Automotive bull5hit facts thread

[Tamworthbay]

4 minutes ago, Craig the Princess said:

He did invent a very useful battery though.

As did his son

[Dick Cheeseburger]

The real reason the wheelbase is shorter on one side than the other on the Renault 4 is because of French engineers acceptable tolerances. Apparently they were heavily influenced by the talented folk who assembled BMC products whilst pissed. 

[anonymous user]

23 hours ago, PiperCub said:

I think it was SM related. Not heard of the Lancia one. 

The Lancia Gamma, with the flat four engine, was the reputed camshaft snapper. 

[Mr Pastry]

49 minutes ago, anonymous user said:

The Lancia Gamma, with the flat four engine, was the reputed camshaft snapper. 

The thing with the Gamma was that the power steering pump was driven off the rear of one of the camshafts.  The camshafts had the usual toothed belt drive from the crankshaft.  In some conditions, e.g. full lock when first starting from cold, the pump placed enough load on the camshaft to cause the belt to jump a few teeth - hence bent valves.  I doubt the camshaft would have broken as they were very robust.  The problem only affected early cars.  On the later ones it was cured by adding an extra tensioner to the cam belt, not (as would have seemed more sensible) by relocating the steering pump and driving it from the crankshaft pulley.

 

[New POD]

2 hours ago, Tamworthbay said:

And an alcoholic, sadly his name has been lost to history......

Allen, the Anglican, alcoholic, absolute arsehole, associated with the automobile association. 

They called him Torx not Allen though. 

[Vince70]

Isopon P38 Filler was designed to be used solely to patch up bullet holes on the P38 Lockheed lighting fighter and repair rust and body damage on  Range rovers.

If it’s used on any other vehicle it just doesn’t stick.

Its the same with K seal as it is solely to be used for rover K series or Honda K series engines and if you put it in any other vehicle it will block up the coolant pipes.

[dozeydustman]

The British Leyland plughole of doom was designed with foresight of the British Motor Industry, after Lord Stokes visited a fortune teller at a works outing to Clacton-on-sea

[vulgalour]

Clacton-on-Sea is where they made the tappets for the Talbot Alpine.  They used real cockle shells since they were in plentiful supply at the time due to a rather severe winter storm.

[Justin Case]

On 2/2/2020 at 11:27 AM, DavidB said:

The transit was originally designed as a metal box with a seat for transvestites to sit and contemplate their lifestyle. Only later did they add wheels and an engine.

I call bullshit on this one. Ford's light commercial vehicle was originally going to be named the Ford Transistor to highlight the large number of small electronic devices which were used to control most of its functions. Unfortunately the short bonnet of the Mark 1 version ruled out the full version of the original name, so ever since they  have used  the abbreviated version.

 

 

[rml2345]

Everyone who works at the AA is called Edmund King. 

[Ghosty]

The Chrysler 180 was originally intended to be rear engined, but due to low sales expectations, and with no time to redesign the car, they just put the engine at the other end and turned the seats around.
Hence the name 180. 

[timolloyd]

Weather presenter Liam Dutton is the owner of the rights to the kit car marque.

His deep fear of extreme weather conditions means that he runs an amphibious Dutton kit car as a daily. It’s a regular spot in the ‘talent’ parking spaces at the TV studio.

[ProgRocker]

3 hours ago, timolloyd said:

Weather presenter Liam Dutton is the owner of the rights to the kit car marque.

I'd love that fact to be true. 

[martc]

20 hours ago, Justin Case said:

I call bullshit on this one. Ford's light commercial vehicle was originally going to be named the Ford Transistor to highlight the large number of small electronic devices which were used to control most of its functions. Unfortunately the short bonnet of the Mark 1 version ruled out the full version of the original name, so ever since they  have used  the abbreviated version.

Similarly, BMC were going to call the Mini the 'Magic Smoke' due to the large amount of Lucas electrical components used.

Unfortunately Trading Standards vetoed this as they had inspected a prototype 'Magic Smoke' and discovered that all the smoke had either evaporated or had been washed away due to the engines 'Self Cleaning Water Inlet System' developed by Isignosis. Publicity of the self-cleaning feature was quietly dropped after the kill joys at Trading Standards intervened (again).

In true BMC style the order for the Magic Smoke badges was not cancelled and a warehouse slowly filled with them. They were discovered in 1964 and, rather cleverly, the badges were snapped in just the right place to be used on the new 'moke' models.

It became company policy, right up to the demise of Rover, to consider the name 'Magic S' for every new model to use up the other half of the badges which, by then, were stored in several old tea chests at Longbridge.

[PhilA]

The Lancia camshaft snapping exercise was actually a result of industrial espionage. The Ford Motor Company were busily designing Project Pegasus, a revolutionary new engine design involving six independent cambelts stolen from the second draftsman's cousins's son's Lego Technic kit.

An Italian mole, working in the design office carefully changed the design on the drawing board while the rest of the design staff had gone to the pub for lunch, not before taking a blurred photograph with his spy camera and sending it back to Italy. Unfortunately for Lancia the picture was so poor they misread the fantastic high performance cambelt design and started putting belts around corners (the design of which was then stolen by a French mole in the Lancia office).

Ford's resulting design was slightly less impressive than the original Pegasus name, and after hearing it start up for the first time the CEO of Ford relegated the design to the name Pinto instead. 

Twenty years later the design office got to rename the design back to Pegasus as it was discovered it did have all the camshaft breaking qualities of the original design so were let off the hook and got a small bottle of Asti from the management as means of thanks.

[New POD]

19 hours ago, ProgRocker said:

I'd love that fact to be true. 

It's on you tube. 

https://www.liamdutton.com/liam-dutton-biography

 

[New POD]

It's a fact that BMW are owned by a group of Welsh nationalists, via a Civil Service Pension Scheme. Managed by a tax avoiding off shore bank on YNYS Mon. 

The plan, they are gradually forming is to procure enough shares to turn up at the next AGM and propose a new CEO.....Mr Dutton, is already experienced in both Wales and Cars and has been approached. He is prepared to do it, provide production of everything moves to Welsh production supply chain Rombus.  Hams hall will.move to Holyhead, Swindon to Swansea, Cowley to Prestatyn, and everything made in The rest of Europe will move to St David's. 

BMWs plants not in Europe will move to New South Wales as Well.....Wales and as is doesn't have any car making it's ideal...

[dozeydustman]

Audi owners in the UK don’t deliberately drive in the outer lanes at 9,000,000mph. What happens is the car suddenly goes into a pre-programmed computer Autobahn mode when it detects a carriageway of 2 lanes or wider, the driver can then take his mind off the road use his hands for other things (such as texting or masturbation); the computer being able to maintain a gap of 9mm behind the car in front without hitting it while also sounding the horn and flashing the main beams.

[ProgRocker]

Melody, Prelude, Ballade, Quintet, Jazz, Accord(ian). Honda have a knack for coming up with musical themes for model names. Their Odyssey MPV was named after the 1970s-80s R&B/soul band. 

In the 1990s however, Honda tried to come up with a name with a musical bent for their city car proposal. 'Death Metal' didn't pass muster at the market research stage. 

[Richard_FM]

On 2/17/2020 at 9:54 PM, ProgRocker said:

Melody, Prelude, Ballade, Quintet, Jazz, Accord(ian). Honda have a knack for coming up with musical themes for model names. Their Odyssey MPV was named after the 1970s-80s R&B/soul band. 

In the 1990s however, Honda tried to come up with a name with a musical bent for their city car proposal. 'Death Metal' didn't pass muster at the market research stage. 

Also concerto, Suzuki got to alto first though along with Nissan with stanza.

[FakeConcern]

Apparently a few years ago Chevrolet workers chanced upon a consignment of unused Allegro steering wheels...

Fast forward to 2019 and just before the sign off of the new C8 Corvette the budget had been exceeded and one engineer remembered those wheels...

[busmansholiday]

On 2/2/2020 at 4:19 PM, Dick Longbridge said:

The real reason the wheelbase is shorter on one side than the other on the Renault 4.....

Actually, my farther had a Mk II Cortina where the rear springs WERE different lengths. Took the Ford dealers ages to finally work out why it pulled left.

[Parky]

The first man to buy a car in Russia employed a guy called Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov to walk ahead of him with the red flag to warn pedestrians of the oncoming vehicle.  

When this red flag fella decided to get into local politics he dug his flag out to wave at rallies, and it became the international symbol of communism.  This also proceeded at low speed, hindered progress and was eventually replaced.  Facts and a little bit of politics ladies and gentlemen!

 

[dozeydustman]

2 hours ago, Parky said:

The first man to buy a car in Russia employed a guy called Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov to walk ahead of him with the red flag to warn pedestrians of the oncoming vehicle.  

When this red flag fella decided to get into local politics he dug his flag out to wave at rallies, and it became the international symbol of communism.  This also proceeded at low speed, hindered progress and was eventually replaced.  Facts and a little bit of politics ladies and gentlemen!

 

In a similar vein to this Simca decided to make their engines with rattly valvegear to warn pedestrians a car was approaching, albeit 60+ years too late.

[Noel Tidybeard]

1 hour ago, dozeydustman said:

In a similar vein to this Simca decided to make their engines with rattly valvegear to warn pedestrians a car was approaching, albeit 60+ years too late.

meanwhile at ford there was a memo sent out to the design team for the mk1 fester to make the car loud enough to alert pedestrians to what is essentially a town car- unfortunately two departments interpreted the memo separately and the engine team made noisy valve gear and the exhaust team put a fog horn in insread of a silencer

[motorpunk]

Citröen Berlingo means “do not ejaculate in my hair” in Albanian.

[Parky]

Mazda named the Xedos 6 after the planet visited by the crew of Moonbase Alpha in episode three of the second series of Space 1999.   Brian Blessed and Peter Bowles lived there with a young Helen Mirren

Xedos 9 on the other hand was an anime series featuring schoolgirls in mini skirts and a man in beige overalls based on Wesley from “Last of the Summer Wine” which was massive in Japan

 

[Parky]

It is quite well known that Soichiro Honda’s original engineering firm was devastated by WW2 and to recuperate, he built a distillery and brewed moonshine for a time.  It was during this period, spent mostly pissed, that he conceived the idea of reliable, mass produced mopeds to get Japan moving.  And a legend was born.  

Impressed with the reliability of these new Japanese machines, the design and engineering teams at BL took a leaf out of Hondas book and vowed never to design anything while sober.  This is neatly illustrated by Issigonis reaction to criticism of the Maxi gearchange when he said “I will fuckin fight you, ya bastard, fucking come here you shit” before swinging a punch miles from LJK Setright and collapsing in a heap

[anonymous user]

2 hours ago, Parky said:

It is quite well known that Soichiro Honda’s original engineering firm was devastated by WW2 and to recuperate, he built a distillery and brewed moonshine for a time.  It was during this period, spent mostly pissed, that he conceived the idea of reliable, mass produced mopeds to get Japan moving.  And a legend was born.  

Impressed with the reliability of these new Japanese machines, the design and engineering teams at BL took a leaf out of Hondas book and vowed never to design anything while sober.  This is neatly illustrated by Issigonis reaction to criticism of the Maxi gearchange when he said “I will fuckin fight you, ya bastard, fucking come here you shit” before swinging a punch miles from LJK Setright and collapsing in a heap

Unfortunately that one is true, therefore disallowed in this thread. And you missed the bit about Issigonis' lit cigarette falling on the design drawings for the Maxi's real doors, meaning they had to quickly make the 1800's doors fit.

[Parky]

Mazda’s Autozam marque was a combination of the words Auto and Zammo as he was the marketing teams favourite Grange Hill character.

AutoGripper was to be used for their cancelled earthmoving equipment plans although the AutoRoland was a successful Kei Car manufactured for the Guatemalan market in the early nineties.