Constitutional Observations

I like to partake of a daily constitutional.

This morning I observed a Santa being transported in a trailer at an uncomfortable speed yelling "Ho Ho Ho" then "Merry Christmas" repeatedly through some sort of amplification system.  He terrified a small dog much to the displeasure of its owner.

The Santa's voice started to waver when they became stuck behind some vehicles wanting to turn right so he was ground to a halt for a quite a while.

The towing vehicle was a large Toyota - probably a Land-Cruiser - this is meant to be a motoring blog.  It would have been more appropriate though to use a Hyundai Santa Fe.

The next thing I observed was this road sign that I've never seen before:

Obviously I don't mean the 20 one.

Or the Pink Route.  Other colours of route are available - I don't think this one takes you to the Gay District.

Here is the one I'm on about in a bit more detail:

Although the only version I could find on the Internet is reversed compared with the one I photographed.

Was it a warning about driving lengthways along steps?

I hadn't twigged at that point that it was a circle not a triangle so not a warning about anything.

It was further along a side road that I found one with a plate below it that read "No motor vehicle parking on verge or footway"

The reversed ones would be on the other side of the road.

There are no yellow lines around there so I guess the council would rather you block the road than damage the grass verges.  I don't know if that is sensible or verging on the ridiculous.

Defending The Faith

Autocar today are reporting that Tata are definitely going to replace the Land-Rover Defender, or, as it was called when I was young, the Land-Rover.

The BBC also had the story but I'm not linking to them because I'm still really annoyed at the way they are not responding to the flood of complaints about their dirty deal with Murdoch over the F1 rights.

Here's a picture of the DC100:This is still just a concept but is a clue as to what the Defender replacement will look like when it goes into production in 2015.

It's a hard act to follow:but I like what they've done so far.

The current Defender isn't selling brilliantly at the moment but I bet any run-out editions will do well. It still has a certain coolness - Richard Hammond has a couple for example - but the old design is expensive to build and poor reliability (which has affected the entire L-R range for quite a while) has led the Toyota Land-Cruiser to easily establish itself as the world-leader. I wonder where they got the idea for the name "Land-Cruiser" from?

The replacement will need to be reliable, tough, good off-road and, most of all, utilitarian. Definitely not trendy. This isn't one for Victoria Beckham to endorse, maybe Marilyn Monroe? Or, if you fancy someone a bit more alive, Rick Stein and the Dalai Lama are Landy fans

...and so is Ronan Keating (Ugh!)