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?

Nomenclature

What is a veteran?

And is a Viet Vet a veterinarian from Vietnam?

Yes, that really is a photograph of a Vietnamese veterinarian.  But this is a car blog so what is a veteran car?  Online dictionaries define it as a car from either before  1919 or before 1905.  The 1905 date fits in with cars eligible for the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run so let's go with that.

So what is a vintage car?  Wikipedia claims that car enthusiasts and collectors say that it is a car from the period of 1919 to 1930.

Wikipedia may be wrong - let's say it is 1905 to 1930.

So anything 1931 to 1970 is just an old car?

That sounds wrong too.

But I certainly wouldn't call 1975 vintage.

This means I have a different view to my favourite Aussie site drive.com.au

Here is their story of a Victorian man (which would make him a veteran) crashing his classic (I think that's the word they should be using rather than "vintage") Holden Torano into a Hyundai i30.

What a tit.

When you read the story, you find that it's the un-named Facebook user they quote who get's the right nomenclature stating, “Some people don’t deserve to own a classic."

And I feel more sorry for the Hyundai driver.

Meanwhile the Holden needs fixing up and being sold to a more discerning owner of a sensible vintage.