Three for All

Happy St.Stephen's Day!

If Good King Wenceslas is looking out on the feast of motoring news this Christmas, he will have spotted the big story which is the potential merger of Nissan, Honda and Mitsubishi.

The story came out with this photo:

Assuming they are standing in front of their respective logos, the Mitsubishi guy looks slightly less unhappy with the deal than the other two.

It took me a while to work out what that photo reminded be of.

At first I thought of Kraftwerk - maybe performing Autobahn:

But they have lecturns.

And there are four of them.

As I have mentioned before, here and here for example, three is the magic number - although I was talking about Top Gear at the time at the start of the Chris Evans era.

You don't hear of him nowadays.

But maybe that is a clue as to what the photo reminds me of:

Except they look too relaxed.

And they are stood in the wrong order - Hammond is definitely Mitsubishi and Clarkson is definitely Nissan.

This photo is a bit closer:

Sir Kier even has the pose right.

But this is the photo that captures the mood best:

Now, what sort of vehicle will these three automotive icons come up with?

How about this?

Don't Mention The War

That phrase was famously said by a silly man with a silly moustache.

Here he is not mentioning the war:

 Here's another silly moustache:

Remember that when Charlie Chaplin and Oliver Hardy sported this style, they were meant to look silly.  This house I took a photo of  several years ago seems to carry off the Hitler look quite well.

Now the real Hitler, in the penultimate picture here, is modelling the Volkswagen Beetle.

If the Beetle was so good though, why were Nazis always photographed hailing taxis?

People who don't like the Beetle are always quick to make the famous association with Adolf - something Volkswagen themselves would probably not be wanting to remind people of.

Shame their boss managed to do just that.  The BBC story is here.  He appears to have used a play-on-words with the phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei" - meaning "Work sets you free" - as emblazoned on the gates of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Oops.

We'd just forgotten about the link with the Nazis.

Now wasn't there something about Diesel?