Why moderns are pish

[Vince70]

I managed to move into my old house using an extremely rusty mk2 stolen recovered Fiesta XR2 and managed to do the house move in two trips..

 

But I guess it's no big deal when all I had was a couple of bin bags full of clothes and a small wardrobe and a TV..

 

But it was one of those old fashioned TVs which weighed a ton and I was more amazed that it didn't go through the extremely rotten floor pan..

 

I recently helped move my brother and his wive and the little one out of there old place just using an old 1994 A6 Avant and those old things are amazing load luggers the amount of weight and stuff that can shoe horned into the back of one of those is amazing and can recommend using an old one as a makeshift removal van..

[Junkman]

I fitted an entire Princess interior inside my C4 and still had room for Junkman holding two overpriced cups of coffee. It all jiggled about hilariously on the trip back down the M65. 

 

The car smelled of labrador beige BL velour for several days afterwards. 

 

Yeah, it smelled lovely. Another thing they just can't get right anymore. I shit on air fresheners. Why don't they sell old car smell in aerosol tins?

[Bren]

Yeah, it smelled lovely. Another thing they just can't get right anymore. I shit on air fresheners. Why don't they sell old car smell in aerosol tins?

Do you mean a combination of werthers original, burning insulation, dust and EP90?

[Split_Pin]

That reminds me, I fitted the WHOLE interior from my Vectra into my Corsa, parcel shelf and all. I did sort of have to sit in the car at the end and pull the last bits in around me though.

[Cavcraft]

That sort of remind of when I got about 35 alloy wheels plus some batteries in my old Mk3 Astra and drove them about 1.5 miles away to a weighbridge. I swear my neck still hurts since that day and I expect a few surgeons are still thanking God I didn't have to do an emergency stop.

 

God knows why some modern cars are so cramped in the back, maybe some of it is sound proofing or something? Anyhow the knobhead in me wants to take a modern(ish) car one day, cut the area round the back lights off and blend it into the boot so it has a bigger opening area. Obvs. it'll need stronger support struts but I'd love to do it to see if it's feasible.

[Asimo]

After a Maxi, all other hatchbacks seem a bit limited.

[Des]

So wait, you smashed it up and took it to the tip? Why on earth didn't you take the manly option of just burning it in one of those metal dustbins with holes in the sides!?

A Vectra is a metal dustbin with holes in the sides.

 

Are we looking at these cramped interiors all wrong, maybe they're actually small cars with the exterior puffed up to look bigger, in the good old days a pair of nice timber running boards would achieve this and were also functional for carrying extra passengers, fucking speed humps put paid to that.

[Junkman]

Do you mean a combination of werthers original, burning insulation, dust and EP90?

 

I mean the old car smell. Which is beyond comparison.

[Spiny Norman]

I mean the old car smell. Which is beyond comparison.

 

The best smelling car I ever owned was my '69 Amazon. I love the smell of '60s cars. Primitive, slightly degraded vinyls, natural sisal or horsehair seat stuffing and insulation boards, the hot oil smell wafting through the holes in the bulkhead where the grommets have fallen apart, and the occasional (hopefully) whiff of petrol when it burps in a traffic jam.

Modern cars seem to smell of sick and farts, even when they're new.

 

 

[NorfolkNWeigh]

Because I own both a large hammer and an angle grinder I don't need to worry about internal capacity for tip runs.

 

 

With the right preparation its actually quite easy to fit a surf board in a wheelie bin.

This reminds me of a few years ago,when the media were talking about 'fridge mountains' and the fact you couldn't get rid of old fridges because of eu legislation.

Anyway our massive fridge/freezer broke, we bought a new one ,and I refused the option for them to dispose of the old one( they wanted £20).

I spent most of one Saturday dismembering it with an axe,then putting the bite size pieces into bin bags.

On arriving at the tip I carefully put the 30 or so bin bags in the general rubbish skip, the last one contained the compressor- sure enough the bag split and it fell on the floor.

Disaster! The tip pikey saw it,'Oi' he shouts,'don't put that in there' I prepared for a bollocking.

But,then he said ' take it round the side and put it with the fridges' DOH !

[jbz2079]

This reminded me of an incident from the early 80's.

My then boss had an L reg Maxi 1750 HL.

This poor old Maxi was used as the company racing car once very week to Birmingham and back to Cumbria once every week.

It also had to put up with everything a do it all car had to do.

 

He was doing up the cottage he lived in at the time and the Maxi had to tow this big trailer with landrover wheels.

We used to do a regular run to the local tip but on the way back call in and collect a trailer full of sandy gravel to make cement.

 

We used to fill the trailer to the top rail, I guess it would be well over two tons of aggregate in there, four of us used to go as with four shovelling it took no time at all to fill the trailer.

 

Anyway on the return trip one day we were pulling up the long hill to the cottage and near the top the road had a bit that was chewed up by heavy wagons constantly crossing the road.

 

When we hit this bit the rear seat fell backwards into the tailgate load area, The guy sitting beside me on the back seat and I honestly thought for a few seconds that the poor old Maxi had got ripped in two from all it's effort.

 

The boss and another guy sitting in the front were badly laughing at us rolling around in the back, so much so, he forgot to back off for the right turn into the road the cottage was on .

 

The Maxi locked it's front wheels and the trailer pushed it across the road and right into the soft wet grass on the roadside where it just sunk in the mud.

 

We had to pull the whole lot back onto the road will a big forklift, after a power wash it carried on regardless! 

[brickwall]

Further to JM's post, my neighbour was an emergency medicine anaesthetist before he retired. He told me   that the construction of cars saved way more lives than whizz-bang safety devices. Plasticised glass and plastic saved many from death as did having a headrest. He told me one of the best things was having a near-side mirror as standard as opposed to being an optional extra (remember those days?) as it massively reduced one of the most common accidents. Also, reinforcing the quarters on cars so they didn't fold like an accordion made a big difference.

 

Engineers hate the marketing people, just ask them. If something can be marketed it goes in. Remember when they said the computer would usher in the day of the paperless office? Bollox! We use more now than ever.

 

The stats say that if there is a fatal car accident  one in three drivers, or corpses as it may be, will test positive for drugs - it's the same old drink driving thing again.

[PhilA]

My Super Minx had a cavernous boot, but the bootlid was quite narrow; the rear doors were HUEG though and you could easily throw stuff in the back.

 

My Fiat Cinquecento (1996) folded down in the back and somehow I managed to get an entire Escort mk3 bonnet inside it, close the tailgate, not break anything and still be able to drive. I think the Escort bonnet was larger than the car, but that was like a TARDIS.

 

Also the whole Hi-Cube transit thing is a disasterous lie because the top of the vehicle tapers in.. any taller and the rear profile would be more church steeple than van.

 

I just say pish and tosh these days and drive a pickup truck instead. Sky's the limit.

 

--Phil

[brickwall]

Some of those wee cars are the biz. I always stuck up for the rover 25 with the seats folded.