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Automotive bull5hit facts thread


Taff

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The nickname 'bridge' for scrapping a car came from when the Forth rail bridge was made entirely out of old cars melted down on site and 'spun' into girders. A by product was a filthy orange liquid consisting entirely of rust in suspension. The canny scots who don't like to waste anything sold this on as an appetising drink for children, hence irn bru, made in Scotland from girders was born.

This explains my love of Irn Bru.

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The nickname 'bridge' for scrapping a car came from when the Forth rail bridge was made entirely out of old cars melted down on site and 'spun' into girders. A by product was a filthy orange liquid consisting entirely of rust in suspension. The canny scots who don't like to waste anything sold this on as an appetising drink for children, hence irn bru, made in Scotland from girders was born.

 

The Forth Rail Bridge is always referred to as the Forth Rail Bridge north of the border, but the Scottishists can get a bit irritated if you call the Forth Road Bridge the Forth Road Bridge, they always just call it the Forth Bridge, because it's better than the rail one.

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March 1942.  War is still raging across Europe and some of the rest of the world.  Fun had been rationed to such a point that it was no longer viable.  It was at this point that men and women across the world developed an underground post and telegram network appreciating the mundane and, in their desperation, seeking out anything of interest.  The group would splinter further, some would go on to become mind-numbingly seriously minded train enthusiasts.  Others would end up recording bus journeys and posting their videos on what is now the internet.  Some would go as far as to become amateur radio enthusiasts.

 

But a few brave souls ventured out into the wilderness determined to make the mundane interesting, amusing and above all never take themselves too seriously.  It was in 1945 as war was coming to an end but life was still fucking miserable in Britain that in spite of rationing, stiff upper lips, structural undergarments and an unremitting optimism of organised fun, Motor Flotsam was born.  An organisation that would later be known as Autoshite.

 

Now, as then, nobody really cared.

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The Forth Rail Bridge is always referred to as the Forth Rail Bridge north of the border, but the Scottishists can get a bit irritated if you call the Forth Road Bridge the Forth Road Bridge, they always just call it the Forth Bridge, because it's better than the rail one.

The Forth bridge is so called because it replaced the previous three bridges which were technically:

 

The first big catapult

The second rope between two big trees

The third series of big red balls (concept later adopted on Total Wipeout)

 

Before the people of Scotland got fed up with falling in rivers while Amanda Byram laughed at them and built a bridge instead.

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The RDS radio system is a god-send when driving, and might even be fitted to some of the shitters on here. It means that there is a better than evens chance that the one good record they play per day on Radio 2 will be interrupted with the second half of the travel news from the county you've just left and a snippet of utterly inane parochial chat, which - if by pure random chance - does happen to be of interest, will cut off before it finishes.

 

However, two little known facts about the RDS system are:

 

1) 98% of the people who have read a manual for a car stereo with RDS have tried to use the 'search by programme type' function, and on both occasions nothing happened.

 

2) The RDS system was actually funded by governments as a means of informing the populace of the start of a Nuclear War, and any RDS compatible radio can be turned on remotely by the government. Even if it's not plugged in. It was supposed to be tested for the Queen's Speech in 1981 but it was vetoed by Thatcher, which is when the rift between her and the Queen began.

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Categories in the 'Search By Type' RDS thing:

 

'Adverts' - local commercial radio, top five on repeat, 'Move Like Jagger', songs where the chorus is just whistling

'Teen' - BBC radio 1, with adverts for the current Strictly Come Dancing, Classic FM

'Pensioner' - BBC local radio and Radio 2,, 100s of songs from the 50s, with adverts and conversation about the current Strictly Come Dancing, Irish presenter

'The Economy' - Radio 3 or 4, Classic FM

'Jazz' - Interference, random unpleasant Indian music if driving through Midlands

'ACDC' - the last three seconds of Soyndgarden's 'Black Hole Sun', before a track list of irrelevant 70s music that only 60+ year old magazine editors listen to, and adverts that lasts six days before they play Black Hole Sun again. Classic FM

'News' - radio will scan for infinity, Radio 4, Classic FM

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eBay pays for people to purposefully bid on cars then piss you about after the auction so you have to relist it and increase their profits. Any suggestions that these knuckle dragging morons just exist anyway and mostly drive corsas bought mostly from Halfords is purely fictitious.

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Due to budget problems, the Lambo Miura featured in the opening of the 1969 version of 'The Italian Job' was in fact a 1969 Austin Maxi 1500. A young Bernie and Leepu were responsible for the realistic re-design of the bodywork, using a hefty 124kg of Plastic Padding to disguise the sexy lines of the Maxi. 

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After British Leyland used the quartic wheel in the Allegro and SD1, Ford bosses didn't want to be outdone by their Midlands rivals, and the Mk3 Escort was planned to have a dodecahedron shaped wheel with fairly pronounced edges to aid grip when turning

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Rather than follow EU directives, to protect drivers with air bags to protect them from moronic manoeuvres, UPIK wanted to follow Jaguars Lead from the 1950 by attaching a selection of daggers and razor blades to the dash, while relocating all air bags to just underneath the drivers seat.

 

Roads would quickly become safer through Darwinesque cleansing of the Jeans pool somehow

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The Fiat X1/9 was originally intended to be a one ninth scale replica of the Bell X1 aircraft that first broke the sound barrier.

 

Its top speed was also intended to be one ninth of the X1's top speed but the little Fiat failed to reach the requisite 177.6 mph.

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