Sat Naff

Yet another story from my new Aussie source www.caradvice.com.au.

Only trouble is - I don't think it's true.

I don't like being let down by my news sources. This comes in the wake of the shock of this month's Top Gear magazine NOT having an advert for Seat on the back page. This must be the first time in many, many years that this has happened. Certainly the All Old Top Gear Magazine from 2004 had a Seat ad on the back. An even older copy I have from 1999 has a Mazda ad on the back but we're talking a minimum of 7-years worth of Seat ads here.

And what have they put there instead? - a flamin' perfume or after-shave ad! I don't take any notice of them - the TV versions are particularly grating. Usually black-and-white and full of very pretentious people you really wouldn't want to meet. Anyone fooled by these ads must be very shallow and very gullible.

Anyway, as Ronnie Corbett would say - I digress.

The story that led me to start wittering on here is about three women who let one of these thingslead them into a lake where they nearly drowned.

It seems far-fetched that even a woman driver (only joking!) would drive into a lake. Even at night, the headlights would show up a large mass of water where a road should be.

The other suspicious thing is that this is supposed to have happened in Washington, Tyne-and-Wear. And yet there is absolutely zero mention of it on the BBC North-East Website, nor on the sites of the Sunderland Echo or Newcastle Chronicle - nor anywhere else on the Global Interweb so how on Earth did a reporter in Oz get hold of the story?

I suppose it does reinforce the need not to blindly rely on Sat-Navs though. It's not as though we haven't been warned...

Not that everyone follows such warnings...
Anyway, what's wrong with good old-fashioned maps and following signs?

Inflatable Girlfriends

A 51-year-old Canadian man has been fined for driving in a high-occupancy vehicle lane with a blow-up doll in the passenger seat of his car.

That's the opening line and picture from a story in my new Car News source, www.caradvice.com.au

It is about a man who was fined for using a Car-Pool lane while travelling alone with a blow-up doll wearing a jacket and baseball cap in his passenger seat. I'm not sure about Canadian seatbelt laws but this doll was safely strapped in.

The picture is not of the offending vehicle, but looks like an advert for Reeses. I don't know if it was mocked up in Australia or not - do they have Reeses confectionary Down Under? - they generally don't in the UK.

The article concludes with the nugget of information, "For the record, police confiscated the doll as evidence, although the cap and jacket were left with the driver" - which conjures up the image of a patrol car driving through Ontario with a naked sex doll on board.

The story prompted me to recall the classic Only Fools and Horses episode with the exploding dolls and to find this picture:









And that, in turn, led me to this story from 2008 in The Mirror with this picture...Look closely at the rear window of the Fiesta - she was definitely not strapped in.

1985 Porsche 911 Targa For Sale

This is a genuine used car ad.Pistonheads found it and it is well worth a look.

Certainly in better condition than the one Hank Moody drives in Californication...

The headlight was smashed in the first episode by an angry, betrayed husband and it hadn't been fixed by end of the third series.

Do they not have an equivalent of the MOT test in California?

G'Day Australia

While my Blog Hits from the US have been steadily increasing, prompting my previous post, the last fortnight (that's two weeks, America) has seen Australia shoot into the lead so I figured I'd better do something for our Antipodean cousins.

So what do I know about Oz motoring?

Holdens, Utes and Bathurst.

So I checked out the Holden Website expecting to see what we would call Vauxhalls.

But it seems to mostly consist of what we would call Chevrolets albeit with a couple of nice mental monsters thrown in as well.

So, next stop on my web-based tour of Australia was the top listing when you type "Australian Car News" into Google - www.caradvice.com.au

This had the usual mix of Toyota and BMW and Porsche news that I've been reading about in the British and American car news sites. I'm not a fan of this global car industry - where has the national individuality gone?

Then I spotted this item in their editorial.

This asks, and attempts an answer, to that age old decision that I'm sure we've all had to make at some time in our lives, choosing the best new car to survive a Zombie Apocalypse.It is a brilliantly written article and they do eventually get around to cars. Apparently, the answer is a Knight XV:but that looks a little thirsty to me and I reckon that once the Zombies have taken over, the fuel infrastructure would be compromised. So you'd be better off with a VW Golf Bluemotion.

Of course, this article assumes that Zombies themselves can't drive - and I'd say that that was an unsafe assumption.




Now, Zombies being dead, would want a car for dead people, so after the Apocalypse, I'd imagine them causing havoc in vehicles like this one below.