Spectres

 

Or Ghosts or Phantoms.

What happens when you want to import your Roller (or any other luxury car) into France but don't fancy paying import duties?

 

I'll tell you.

 

You register it as being adapted for disabled people - even if it isn't.  That way it is Tax Exempt.

 

So how do you actually do that then?

 

I'll tell you.

 

You take advantage of a bit of a stupid decision made by the French government in 2017.  They decided to part-privatise the SIV - ie the registration system.  This was allegedly in a bid to speed up the slow process of delivering registration papers to car-buyers but probably, like all privatisations, to save money anjd help their rich friends make money.

 

Look at Mrs.Thatch in the '80s.

 

But I digress.

 

Some 2,000 civil servants were assigned to new tasks, and instead car-dealers were given the right to access the register themselves in order to issue documents for their clients.

 

Car dealers!?

What could possibly go wrong?

 

The full story is here.

 

And to give you the opening paragraph...

 

A million illegally-registered cars are being driven in France in a fraud scandal that has cost hundreds of millions of euros in lost taxes and fines, according to the state auditor.

 

These are known as "ghost cars" - even the ones that are not Rolls Royces.

 

The closing paragraph concludes...

 

France's interior ministry said it acknowledged the problem, and was taking steps to remedy it. An action plan announced last year has led to an increase in fraud detections, while the number of authorisations to access the SIV has been sharply reduced. 

 

 I think I know who they need to call. 

Supercar Showroom

I saw this programme advertised a couple of times on Quest:

I decided I probably wouldn't watch it because I wouldn't like the customers - and I'd be bloody jealous of them too.

Then I accidentally caught episode 4.

There was one really irritating customer - but she wasn't buying a Supercar - and the car she did buy she wanted wrapping in a garish pink.

Yuk.

I've watched episode 5 now too.

The rest of the customers all seem really decent, knowledgeable people.

The idea of a car showroom with an airport runway to test-drive the cars on is a brilliant idea.

The supercar showroom in question is The DMB Collection.  The D stands for Dean (the boss) - he is played by Brian Cox:

No - the other one.

The rest of the cast are is main salesman Brad, his office manager Trudy (who I think I may be in love with), his daughter Ellie and the bloke in the control tower who is called Alex and is played by Caleb from Clarkson's Farm.

It's only the first series so the bits where they have been told to react in certain ways for dramatic purposes still look a bit wooden but it is good enough for me to have set the series-record link.

I do hope though that Ellie is not as dim as she is made out to be - i.e. really dim.

And I do think that Dean is changing the perception of car dealers;

Arthur Daley, Little Dodgy Maybe?

And I'm not just talking about the awful cardboard cut-outs:

 

Two stars of Minder are up for sale.  The story is here.  There's no doubt about the Capri - I remember it played a big part in the opening titles. But that isn't the reg no. of Arthur's Daimler that I remember.

Now I'm not sad enough to remember all the number plates from the cars of my TV youth.

But I'd know them if I saw them again.

And I knew this one when I Googled "Arthur Daley Daimler":

I ran a quick MyCarCheck on DYO979V and it isn't on the books.  VDU342X is.

So then I tried the Government's MOT History Website. I have been aware of this site for a while and tried it out once on my Jag when I saw a link on Facebook.  Then a blogging chum of mine inspired me to look at a car I used to own.

I found out that my old Merc is now a taxi.

And still has a lot of the niggling problems that Mercs built around the turn of the Century had that made me get shut of it.

And it confirmed that DYO979V is not on the road.

Although VDU342X only seems to have been around since March 2014 when it's Front Exhaust had a minor leak of exhaust gases.

However, I found a fan-site which seems to offer a solution to the mystery.

Now, even though I'm a Jag man, I'd rather have the Capri that Dennis Waterman drove in the series.

Actually, I 'd rather have the car he drove in New Tricks:

 I could be so good for you.

Lots of Fun

Car lots of fun? This amusing article on the Car&Driver site highlights the secret language used by salesmen working on America's car Lots.

Now Arthur Daley here also had his own patois used on his car lot:

But that was just Cockney - Corblimey Mate! Luvaduck. Beales - Don't talk to me about Beales!

I've been meeting a few car salesmen lately.  Never a car saleswoman - do they exist?

My wife is after a new (or newer) car - it all follows on from the little yellow light that appears in a photo in my earlier post about the MOT test.  So far we've visited (in order of appearance) our local Toyota, Mazda, Hyundai and Ford dealers for test drives.

At the moment, my wife is being "up" while I am being "Third Baseman".  However, I'm not very good at this.  When she has finalised her choice, I will switch to being "Paperboy" - a role I recently played while purchasing our new family computer.  I wasn't very good at that either.

I have seen a couple of "Lot lizards" and would wish them well with "de-horsing" given the condition of my wife's current car - but that doesn't tend to happen in Britain anyway - if they want to keep you in the place, they make you a hot coffee and you are supposed to feel guilty if you don't finish it.

If you want to understand the past two paragraphs, and this clever illustration...

...you will need to read the article.

However, if you want to understand Arthur Daley, and maybe spend some sausage and mash on a new jam-jar, then this site may be more useful.