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[Way OT - but canucks and brits will love this] The queenDeclares - After recent electrions...



On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 14:34:02 -0800 (PST), you wrote:

>have you ever driven a brit car??  unless i'm in the
>bush, or on the savanna, and in a land rover, i'm not
>getting in one!!!  (they even have the wheel on the
>wrong side!!!)

Should have added: :-)

Short answer: yes, I've driven several.  TR4, MG Midget, Land Rover &
5-ton Bedford truck (military versions), and AH 3000 that my buddy had
when we in the Army in Germany.   The AH had a bad habit of leaking
oil onto the exhaust manifold in turns and produced large clouds of
blue-white smoke which exited through the open cockpit.  It had no
top, and cruising through a German village in the dead of winter, oil
smoke pouring out as if on fire, got plenty of stares from the locals.

Rest of answer:  But I never had to turn a wrench on ANY of them!  I
watched a frat brother flunk out of school trying to keep an MG TD
running.  A neighbor had a Spitfire IRS that required him to rebuild
the rear end so many times I stopped counting.  I have known
(pre-Ford) Jaguar owners who referred to their cars as "The Prince of
Darkness" for spontaneous, unannounced total electrical failures.  In
reality you have to assume that if anyone was driving a Jag, they had
a second one as well since one always had to be "in the shop."

Somewhere I read that Brit cars are like they are because Brits would
really rather "tinker" on the car than actually drive it.  Kind of
like old Sciroccos?

Gordon

75 Mk1/Drake 1.9
http://pws.prserv.net/gforbess/scirocco/scirocco.htm