Automotive bull5hit facts thread

[martc]

Lanchester cars were made halfway between Lancaster and Chester.

[Parky]

Levi Roots is related to the founder of the Hillman Car company

[dozeydustman]

Just now, Parky said:

Levi Roots is related to the founder of the Hillman Car company

Not the supercharger company?

[Parky]

He gets around!

[vulgalour]

He was also the inventor of the Jeans Bug.

[Noel Tidybeard]

9 hours ago, vulgalour said:

Hey, this thread is only for facts* so that one's disallowed!

 

10 hours ago, Noel Tidybeard said:

Vulgalour didn't buy an Lanchester just because it was the only vehicle with enough headroom to allow him to go out for a drive in his new Willy Wonka top hat!

FIFY lol

[Parky]

Following the successful launch of the Ibiza, Seat followed that with a two seat concept convertible called the Magaluf.  Sadly it was withdrawn from sale when a design flaw meant the stereo would only play ambient house and owners developed STD’s.

 

[ProgRocker]

John DeLoean tried to keep his car company solvent in the early 1980s with a side business selling talcum powder. 

[St.Jude]

The Hyundai Kona isn't called the Hyundai Kona in Portugal, as Kona is Portugese for C*nt.

Hyundai knew this, because the designer was Portugese and called it the Kona because only C*nts would drive it. 

[New POD]

23 hours ago, martc said:

Lanchester cars were made halfway between Lancaster and Chester.

Indeed.  In fact: Lanchester College of Art and Technology, became Coventry (Lanchester) Polytechnic, which became Coventry Polytechnic, which became Coventry University.  

Coventry is actually an anagram of  Chorley, Oldham, Vue cinemas, Eccles,  New Brighton, Tarlton, Runcorn and Yarrow Valley and the university campus is actually a collection of rooms above off licences, sheds on allotments, and when they have need of a large lecture hall, they use screen 12 at Southport. 

The Halls of Residence are actually Pontins at Ainsdale and the disused nuclear waste disposal area near Heysham. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[anonymous user]

22 minutes ago, ProgRocker said:

John DeLoean tried to keep his car company solvent in the early 1980s with a side business selling talcum powder. 

Whereas if he'd sold solvent that people could inhale he may have got away with it.

[phil_lihp]

For a short time in the early 2000s, due to an inspired partnership between the two companies, you could walk into a Sainsburys in some parts of the UK and buy an MG Rover car off the shelf with your groceries.  Although initially popular, the scheme was ended after a few months due to an administrative error which meant that for a short period in February 2002 every pack of Ferrero Rocher came with a free MG ZR, a mistake which cost MG Rover millions and eventually led to bankruptcy.  Due to the short-lived promotion, cars sold under the Sainsburys brand were never a common sight.  To this day a Rover 75 in top-of-the-range "Taste the Difference" spec is a rare and desirable find, with only 3 currently known to exist in the UK.  

[motorpunk]

When Ulrich Bez was CEO of Aston Martin, he was so desperate to fit in as an Englishman that he played in goal for Newport Pagnall FC for two seasons, conceding only 12 goals in total and helping the team to the Unibond Vanarama League 6 (South) playoffs, where they lost to a late penalty scored by Jaguar CEO Ralf Speth, who plays striker for Leamington Town Rangers and insists on being called Jayden Smith.

These are true facts and I will defend them in any international court of law. 

[dozeydustman]

The Daihatsu Charade was named in honour of popular 80s daytime show ‘Give us a clue’, and the first three imported to the UK were given to Lionel Blair, Una Stubbs and Michael Aspel.

[martc]

13 hours ago, phil_lihp said:

 for a short period in February 2002 every pack of Ferrero Rocher came with a free MG ZR, a mistake which cost MG Rover millions

It is true that BMC/BL/Austin Rover et al are well known for their costly mistakes. The above is a repeat of the costly Austin Ambassador/Ferrero Rocher tie in of 1982 when 27 Ambassdors were wrapped in gold foil and piled on top of each other in a teetering pyramid. Several bit actors were paid to be impressed by BL spoiling them.

10 Ambassadors were crushed beyond repair, the rest were unwrapped, the dents knocked out and sold to an unsuspecting public. They later became the topic of a That's Life Special following a class action led by Nigel Farage.

Only one Ambassador from this stunt has survived, the top one, pieces of hazelnut can still be found under the seats, and the front wings are made from biscuit. There is still some gold foil ground into the vinyl roof.

Nigel Farage's freshly unwrapped Ambassador just after delivery. This one was on the second row.

 

 

 

[ProgRocker]

If you type in the number sequence '80087355' into the immobiliser keypad of 1996 Citroen Xantia diesels, French owned nuclear weapons at Bikini Atoll are primed for firing.

[New POD]

1 hour ago, HarmonicCheeseburger said:

The Invacar was intended at one point to get the Trabant engine, in a move that would have seen a more interesting GTi variant,  they even did ponder using the alloy wheels from the Dolly Sprint too. 

I think the tabbant was intended to have the invacar engine, but the complexity was beyond East German weapons designers, who had defected to automotive design. 

In fact invacar was going to  have a Honda 1300 motorbike engine (The six cylinder one) but the accountants at The department for health decided that servicing them would need 5 too many spark plugs, so they fitted it with a 2 stroke diesel, made by a toy company in Hong Kong 

[dozeydustman]

Nicole of Papa & Nicole Renault Clio fame was played by Estelle Skornik. Where’s the automotive question you may ask?

Estelle Skornik was named after her Aunt Lil’s Skoda.

[dozeydustman]

The Ford Granada was named solely to appeal to ITV viewers in Manchester

[dozeydustman]

The Citroen Visa got its name after the designer needed a stamp on his passport to bring his design drawings to the board of Group PSA

[ProgRocker]

5 hours ago, dozeydustman said:

The Citroen Visa got its name after the designer needed a stamp on his passport to bring his design drawings to the board of Group PSA

In the 1990s 'Jalopy' magazine the authors poked a bit of fun at Citroen for "naming the car after a credit card" 

😀

[Parky]

June Whitfield and Terry Scott still hold the record for the furthest distance travelled around MIRA in 24 hours.  Achieved in a Princess 1700HL in standard spec they were aided by slipstream created by James Hunt and Emerson Fittipaldi towing caravans behind their Formula One cars.  

Scott, a promising F3 star was once described by Jim Clark as “The only man I ever feared” said after the event that  “the slipstream instantly added  500 revs onto the B series engine at which point is was as silent as a fish“.

After the event they celebrated by having Terrys boss round for dinner (although it didn’t go well apparently)

 

[Parky]

Lord Creator originally wrote a soft reggae track called “William Town”.  However William Towns, designer of the Aston Martin Lagonda objected so the track had to be changed to Kingston Town.

[JimH]

Shortly after commercial television began Associated Rediffusion poached Barry Bucknell from the BBC. Barry Bucknell's Banger Bonanza was cancelled after only three weeks because viewers felt that his attempt to poularise the catch phrase "Hold out your hand" was in poor taste given the number of people who were crippled by polio.

[sheffcortinacentre]

20 hours ago, Parky said:

June Whitfield and Terry Scott still hold the record for the furthest distance travelled around MIRA in 24 hours.  Achieved in a Princess 1700HL in standard spec they were aided by slipstream created by James Hunt and Emerson Fittipaldi towing caravans behind their Formula One cars.  

Scott, a promising F3 star was once described by Jim Clark as “The only man I ever feared” said after the event that  “the slipstream instantly added  500 revs onto the B series engine at which point is was as silent as a fish“.

After the event they celebrated by having Terrys boss round for dinner (although it didn’t go well apparently)

 

1700 would be an "O" series ( pedant mode off).

[purplebargeken]

 From 1963 to the late 80's, my dad worked as a manager at Fords in Halewood. He single handedly was responsible for intructing his shift workers to grind away a small lip of metal from the rear wheel arch pressings for Escorts and Orions. He realised that these extra bits  of bare metal were being missed by the paint shop robots and led to corrosion forming in the rear arches.  So if you ever saw an Escort or Orion with solid rear arches, that was solely down to my dad.

[sloth]

vauxhall nova in spanish means joyriders wet dream. 

 

ford escorts are so names after the designers of the mk1 got shit faced and had an office party woth copious coke and hookers. it was originally called the ford overpriced scentax wankmobile. 

[Parky]

The Austin 1100 was originally called the Austin 1098.  However a bean counter realised that 1100 only used two numbers, whereas 1098 was four different ones.  The saving in toolmaking costs for the rear badging amounted to  savings which Donald Stokes used to buy a new hat for his wife.

The car itself was originally intended to be slightly smaller as demonstrated by Alec Issigonis In this early press photo.  However this prototype was used by the construction industry (and is still in use today!) as the benchmark for garage dimensions in the U.K.

[JimH]

Many people believe that the Dockers' excesses at Daimler were an isolated incident. Few are aware of  the behaviour of Pehr Gyllenhammar and his wife Christina at Volvo. When shadows lengthen in Sweden the older men sit round the fire and talk of the "Gyllenhammar 300s" - a series of show cars created by Christina for various motor shows. Few who saw one could forget the opulence ofthe 340 GL Blue Line show car. The pinstriping alone cost as much as a Volvo line worker earned in eight minutes.

The Volvo board tolerated the ridiculous expenditure but when they repeated the stunt with the 340 GL Red Line strike action by assembly line workers disgruntled about the tinted glass forced a boardroom showdown and Pehr was voted out. 

[martc]

On 1/26/2021 at 1:07 PM, dozeydustman said:

The Citroen Visa got its name after the designer needed a stamp on his passport to bring his design drawings to the board of Group PSA

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Those who have read the small print of the recently signed treaty between the UK and EU need read no further, but everyone else please note that from 1/1/21 all visitors to France must have a fully stamped Citroen Visa to enter the country.

VAG have recently copyrighted the following model names  - Pasaporte (for SEAT),  Cestovni Pas (for Skoda), Reisepass (for VW and Audi) and Shove Your Bally Paperwork Up Your Arse, Johnny Foreigner (for Bentley); just in case.