Magnificent Rustbucket

Look at that 'phone number - from the days when managing to convince the GPO you deserved to be sold a 'phone was really difficult so hardly anyone had one! - It's probably why 'sixties and 'seventies TV shows always have banks of telephones on the big man's desk - to show how powerful he is by having so many 'phones! When I was at school in the sixth form one of the lads had a SAAB like this in a paler green - more of an olive colour. It was a lovely car and I remember it fondly, even though it was falling to bits.

Such handsome cars.

The Jaguar XJ40 Sovereign must be one of only a handful of cars which came with alloy wheels as standard which listed hubcaps as an extra cost option. These stainless steel hubcaps are rare and were £250 extra on the later Sovereign, more on the standard XJ6. I like them but my favourite hubcaps are probably those fitted to the Rolls-Royce Silver clouds and early Silver shadows. ACE wheel discs are splendid things too, from an earlier era.

This to my eye at least has a slight overtone of the Peugeot 505 - another elegantly styled big Peugeot - particularly around the rear pillar and in the relationship of the glass to the body. I like quite a few of Paolo Martin's creations, not just the 604. The 104 was especially neat, the 130 particularly elegant - andd the Camargue remains one of my favourite cars. A friend of my late father owned a Camargue in the early '80s. Riding in a Camargue was such an event even the normal Shadow felt ordinary after it. And who could forget the Ferrari Modulo from Top Trumps?

I've always loved the 604, particularly the earlier ones.

Relatively efficient isn't the same as efficient.

American car's styling in this period was particularly pleasing.

The NHS is valuable and I wouldn't be without it, but it is deluded not to see that it has serious faults to the extent that the care it offers can be poor and when things go wrong its behaviour can be appalling. I have experienced this. Another thing it definitely is not, is efficient.

Lovely car.

It is deeply disappointing but should come as no surprise to me that this is all you have to say and that the preceding pages laced with criticism of the moderation on Autoshite are once again dismissed with silence. It is not a tantrum by children. It is reasoned criticism by adult members who are supposedly respected members here. Many have been members here for a long time and from long before you appointed yourselves to control us. Or that is, what's left of them, the ones you haven't yet driven away. Yet we are it seems worthy of nothing. No response. No respect. Just high-handed dismissal from 'teacher'. The silence is stark. It's the arrogance which triggers me. It's breathtaking. I am lucky enough that in daily life I have not been bullied and have always been treated with respect by those around me. That is what makes the behaviour of the moderating team all the more stark. Maybe if I had endured bad managers I would be more inured to it but being treated as a feeble-minded, grubby little child unworthy of consideration or explanation when the law is laid down by my self-styled 'betters' is very difficult for me to accept with the 'simple shrug, head downcast and move on' I am expected - nay required - to manage in order to remain a 'valued' member here. Finally I grasp that I am done contributing to Autoshite. Fondness of what is was has left me blinkered to the reality that it will never recover its vitality, its colourfulness or its eccentric uniqueness. Most of its characters have gone or mostly lurk. Doesn't that tell you something or are you too sure of your own virtue to notice or care? Is your crusade so important it is worth killing the forum for? Maybe you think it is. Because that is what you are doing. The period since the moderation team appointed themselves has been disastrous for Autoshite. The forum staggers from one moderator-driven fiasco to the next. I had drifted back here in the hope that something has been learned and that the situation may have improved. But nothing has. The forum I loved is dead and you Chaseracer and your clique have killed it for me. It is an achievement indeed to bring such an emotional response from one so phlegmatic as me, but by God you have managed it.

The 'How are moderators appointed?' thread seems to have been deleted by the moderators. By removing the thread the moderators are sending a clear signal to members that they do not want us to know how the moderators were appointed and that they want the process to remain cloaked by smoke and mirrors and to be unaccountable. I have long suspected that they effectively appoint themselves now, possibly having initially been appointed to remove the spam that bedeviled the forum in the 'Dave' era. Moderation was supposed to remove spam only - there is a post to that effect from the forum owners way back, if it hasn't itself been removed by the moderators of course. I imagine it is only matter of time before criticism in this thread is itself removed and we are all compelled to go back to 'smiling-happy'.

You also say, "you would loathe to lose the colour from the forum ... just because it is beige shouldn't mean we're only beige in content" Yet it is the moderators here of whom you are one, who have deliberately, systematically and consistently extinguished that very thing. What made AS unique has been stamped out and smothered not by accident but by conscious decision and undertaken in such a way as to treat the members here as ignorant children. It is frustrating indeed as I retain a fondness for this forum. At its best it was superb, but sadly the embers are now dim.

If anything demonstrated that nothing has changed nor been learned by the moderators here, then this response is it.

Autoshite has been diluted almost beyond recognition in the last couple of years so I'm not sure an influx would make much difference.

You have done a beautiful job on this car. The difference between good and great is in the attention to detail and yours is painstaking. So many otherwise good cars are let down by waves in the paint, most often seen on the flanks of the car. I am delighted to see that you will not tolerate this on your car!