up by sales or promotional people who neither know nor care about the amount of work necessary to get things done. Fortunately there used to be a brotherhood of sufferance amongst technical/practical people in the industry, thus under the auspices of this it was made possible that I arrived in the car park of the DOT at Bristol one grey Monday morning with a cardboard cutout of a headform.
[A head form was a 165MM dia ball. pierced by a 50mm dia displaceable cylinder having its axis at right angles to a tangent of its nominated front face. this provided a calibrated measurable displacement when applied to the item to be assessed. In normal tests the headform would be anchored to the frame representing a skeleton and fixed to the car at the hips or "H"points. ]

I also had my tools and the head units, but the problem was that the Pioneer units in those days were intended for aftermarket only and designed to be as flashy and gauche as possible resulting in a nightmare of chrome and sharp edges. So I did the only thing possible and installed the head units recessed a good 10mm further back than normal so that the headform did not touch them at all, however one applied it.
Thus the “We claim compliance….” got stamped “approved” by a bemused DOT engineer who commented that the compliance was very much to the letter rather than the spirit of the regulations.

Thus as it is in F1, it is all in how you write the regs that decides how easy it is to circumvent them. Though in later years, as head units became fitted as OEM, the knobs and buttons all got flatter and wider and designed to shear off under impact. (At least for those who were OEM oriented, Pioneer lagged behind for a long time)

I tried to check the old internal protrusion regs as I wrote this but all I could find was a modern document that has been “EUised” it is here in case anyone is feeling obsessive, I have not checked how much it differs from what we used 30 odd years ago. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31974L0060:EN:HTML

I am happy to note that Ambrosetti is still there on the same site, (though with different owners) still in the same business of PDI and rectification, but part of a much larger group. http://www.ambrosetti.co.uk/services.php
I wonder if they could still do the job they did back all those years ago on all the old Alfas, PDI, Rectification, special paint, badges etc. Underseal with grillaguard or whatever the nasty black gunge was called (the guys had a less than complimentary name for it) fitting head units, loudspeakers, grilles and antennas all from scratch, wiring it all up, there was no radio prep in those days. (yes we drilled metal then too and we had cars still in wax!)

Looking back now they did a huge job very well, though at the time 30 years ago there was no other option.
I used to go down to Ambrosetti once a month and do a quality check on the installations in the car park of several hundred cars, (hence the reason I have a high vis jacket that still sits in my car.) the guys all worked in pairs and left their initials on the job cards in each car. I used to produce a results table identifying Type, chassis nr, each part of the job (which would be annotated with any fault) and the team initials, then pin it on the workshop notice board. There was some ribbing of each other but all taken in good heart. Cars with faults had to be rectified by the guys that made the error. (I think they were paid per car then so it cost them to make mistakes) Very rarely did anyone need re-training or bitch about being found at fault. One thing I found was that in most of the import centres where we had units being fitted, with either a colleague or myself having done the initial training, the guys doing the job always found better or faster ways of doing it. (and maintaining quality) There is always a huge amount of ingenuity, knowledge and talent on the shop floor which goes largely unrecognised and unrewarded. I learned a lot of respect for the guys doing those jobs, they were there often because that’s all the work there was around, but they made the most of it. Though initially, I may have shown them what to do, there is no way I could have done it myself, all day, all week, all month. So if any guys who worked at Ambrosetti Richborough, fitting Pioneer stereos into Alfas 30 years ago should read this, I salute you.

Mercedes 2013 and onward strategy

I think I have sussed Merc’s new cunning plan. it is quite simple really:
Merc will employ everybody in F1, thus leaving nobody to work in other teams.
This may sound expensive but with the Bernie money for winning, it should easily cover the extra cost.

Who makes up these costs? Blair again?

I was not in a good mood to start with but, reading last weeks Moneyweek over breakfast today I found in “Tabloid Money” the small article about the squirrel rescued by seven firemen and three fire engines. Apparently the episode cost £6000!

Ridiculous, how can it possibly cost £6000?  Let me see a cost breakdown please.

I am willing to bet that at least 50 % of the cost is due to Blair’s thousands of spurious laws that micro manage all aspects of our life.  One can only hope that we exit the EU and dump all laws that were imposed by Blair in the name of eliminating common sense. Firemen not allowed to slide down poles any more because after hundreds of years it is suddenly dangerous. Firemen’s beds taken away  and replaced by armchairs which they are not allowed to use until they have been specially trained. They did not want the armchairs and needed their sleep on standby which they no longer get. Thus they are uncomfortable stressed and tired. Well done!

Still that’s what Blair did to most of the country, left us uncomfortable, stressed and tired, oh, and poorer, after selling our country to Belgium to rule over, the only bit of his plan to go wrong is that he did not get to be President, to lord it over us himself, but he has made up for it by getting sickeningly rich. He was sent to the middle east as a european peacemaker, that went well !!  It revealed his true capabilities to the world. Was it just perversity that made him change religion to the one most hated in the middle east before he went there?

But who is it that quotes these gigantic, out of all proportion figures for all incidents involving public services? Is it perhaps the same sort of people who commission government projects or buy defence technology. The people who seem totally ignorant of what the purpose is and keep adding to the spec. That’s why we have Typhoons, fighters with no guns in them (whereas the Tornado did) but  they must also be Bombers with no bomb bays. GR and air defence too,

I speculated upon what sort of animal these people would have designed when asked for a sheep to grow wool. They would then ask that the same animal gave cows milk, and provided beef and bacon. (An Alpaca is probably the best compromise)

Look at the Bowman radio for our troops, it doesn’t work in anything but flat open terrain if both transmitter and receiver stand up and can see each other. It weighs ten times what the US equivalent does and theirs works, man to man, man to aircraft, man to tank/artillery , man to command post or FOB. Ours doesn’t,  but it cost about ten times what it should and took ten times longer that it should have to reach operational service. I would have all those involved in it tried for treason and shot, well maybe just shot!

One of the hazards of a democracy I suppose that only totally ignorant politicians and their staff are allowed to handle projects. Expertise is bought willy nilly and assessed by the same incompetents in charge, very very slowly, with as many expense account dinners as possible. Making a decision is put off for as long as possible in order to postpone the fateful day their incompetence is exposed.  The principles of “Yes Minister” are very much alive and costing us about 75% of every government  project.

Arrrgggghhhh!!!!!!

 

The DPF scandal in waiting.

Diesel Particulate filters, are the means by which the modern generation of diesels achieve very low levels of soot emissions. You will find them on a now rapidly increasing overall percentage of cars on the road as new highly efficient diesels replace a lot of petrol engines. They have become respectable, middle managers, even department heads now drive diesels, but very few are aware of the consequences.

Firstly the DPF does not work until it has reached operating temperature, this takes on most affected cars, a good 20 minutes of steady high speed (for a diesel) constant driving, eg. on a motorway. The DPF collects the particles on wet surfaces, but every so often regenerates by burning/blowing out the accumulated muck in a black cloud, very nice, very clean!

If one does not regularly do journeys of 20 miles fast cruise then the thing does not get hot enough to work and instead it clogs up, an error is then shown on the car’s monitoring system. Apparently at this stage you are stuffed, the DPF cannot be cleaned by any normal method** and it needs replacing, and your car’s computer re-setting. Around £1500-£1800 per car or more for some makes.

**There are some places offering a cleaning service using  ultrasound equipment but theses are few and far between and not cheap. One also has to consider the terms of the car’s guarantee.

It is true that one can have the DPF removed from the exhaust system and the car’s software hacked so as not to look for the sensor/sender, but this would of course invalidate the car warranty. (and probably increase the insurance, it is definitely a modification which if undeclared could mean an excuse not to pay a claim.) Though currently apparently, this is legal in the UK, it is rumoured that the MOT law will be soon changed to say that anything which changes the exhaust emission output from the factory spec is not allowed.

So folks that is why, in spite of  the approx two to three times advantage in mpg I have just bought a petrol engined car.  (Update: very disappointing petrol mpg so far)  I do a very low annual mileage nowadays, so do many of the people who have unwittingly bought a DPF cost time  bomb.

I only know about this because my nephew runs a garage and now spends around 30% of his time replacing DPFs.

If you are buying a new diesel car or one built in the last few years be sure to ask if it has a DPF and ask what mileage you need to do to keep it working correctly.

This will be the same sort of scandal as car owners finding they have no spare wheel, just a can of temporary re-inflation gunge, little use if one has a blowout. Spare wheels are an option now!

Football

I am what most, perhaps would consider, abnormally disdainful of football, it stems from my childhood.

I was thin and weedy as a child, I did not like eating, I can remember being taken to the doctor’s because I ate “Not enough to keep a sparrow alive”, however the doctor was unconcerned when he heard that I did eat bread or toast with dripping and Marmite. (That would still be a favourite if one could afford a big piece of beef and hence the dripping.) He also said my pulse was so slow that I would never have any heart problems, I am now on Beta blockers, but it was still slow anyway. He also said that I have poor circulation which is very true. He was always getting arrested for speeding and was in the local paper nearly every week.

Footballs were made of leather and very heavy, done up with laces which would leave a imprint or cut wherever they hit you, in wet weather the leather absorbed a lot of water and became twice as heavy.

Obviously being a 4 stone weakling, looking like two xylophones glued together back to back, I was not keen on PE, but the real anathema was “Games”, these were enforced regardless of weather conditions in the school playing field one afternoon per week.  The large yobbos I spent my time avoiding in the playground and corridors took full advantage here. A football kicked with even moderate force could easily knock me over, usually inflicting heavy bruising as well. I was in pain from the start however because I had chilblains on all my fingers and toes, which hurt like hell especially if touched. I was quite normal for me to have at least 6 or 8 bandages on burst chilblains on both fingers an toes. It was difficult to write or concentrate over the pain. . On the football field, in  shorts and vest with heavy leather football boots and shin pads my main concern as I endured my chilblain pain, was the ball coming in my direction. The ball would be followed by a mob which would kick me and knock me over on the frozen ground, so my reaction was to kick the ball as far away as I could in any direction, this of course hurt my foot,  I had no objective except survival and not getting any more hurt than normal. Being weedy was an attraction to bullies.  In the summer for a couple of months I was free of chilblains, but then it was cricket season, which meant standing in the field trying not to get hit and consequently knocked out by the ball, the equivalent of a 5 pounder cannon ball. I used to play aeroplanes to pass the time, making sure I was never close enough to catch the ball which would practically take one’s hand off.

I can remember people saying that I needed to plunge my hands from bowls of hot water to cold and back in order to increase circulation. They had no idea! The pain of the change of temperature just coming indoors from  outside was almost unbearable, the only treatment was Zambuck a sort of Tiger Balm, totally ineffective.

I still get the damn things even now but not nearly as bad.

For me football has always been associated with violence, and pain.

The era of  organised football fan/thug violence only confirmed my  impression, I am reminded of one of JG Ballard’s books “Kingdom Come”, which captures the dark background against which I picture football.

You may be surprised then to hear of me, aged about early forties, attending a midweek evening match at Ipswich a hundred and forever miles away. It was the era of  electrical goods manufacturers sponsoring half the first division teams, thus we had Philips playing Sanyo, Clarion playing Hitachi etc (I would suggest that made a lot more sense than F1 teams sponsoring football teams) My employer sponsored Ipswich. I was coerced into going by my boss. (A larger than life character in the industry and a good friend. Noted for his entrance at dealer conferences to the background of Carly Simon’s “Nobody does it better”)  After an interminable drive we arrived at the Ipswich ground and drove straight to the VIP parking space, then in via the team entrance and to the director’s box. I felt safely out of the way of the ball and rushing mob up there, in fact it all looked a long way down in the distance. At half time we all had soup and were introduced to Bobby Robson who became England manager the next year, I had no idea who he was nor was interested really. After the match finished everybody in the box disappeared quite rapidly, but my boss wanted to go for a drink, but that’s another story. So I have to admit that football is bearable from the director’s box in the warm.

Alpine in the docks

I have the uneasy feeling that I have written about this before, but anyway…..

All those years ago, it must be about 25 or so now, I could not understand Stephen’s admiration of mass production. He was manager of the two Renault import centres, theses were at Goole and Southampton western docks. In that era I spent a lot of my life in various car import centres/docks around the country.

We had talked about the new Alpine I was very keen to see it, he was indifferent but had one unblocked for me (they used to have wooden blocks in the coil springs to prevent the car moving about during the boat trip) and we went for a drive around the docks, while he extolled the virtue of the ability to make thousands of  cars identical. I could not find any enthusiasm for mass production, I wanted to see “hand  built”.

The 3 metre or so concrete slabs that formed the roads inside the docks were fairly slippery in the damp of Southampton and gave a hard thunk each time we ran across the joins with the Alpine’s fairly stiff suspension, so it was not all that much fun to drive but interesting nonetheless. We could drive up as far as the Fiat import centre and then back past the fizzing main electrical distribution centre for the region, full of pylons with blue arcs around almost everything. One could just hold a fluorescent tube up in the air and it would light.
So roll on quite a few years and two employers later, when you are trying to get the first run production of a product to behave as the prototypes did, but they keep being rejected.  In this case it was a two part moulding and an “O” ring seal, it is then that one begins to think of the virtue of having everything the same by the ten thousand. The part in question worked very well in prototype, they sat me in the back of the vehicle and reversed into the rain test booth. A tropical storm then happened and we sat in the pounding rain for 10 minutes, I got a wet leg from the leaky rear door seal, but my product sealing a hole in the roof worked ok.

I had said from the start we should not have been doing the job at all, it was by way of ingratiation of the people at Solihull whom we wanted to buy our regular type of product, but the boss said yes against my protests.. We had originally sent in a similar product used by GM and it was liked but obviously it could not be supplied to Solihull as quite apart from the moral and legal issues, it had a GN logo on it. So I designed a slightly different version which would have been better had it been made properly.

There are lots of things that can go wrong with mouldings starting with using the wrong material, I have always been sure that was the cause but the moulder said not. He was a friend of the boss so difficult to pursue.  Any way if you have a 12 year old Disco without GPS and a leaky roof blanking plug that’s why.

F1′s new structure is it a killer?

Or will it be Bernie’s current crop of CAs that slowly strangle it?

In the last few years the rules have curtailed much of the primary development in F1, if you want to see innovation at it’s most spectacular and you are starting to look now, you were born too late, it happened and it was revolutionary in all sorts of ways and then it was banned. Now what we have left is “aero effects” and electricity, oh and the new power units in 2014. There is some room for development there but if anyone makes a leap forward in design it will be banned. As the rules get tighter each year so innovation is stifled. Thus the new “xyz” with 6 wheels, double chassis, or active suspension or ground effect or abs or anti dive will not be providing the interest and excitement for fans. We are now looking at innovation bringing an advantage that cannot be measured with an analogue stopwatch any more, you need a digital one and a digital finger (a digital digit!)

So unless reasonable development of the new engines and ERS is allowed, we cannot rely upon the technology to hook the mass audience, the devotees yes, but are there enough of them? Or does it matter?

The setup now is that the circuits and the tv companies pay FOM each year for the right to stage a race and put it on tv in some form or other. Bernie has tied up those deals for the next 8 years (I think, it may be 7 for some and much longer for others) so FOM is guaranteed that income. This was the package to be offered in the partial float, a viable guaranteed income for a given period. Just exactly what was to be floated was never revealed, whether it was Delta Topco or Delta Prefco or both or another new non voting holding instrument.

We know that tv audiences have fallen, Karen who sometimes comments in Joe Saward’s Blog has quoted figures. In the UK there is a huge fall in F1 tv audiences with the BBC coverage cut by 50%, but the whole series now being on Sky. Next year the same move to Sky happens in Italy, land of the Tiffosi, I predict a strong reaction when it hits home there.  The paltry Sky viewing figures can surely not attract advertisers. Does Sky survive on it’s subscriptions or on its advertisers?

The high cost of entry and grandstands at the circuits, a necessity to help towards the gigantic FOM fees, is putting off a lot of the low to middle income fans who would love to go but simply cannot afford it. With F1 moving to countries further away, even the hardcore fans must have second thoughts about the cost.

Eventually the total audience will be permanently reduced. Will sponsors see any benefit in chucking the vast amounts of promotional money at a reducing and ever more distant sport?   It could be a slow death, with sponsors gradually realising that their message is reaching a shrinking target. Unless something is done I would offer a guess at 5 years before teams have to withdraw for lack of sponsorship.

Then there is the new F1 Strategy Group formed of 6 team representatives, 6 from the FIA and 6 from FOM. This one could speculate is the “Number of the Beast” (excepting QI fans who know it is 616 and AE Van Vogt fans who know it is way different)

This new group which replaces both the technical and sporting working groups will decide, well, everything including the rules. not only that, but only a straight majority is required, looks like Ferrari have lost their rules veto.

The worrying thin about this is that as far a rules are concerned it virtually gives Bernie a free hand, he needs only to persuade 4 FIA people and the teams are scuppered. We all know how good Bernie is at persuading people.  He has already said there will be no “electric only in the pit lane”  which is of course contrary to what is written in 5.19 of the 2014 technical regs. So has he sought a rule change in the first meeting of the F1SG or is he just confident that he can do whatever he wants regardless? (I would bet on the latter)

As I said in Joe’s blog I think the F1SG is very dangerous for F1 and for the teams in particular. It fundamentally changes the balance of power in Bernie’s favour, (which he no doubt sold as 3 way equality) and could it be contrary to the conditions imposed by the EU commission?

TV ads that annoy me

I tend to watch tv ads, often not at all, or with half an eye and little attention, even so what I would reckon to be “good” ads would still leak though my defences.

I heartily agree with Sir Alan Sugar in the ideal content of tv ads, show them a benefit, then the product that offers it, tell them what it is and why they need it. Then where to get it and possibly how much it is to buy.

Some ads are obviously the result of “artistic” competition between agencies, with the product either not being mentioned or so obliquely referenced that the ad is a complete waste of money, but the ego of its directors upheld.

Any ad that has not shown me either the product or it’s benefit after 15 seconds is a write-off as far as I am concerned.

Corporate “feel good ” ads can be very airy fairy and annoying unless they are clever and hold one’s attention, but to me if you do not know what they are being clever about, it is a waste of the seconds up until the reveal.  Far better for me to associate the customer or corporation with the cleverness for the whole ad than have it stuck on at the end as an afterthought.

Papa, Nicole and family/lovers were some of the best ever car ads,  but probably could not be shown on uk tv today lest some Mary Whitehouse type objected to lovers being admitted on tv. More likely though, the objection would be that none of the relationships were gay, which seems to be compulsory nowadays.

I can now remember that it was Cinzano that Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins  were flogging, but for years I could never say whether it was Campari or Dubonnet instead. But yes we remember “Do ‘av a Dubonnet”

I have been sitting here with a bad man cold “dying” this morning with the tv on and I cannot remember a single ad from the whole morning’s tv.

Just as I wrote that there was “proper” ad for Flash, it showed the product on screen the whole time and then several benefits in action. That was followed by Garnier ultra something which showed a lot of faces but no ID until the last second. no idea what the product did.

Ads should work equally well with the sound off,.Many of us old gits are deaf and have the subtitles on, so subtitle availability in the right position on the screen could help. One should also have the sound track usable  on it’s own.

A matter of Health and Safety?

I was reminded today by Jem on Joe Saward’s blog of a story of Aston Martin from my old days.

I used to visit Aston at Newport Pagnell on a regular basis to keep up to date with what was happening the electrical engineering side of things and several times to take visiting Japanese bosses for a factory tour. My main contact Barry, always told the story of what would nowadays be called a Health and Safety Issue but back then it was down to a bit of common sense that went missing one day.

The boots of the Astons were lined with carpet which was stuck in place with Evostick or some other contact adhesive. This was of course highly flammable and gave off a large amount of heavy vapour which could render one unconscious if not careful, at very least a huge hangover could result. There was of course a routine for fitting the carpet and a sequence which kept fumes and line operator apart at the crucial times.

However one day the chap was feeling a bit tired and decided to have a sit down, which he did, in the boot of the car the had just completed a few minutes ago, all was fine until he went to light his pipe, when the mixture of flammable fumes had mixed with enough air to form an explosive combination. He was blown out of the boot and several feet across the shop. He was fine but a little chagrined mainly at the chides and jibes of his work-mates. He lit his pipe carefully standing beside the cars after that.

Cars I have known.

Whilst over my working life  I have had several new company cars, with a few exceptions, they do not stick in the mind. In chronological order the ones I remember are:

A Cortina, it was my first ever company car, I am afraid I thrashed it and it went like the wind, through my half of London and all the South East, my patch as a Philips Car Audio FD rep. The other reps often asked how I had managed to get an 1800cc version, “it isn’t” I told them “you just need to rev it up more!” This was in the days when one with the appropriate knowledge could sail all the way down Finchley Road from Golders Green to Swiss Cottage almost without stopping. Marble Arch, Park Lane, Wellington Arch one glorious continual swoop down to Victoria. It was then just about knowing the traffic flow pattern and never giving way to a taxi.

The Marina is memorable because, inside a year from brand new, it fell to bits around me. The drivers side window was a particular annoyance, it was cable operated and a full turn of the winder handle was needed to take up the slack and reach the position where both hands were needed to wind it any further. Unfortunately long before the days of silicone spray. Thus with the window permanently shut I remember leaving the car at Heathrow for a weekend sales conference during  a hot summer, when I returned all the window sealing rubbers had shrunk and pulled apart. It must have been one of the last cars with a manual choke, the position of whose knob bore no relation to what happened in the carburettor whatsoever.

The Alfa Romeo, Giulietta was very obviously the car on which a certain Honda and thus later a Rover was modelled, both copying it’s body shape almost exactly. The Alfa had some memorable features, notably a lack of road holding unless driven flat out, the wibbly gear-change due to the gearbox being on the back transaxle, (for weight balance) the inability to see out of the windscreen in the winter or when it was damp, the blower made a huge din but little or no air came out of anywhere. But it had a boxer flat four and sounded wonderful in the summer with the windows open, it was forgiven. I was once stopped on the A3 on suspicion of speeding back in the days when the police had to follow you for an eighth of a mile. “You were driving very close to the white line” (even today |I can’t think of a correct response to that that does not imply “without due care and attention”) I took that as a statement not a question so said nothing, “What’s this car then?” “An Alfa” “A wot?” “An Alfa Romeo”.”Never heard of it, foreign is it”.”Yes Italian” .”Well just watch it then”

The Cavalier LX 1.8 was one of the best I ever had, it had rally seats was really comfortable and went extremely fast,  so much so, that when I (after being a good boy and selling lots) was rewarded with an SRi 2.0 it was huge disappointment  dull and sluggish by comparison. (“Don’t worry it will loosen up” the dealer kept saying, it never did though).

The cars I have actually owned are for lot of reasons, much more memorable:

The first was a Ford Escort, not the one you are thinking of, but many years earlier The Escort was a shooting brake version of something years before the Anglia. It had split flap up and flap down tailgate like a Range Rover 20 or so years later.

It was ok except for jumping out of second and being past the end of it’s life well before I bought it.  The engine was just about to knock it’s ends out. However I then lived in mid Kent and worked in Croydon and anything was better than the train up to London and back out to Croydon every day and then home again, which took 3 hours out of the day if everything was on time and I caught the right trains and a lot longer if not. (The train used to split in half at Swanley with the back going south and the front half going my way; there was always the rush of people from back to front since the back was nearest the platform entrance at Charing Cross and many jumped on at the last minute on the nearest carriage, falling asleep in the wrong half was always a fear .)

Having a permanent, advanced state of being boracic, car maintenance was minimal as were what passed for tyres. To say merely that they were bald would be misleading.  Tyres had two canvases with a thin layer of rubber in between, this was of course after the tread had worn away. There was no law of minimum tread depth so tyres were used until they wore out, people’s definitions of wearing out differed according to how much money they had, in my case it meant the second canvas wore through and the inner tube wore down and burst. Or there was a road in the outskirts of Dartford which had a particularly steep camber on more than one occasion in the wet, the car just slid sideways into the gutter, the wet canvas loosing it’s feeble grip entirely, embarrassing. Rain was a problem, vacuum operated wipers which went like fury every time you lifted  the accelerator but slowed down to a stop if driving uphill.  The big ends went after a few months and left me carless again. The lights too were like a couple of birthday cake candles.

Then there was the Vauxhall, the forerunner of the Victor, I think it was an “F” it had chrome strips all over it and big fins on the rear wings. I bought it for £5, my colleague’s brother was going to scrap it but I rescued it. Out of desperation you understand, not altruism. Bench seats and a column gear change with foibles. The foibles in this case were that it did not like going into first gear, which was away or forward and up. The technique was to bang hard on lever and ram it upwards as hard and quickly as one could, this often worked! Though things got progressively worse and eventually the age of the thing showed itself and it blew the horn.

Thus the scene is set at a major road junction in London,( I was taking the family to the GOSH which our youngest son needed to attend.) The lights were at red I was on pole. The light changed and I sat trying to get into first and failing, eventually it blew the horn, this of course started off everyone behind me, “who blew their horn, I will too!” In the end I settled for 2nd which is a struggle on a 3 gear box, and slowly crept over the junction in a cloud of clutch smoke as the lights changed again leaving the hooting queue behind, waiting once again.

The gearbox problem was very simple in fact, a selector fork became loose on it’s rod, the grub screw securing it came undone. I would drain the oil, take the bottom cover off the box, tighten the grub screw, replace the cover and refill with oil through an adjacent hole I had cut in the transmission tunnel, it had a fill/level plug in the side of the box. I did this so often, that eventually I could do it entirely by touch and guesswork in the dark.

The Mini was a Cooper 998 with straight through exhaust pipe and lowered suspension, it had been condemned some years before for not having enough of it’s rear subframe present. Several weekends work had a new subframe in place it was theoretically ready to start. The Reece Fish carburettor took some getting use to, it had no choke, just an air heater in the inlet tube, one had to turn on the heater count to ten and try and start, if it did ok but if not the heater had to be turned off pdq as it stared glowing red and smoking. The inlet was additionally about an inch from the back of the instrument nacelle and the cable harnesses issuing from it, frequent backfires shot gouts of flame into the harness giving an interesting smell.  When |I got the car it had not run for a several years so it was reluctant to start but eventually gave in after being towed for about half an hour in a continual bump start.   Unbeknown to me there was a hidden fault in the water jacket in the shape of a large piece of scale or rust, which occasionally blocked off one of the channels causing a hot-spot and boiling the water. This used to happen at random in inconvenient places and required an immediate stop in clouds of steam, most memorable was in the fast lane of the M2, leaving me stranded on the central reservation. The police arrived after about 15 minutes but declined to give me a lift to get some more water. The previous owner had lowered the suspension much too far, so that the exhaust pipe clamps frequently dragged on the ground. This was solved by dismantling the suspension cone/ball assys and inseting a 5mm car radio spindle spacer in each. The small ends went and I decided to do the big ends as well. Unfortunately some previous owner had lapped the flywheel on to the crankshaft with grinding paste tus making the normal Morse taper an almost permanent fixing. It took about 5 weeks of ever increasing leverage and hammering/heating to free it off.

Then until I got company cars there were many years of public transport and the vast expense of season tickets, looking back now I could have bought a car each year for the cost of those season tickets.

Now having retired, we have the Xantia 14 years old, an ex company car, built very well,very comfortable, (almost as good as a Saab 900) an unbeatable smooth ride, and not rusty in the body, but its days are numbered due to the ridiculous lengths of the new MOT test that mean even a single spot of rust on a pipe can fail a car. What a contrast to my Escort with bald tyres.