Over the moon with the Cavalier..

[CortinaDave]

I know this has been discussed a few times on here.. but for anyone who hasn't seen it - parts of from A to B - Tales of Modern Motoring have appeared on You Tube.

 

The Cavalier driver who won't let anyone pass him that doesn't have headlamp wash..

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEGNclTE ... re=related

 

and the Maestro driver - "This Maestro is crap! I feel as though the company have shit on me"

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMCFeoR9 ... re=related

 

and Leroy the Capri... "Not a lot of bits still work really"

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIN1uigE ... re=related

 

 

Theres a few other bits on there too but these were my favourites. Classic TV.

[fordpoplier]

Thanks for posting, I had heard about these but never seen them.

[cobblers]

These are fupping excellent!

 

I bet that floozy with the Capri looks a bit haggard by now.

[Dick Cheeseburger]

That's something else, and is now added to my favourites on xtube. I particularly love the line, 'What I really want is a Vauxhall Calibra. A shiny red one.' I'm suprised he didn't demonstrate the use of his mobile brick for the camera viewers pleasure...

[barefoot]

Not seen those for a long time.

Remember the bloke with the debadged Mercedes.

On the Cavalier bloke...

Do you know, I can remember being able to differentiate the minutiae of differences between models of car.

Now I can barely tell a Kia from a Hyundai !

[cort16]

Those are class. I remember them vaguely from the time but not seen them since.

I guess now the Cav 2.0Gli is now an A4 2.0TDi and the Maestro is a Kia of some description.

[Lord Sterling]

Brilliant! Thanks for putting these up. 109Landys did a couple of copies for some shiters a couple of years back. The one I have is with all the company cars drivers, will have to look out for the others, if anyone has them on DVD or can copy to, I'd be very interested.

 

Here are a couple more I found from the same user:

 

Posh Girl in Citroen 2CV

 

Young lad in Metro

[trigger]

I bet that floozy with the Capri looks a bit haggard by now.

 

What do you mean now?!

 

It's funny how the car some times looks like the owner...

 

 

[ashmicro]

Great links, I'd heard of these but never seen them.

 

The guy driving the Maestro needs a good hundred-hand slap. BTW, Mister, your colleagues weren't laughing at the car, they're laughing at you cos your a miserable fucking prick.

[cort16]

Great links, I'd heard of these but never seen them.

 

The guy driving the Maestro needs a good hundred-hand slap. BTW, Mister, your colleagues weren't laughing at the car, they're laughing at you cos your a miserable fucking prick.

 

That may be true but they where laughing at the car a bit. Are these Clubman D's NA Perkins Primas?

 

If you've ever wonder what the opposite of "slammed" is, it's this.

 

maestro by cort16, on Flickr

[Richard]

Are these Clubman D's NA Perkins Primas?

 

 

Yes. I always wondered what his employers thought of him moaning about them on national TV. I'd lover to see an update with the same people.

[cobblers]

What do you mean now?!

 

Bahhh, I've hammered smaller sockets over worse.

[e287yba]

Not seen those for a long time.

Remember the bloke with the debadged Mercedes.

On the Cavalier bloke...

Do you know, I can remember being able to differentiate the minutiae of differences between models of car.

Now I can barely tell a Kia from a Hyundai !

 

Ah, yes... You remind me of longlost "factoids". One is that on the Mk 3 Cavs, the darker the shade of grey of the front grille, the higher the spec. Ol' GL "i" man didn't mention that spedifically, did he, eh???

 

And then there was the sales rep in the XR2i (what a user-chooser rebel!) who laid his jacket on the back seat as opposed to hanging it on the grab handle behind him like reps normally do. I dont know who was more embarrassed at their situation, this XR2i chappie or the depressed Clubman D driver !

 

I reckon "From A to B: Tales Of Modern Motoring" was the best telly of the 1990s.

 

 

 

Now, modern cars... I can barely tell them apart .

[Vin]

I remember this when it was first on.

 

At the time I kind of felt sorry for Maestro man. By replacing his Cavalier with the Maestro it was probably a case of constructive dismissal Or maybe the company thought he was a twat and needed humiliating....

 

When did the 56mph max for trucks come in??? I assume it was after this was made, as you can obviously overtake a truck in a diesel meastro....

 

I vaguely one of the other company car drivers was extolling the virtues of his MK 3 Astra saloon.

[M'coli]

This was made around about 20 years ago, i.e. when the early 90s recession hit. The diesel Maestro Clubman would probably have been the cheapest fleet car to buy with the best fuel economy - perhaps his company was looking at that with a view to surviving, rather than shitting on him!

[maxpower]

i think i would have to slap that square headed twat in the cavalier

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

I remember this. There was some other guy who'd started his own business, had some shitbox and parked it around the corner from his meetings so the clients wouldn't see it. Was it an Ital or something?

[M'coli]

IIRC it was a 309.

[AnthonyG]

Was there a bloke who had hired a yellow Avenger or Mk4 Cortina estate from a Rent-a-wreck type operation?

 

Were these were filmed at motorway services stations as that's how I remember it?

[tonedepear]

What do you mean now?!

 

Bahhh, I've hammered smaller sockets over worse.

[e287yba]

Was there a bloke who had hired a yellow Avenger or Mk4 Cortina estate from a Rent-a-wreck type operation?

 

Were these were filmed at motorway services stations as that's how I remember it?

 

"It" was a Yellow Cortina Estate - his daughter seemed a little embarrassed ...

 

They were filmed en route - there was an element of motorway services in there (our hero in the Clubfoot D), but the majority of the filming to camera was on single carriageway, if not minor routes.

 

Someone needs to scan in the Jalopy interpretation of this series - it wass enlightening, to say the least .

 

GREAT telly... Best of the '90s - period!

[Vin]

45 year old woman driving a then new Mini Cooper round Doncaster. From 'Perrys' by the look of the 1992 tax disc.

 

 

'Essex girl' and her XR3i cabriolet...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4sGrHPM ... re=related

 

Great stuff.

[CortinaDave]

If you search a to b tales there are a few others including a spoilt brat with a Clio .. Sadly I can't find the cortina one though - I'd love to see that. I seem to remember there was a rep in an Astra saloon as well which is also missing

[254575]

I have the full collection of these

 

IT GETS YOU OUT OF THE HOUSE (18/03/1994)

SHE LIKES IT HOT (25/03/1994)

LOOKING AT HIM LOOKING AT ME (01/04/1994)

OVER THE MOON WITH THE CAVALIER (08/04/1994)

RED LORRY YELLOW LORRY (15/04/1994)

 

if anyone else wants them, PM me

 

i have them in AVI format, but i could knock up a dvd with menu's etc if you prefer.

[cobblers]

Perhaps stick them on youtube? for us all to see?

[254575]

Perhaps stick them on youtube? for us all to see?

 

it did cross my mind. but no. i dont fancy getting shit from the bbc copyright department.

[Station]

These were repeated on BBC3 about two years ago. I remember the spoilt daddy's boy in the Clio.

Cavalier drivers seems a little delusional to me, esp as the Cavalier was no more the year after.

They don't make TV like this anymore!

[e287yba]

FROM Jalopy, issue 21 June 1994, the original item was titled "Crocks on the Box - Toys for boys by C. Potato".

 

The Jalopy six-valve terrestrial TV set has seen a fair bit of automotive action this month. Undoubtedly the highlight of recent box crox was a Beeb 2 series called A - B: Tales of Modern Motoring.

 

I have to admit I wasn't expecting much from these programmes beforehand, having read lots of TV experts saying how great they were. Anything the pundits say is good is usually a load of rubbish, I find. This does of course apply to C. Potato's column particularly.

 

The ToMM progs were hilarious - far funnier than most alleged comedies, which raise about as many laughs as driving an Allegro into the back of a bus. Speaking of which [follows reference to a Jo Brand debut series telling one 'fat joke' numerous times, and also to a Dawn French program on the 'I am fat and beautiful' theme].

 

Back to A to B. Yes, it was funny. Prog 1 featured young drivers talking about their hopes and dreams. It's hard to say exactly why it was so funny, but it owed a lot to the way it was filmed and edited. A refreshing lack of background musak plus skilful use of that rare TV comodity known as silence, gave time for the silliness of the comments to sink in. For instance, instead of poking a camera at a youth and getting him to spout some predictable stuff about his Metro's Group 2 Insurance rating, we were given a fly-on-the-dashboard minute or two watching the victim with the beans-on-toast visage simply driving. So when the poor lad eventually started to speak and muttered something about forgetting to put his spot cream on in a Hovis Bread Accent, your reviewer almost choked on his pot noodles.

 

Indeed, the effect was so comical that I started to believe that these weren't real people, because surely no-one would agree to appear ont'telly looking like such a complete idiot. Please tell me this isn't true.

 

A later episode dealt with gurls in cars and threw up some similarly entertaining gems, but the jewel in the Toyota was surely the last, Over the moon with a Cavalier, a priceless insight into the minds of company car drivers. A typically sane Jalopy reader would not believe the way these peoples' brains work, judging by this evidence. Again, were the participants deliberately sending themselves up?

 

There was the Cavalier rep who checked in his rear view mirror for approaching vehicles wearing colour-coded bumpers (signifying an up-market Vaux) before moving over and letting them pass. Only an 'i' was allowed to do that, he said. What worried me about this cheery chap was the way he seemed to spend very little time actually looking where he was going.

 

Then how about the daring rebel rep who held out for an outrageously different Ford XR2i and left his jacket on the back seat so that casual observers might not guess his true mission in life? Furthermore, he was proud to say he could outgun any Sierra, we learned, as a stream of old bangers overtook in the background.

 

It seems there is a lot more to the hanging jacket business business than any sensible person might have realised. While our XR2i friend was carefully placing his best Burtonwear on the rear seat, others resorted to subtle tactics with the hangers themselves. M&S is definitely non-U for the get-ahead rep, it seems.

 

Moving up a notch to those who've really arrived in one sense even if they're still obliged to go everywhere in the other, we came to the executive set. There was the bloke in the Mercedes 200E who felt he should prise the badges off his bootlid so that people wouldn't think he had a mere base model like wot the common plebs use. The question is... does anyone care apart from him? Besides, just listening to the terrible din the thing made as he accelerated would give the game away. Still, at least it wasn't a diesel.

 

Stepping up to the glories of a Meistermachine, the camera stumbled across the BMW 320i co-op pilot who was at pains to point out that he is in fact a Very Pleasant Person. Just because he thought he was great didn't mean he wasn't nice. To prove this he recounted the story of a flirtation with starting his own business and the resultant cruel turn of fate that forced him to rattle round in a Peugeot 309. He tended to park this out of the sight of clients in case they got the wrong idea. Heaven forbid, old chap!

 

Saddest of all, however, was the man who found himself falling from the heavenly ecstasy of a Cavalier 2.0i into - shock horror! - a Maestro. But there was worse to come: it was a diesel Maestro Clubman! Oh the shame, the humiliation. His colleagues mocked him. His wife refused to go in the car - they actually cried about it. "It's crap. What have I done wrong?" the poor bewildered fellow said as he settled down in the inside lane, HGVs whistling past.

 

Here was a man with deep problems. When he stopped for the reps' customary service station strut and display of automotive plumage, he cunningly disguised himself as a regular family man by hiding the official jacket and removing his tie.

 

At this pont I again smelled a TV rat. Fact may be stranger than fiction, but not this strange, surely? More recently, the late John Betjeman rose from the video vaults to recite his poem Executive - probably the only instance of the Cortina, that old rep favourite, making it into literature. The poem said it all...

 

 

I've made a couple of minor changes, so it reads slightly better - I'm not constrained by getting it on to 2 pages of A5 after all - but there's nothing missing except where I have said so near the start.

 

And C. Potato makes a valid point at the end - the poem does say it all .

[Lord Sterling]

Just had a quick look at some of the cars featured in the A to B docu.

 

Maestro Clubman Diesel lasted only 2 years:

 

The vehicle details for J773 AWG are:

 

Date of Liability: 24 10 1994

Date of First Registration: 25 03 1992

Year of Manufacture: 1992

Cylinder Capacity (cc): 1994cc

Fuel Type: HEAVY OIL

Export Marker: N

Vehicle Status: Unlicensed

Vehicle Colour: BLUE

 

Poor car, I'd happily drive that car. I wonder if it was accidently 'delibertly' damaged in some way?

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Young lad in Red Metro:

 

The vehicle details for A448 NHD are:

 

Date of Liability: 25 11 1993

Date of First Registration: 15 02 1984

Year of Manufacture: 1984

Cylinder Capacity (cc): 998cc

Fuel Type: PETROL

Export Marker: N

Vehicle Status: Unlicensed

Vehicle Colour: RED

 

Not very surprising it didnt last, sounded like it was on its last legs.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posh Girl in Citroen 2CV6:

 

The vehicle details for E736 PEG are:

 

Date of Liability: 01 05 1998

Date of First Registration: 21 05 1988

Year of Manufacture: 1988

Cylinder Capacity (cc): 602cc

Fuel Type: PETROL

Export Marker: Y - Its been exported, probably to France no doubt.

Vehicle Status: Unlicensed

Vehicle Colour GREEN

 

I wonder if posh girl is acheived her dream of driving a 4x4 with oodles of kids in the back and a dog?

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blonde Essex girl in White Escort Cabriolet:

 

The vehicle details for C568 VPJ are:

 

Date of Liability: 01 02 2013

Date of First Registration: 06 03 1987

Year of Manufacture: 1986

Cylinder Capacity (cc): 1597cc

Fuel Type: PETROL

Export Marker: N

Vehicle Status: SORN Not Due

Vehicle Colour: WHITE

 

Hey, so its still around, wonder if its still has the same owner, and wonder what she looks like today? Has it or she ended up in Jaywick one wonders?

[Twiggy]

Thank you for posting those - they were fascinating ! I never realised that company cars were such a status symbol... or that the drivers were such monstrous clowns.