Automotive bull5hit facts thread

[timolloyd]

Triumph Heralds were originally designed so that the bonnet, bulkhead and rear tub could be switched around, to turn it in to a rear engined, front wheel drive car.

 

If you look closely at the original 1959 Motor Show footage of a Herald being built live on stage, you'll see the engine is actually in the boot.

[Negative Creep]

Henry Ford decreed all Model Ts should be painted black because they'd all appear that colour anyway on contemporary newsreels.

[Pillock]

A miscommunication around an April Fools Day gag by BMW led to them accidentally selling the 525r for three days in 1994, where the entire left hand side of the car was an optional extra. Dealers took 62 orders but these were cancelled when BMW realised that by chopping the V8 in half, they had inadvertently promoted a 4 cylinder car and that was in fact a stupid idea.

[Felly Magic]

Princess Anne holds the world land speed record for a horse after being nicked for doing 85 in her Reliant Robin along the A1 near Stamford

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

It is perfectly acceptable by the ministry to have no drivers side foot well in a car provided that you comply with section 2c, part e; engine must be removed and section 2f, part q; operator has adequate grip on their training shoes.

 

You can reduce a vehicles weight by 1.8% and increase mpg by 2.7% by folding the back seats down and putting the floor mats in the boot.

[MorrisItalSLX]

K-Seal was named after the K-Series engine, as it was the incresased sales due to the K-Series engine thet saved the company from bankrupcy in the early 2000s and allowed the company to expand and grow into the buisiness they are today.

[martc]

Henry Ford decreed that all Ford Model T's should in fact be refered to as Model T Fords.

 

A few decades later the good folk at Tamworth followed Henry's example and decided that Reliant Robins should in fact be called Robin Reliants.

[Parky]

George the Bear abandoned his lucrative modelling career as the face of Hofmeister lager in 1988 and turned to car design.

 

His primary contribution was a small upsweep to the rear window profile, popular in many BMW models which he named after his previous employer as a goodwill gesture.

 

Less well known designs from George the Bear are the Lowenbrau splitter, the Jagermeister louvre, and the Kronenbourg rear spoiler.

 

Sadly Georges drinking problem consumed him and he died in 2006 while working on what he described as "an intensive collaboration with Smirnoff"

[Tamworthbay]

Henry Ford decreed that all Ford Model T's should in fact be refered to as Model T Fords.

 

A few decades later the good folk at Tamworth followed Henry's example and decided that Reliant Robins should in fact be called Robin Reliants.

Not true, The Robin Reliant was named after it's inventor. As Robin is such a popular name in Tamworth it is common to use a place of work to determine which Robin you mean. At the time of its invention Robin was working at a local TV rental company and the legend was born. Due to an unfortunate cock up in the ordering department where Robin deaf clueless fucker in stores misheard and replaced the C and E with a T much to the delight of the companies bean counters.

[martc]

Regal Relaints were named after the most famous, nay regal, Reliant owner ever.

 

The Scimitars and Sabres have some sort of connection to all the bladed weapons owned by people living in Tamworth. There are also a lot of Ants there.

 

Oh and there's also some link between Tamworth pigs and Relaints but I'd be thrown off Autoshite if I were to be more precise...

[Parky]

Ssangyong derived their company name from the combination of letters drawn by Carol Vorderman in the second round on episode 3 series 2 of Countdown.

 

Margaret from Bexhill on Sea got "Gays"

[Talbot]

Rolls-Royce cars are nicknamed "rollers" as the first production car that was made had a crash with a steamroller on it's first every road test.  Thereafter, the model was known as "the one that hit the roller", or just "the roller" for short, and the name stuck.  The model itself was a sucess.

 

Bonus fact.. Ever since then, all new Rolls-Royce models have had their first-off-the-line cars intentionally crashed into a steam roller or road roller as a good luck.  The only model that this was not done for, a "1968 bronze well-lit" was not a sucess, hence the superstition continues to this day.

[Parky]

Another interesting Rolls Royce fact is their factory had an electric clock which was wired into a surplus WW2 Air Raid klaxon. It was designed after someone said "so loud you can't think" so the bosses thought that if the workforce can't think, they will just work. It was quite successful.

 

It also worked in their marketing - remember the line "at 60mph the only thing you can hear is the electric clock?" Well they never specified how loud the electric clock was!

 

The line was also used in their Jet Engine marketing except 60mph was substituted for 60000 rpm

[martc]

Another interesting Rolls Royce fact is their factory had an electric clock which was wired into a surplus WW2 Air Raid klaxon. It was designed after someone said "so loud you can't think" so the bosses thought that if the workforce can't think, they will just work. It was quite successful.

 

 

[Talbot]

The NSU RO80 was the last in a line of vehicles that were designed by a government body to gauge just how shit a car can be, and just how severe the faults need to be before the car-buying public actually stop buying them. Other vehicles as part of the scheme had been the Alfa-Romeo Alfasud, the Lancia Beta, the Austin Maxi, the Morris Marina and the Triumph Stag.

 

The study group all agreed that with the RO80 they'd "gone a bit fucking far this time lads".

 

While the govenment body is no longer with us, the results of their painstaking work were put to good use, ensuring that the vast majority of vehicles for sale in the UK were "just the right balance of shit" so that they would continue to be sold, but also keep an army of mechanics in full-time work the country over.

 

Recently, a group of American manufacturers realised that this information was sorely lacking, both for their market and needing to be up-to-date, so they put together their own group, all agreeing that they should each sacrifice one model to the cause. Chrysler went first with the PT cruiser, and all the other manufacturers immediately decided that this wasn't a very sensible game to play anymore, and pulled out. The information gained from the PT cruiser incident was, however, very revealing and the American market now also has a reasonable balance of utterly shit engineering in the vast majority of its cars, ensuring they also have a large workforce capable of swearing loudly at every opportunity.

[bunglebus]

Here's a bit of BS a knowledgeable* chap passed on to me, he had a MK3 Escort for sale with genuine RS1600i wheels on it which I was trying to buy to put on my Sierra - he told me some Sierras came with them new because Ford fitted "whatever they had lying around".

[sierraman]

Yeah just Chuck those ronals on that 1.3L to get it out the door.

 

Ford actually created a Mondeo Cosworth, they only made one and my dad bought it in the admag in 2003 for £250. Its still in his garage but you can't see it otherwise the magic will stop. Anyway my camera always breaks when I'm challenged to provide photographic evidence.

[Tamworthbay]

Here's a bit of BS a knowledgeable* chap passed on to me, he had a MK3 Escort for sale with genuine RS1600i wheels on it which I was trying to buy to put on my Sierra - he told me some Sierras came with them new because Ford fitted "whatever they had lying around".

I understand that is exactly how the legendary Maxi diesel was born, after a van load of Bedford engines was dropped at the wrong shed.

[Pillock]

All Scorpio 2.9i Cosworths have a fuse missing. If you put it back in, the engine gets a full 500bhp because it's the same as the RS500 racing one but they turned a load of stuff off to make it safer for road use.

[Parky]

In 1960, a talented French chassis designer called Michel Blanchimont was sacked by Ronal wheels for shagging the bosses daughter.

 

Managing to secure a role with Renault, he persuaded Renault management that by making wheels with three studs would save a franc per car, and over the course of the year that would save the company several hundred thousand francs. This idea was also adopted by Peugeot and Citroen.

 

The real reason was to deprive Ronal of sales in France as he knew they didn't have the facilities to retool to cater for three stud wheels, even going as far as to alter the spacing of the studs so wheels from the 12 wouldn't fit the Renault 5 and so on. So whilst the publically announced intention was cost saving, the real reason was to piss the MD of Ronal France off.

 

And that's absolutely true

[Parky]

Nurse Gladys Emmanuels Morris Minor in "Open all Hours" had a two litre Fiat twin cam engine fitted

[Justin Case]

Nurse Gladys Emmanuels Morris Minor in "Open all Hours" had a two litre Fiat twin cam engine fitted

I call Bullshit on that one. It is widely documented that it actually had a BMC diesel engine out of a J4 van,  to give her greater economy when doing her rounds. You will notice that it only moves at the beginning and end of the programme, when the theme music is played loud enough to drown out the distinctive diesel rattle. The transplant was so so succcessful that the BBC did the same thing on Del Boys Reliant van and the Triumph Herald driven by the Thora Hird character in Last of the Summer Wine.

[bunglebus]

I call Bullshit on that one. It is widely documented that it actually had a BMC diesel engine out of a J4 van,  to give her greater economy when doing her rounds. You will notice that it only moves at the beginning and end of the programme, when the theme music is played loud enough to drown out the distinctive diesel rattle. The transplant was so so succcessful that the BBC did the same thing on Del Boys Reliant van and the Triumph Herald driven by the Thora Hird character in Last of the Summer Wine.

The Regal had a Honda C90 engine fitted for the scene where Rodney takes off in it because the BMC Diesel made it too nose heavy.

[Parky]

The Toyota Hilux driven by Entwhistle in Last of the Summer Wine which has carried actors such as Peter Sallis, Frank Thornton and Brian Murphy was retained in storage by the BBC following Burt Kwouks death, and later used by Clarkson in Top Gears Hilux tests.

 

It was successfully sold as a wreck to Aardman Animations as part of their Peter Sallis (voice of Wallis) memorial exhibition and receives over a hundred thousand Japanese visitors a year at their Bristol HQ.

[Parky]

The Vauxhall VX4-90 was Marty Hopkirks car and following his death became a ghost car.

 

Jeff was the only one who could see it which was great for avoiding parking fines but made servicing and repairs at his local Vauxhall dealer impossible

[xtriple]

Mercedes Benz don't put transmission oil dipsticks on their cars to make you go to the dealership to be fleeced for thousands when you want to check your oil level.

[sierraman]

It is impossible to DIY any repairs or servicing on any car made after 1990. Under the bonnet there is just a big microchip. You must throw all your tools away and take it to an authorised dealer to carry out any repairs. Fail to do this and you will be greeted by Elon Musk at the gates of hell.

[sierraman]

The Morris Traveller was created due to a shortage of sheet metal during the post war years. Morris found it was cheaper to hand make a timer frame to be fitted instead.

[sierraman]

On LHD cara the accelerator and clutch as the opposite way round.

[sierraman]

The Honda VTEC is so sophisticated it can be run anticlockwise so you effectively have 5 reverse gears.