For those interested in old cars.

[PhilJ W]

I once had a Rascal, very nippy and fun to drive but you're allways going to be the one to arrive first at the accident.

Edited September 20, 2019 by PhilJ W

[Hobby]

On 18/09/2019 at 10:01, alastairq said:

Vulnerability ,I feel, is a perception in folks' minds, a much as anything else.

 

So my friend thought... Until he had that crash in which he was an innocent victim. You can "feel" all you want, but the fact is if you were in a crash with a modern medium sized car you'd come off worse.

 

But I wasn't saying anything about how people who drive them feel, that's their decision, not mine, and I am sure that if they were concerned about it they wouldn't drive those sorts of cars, so logically there's a lot of people who have no worries, just like you. I was just commenting how vulnerable you are, which is fact, and the old chestnut of "I drive to avoid accidents" is a red herring, we all do that, but sometimes you can't avoid it. My daughter's first accident just recently for instance, stopped to turn right, correct position on the road, and was rear-ended by someone not looking where they were going. I'd love to know how your "driving" could have avoided that. Just one of things, s**t happens, luckily she was in the Golf so all was ok except for a bit of whiplash...

[alastairq]

Good driving is all about minimising risk.

Risk to yourself, and risk to others.

Contrary to popular belief, driving on the public roads is not a 'team effort'.

 

The Highway Code is a manual showing how to interact with other road users. There Is no presumption in the Highway Code, that other road users are going to play the same game.

 

Around these parts [where I live] there have been a number of collisions recently...involving modern cars & stuffs.

 

In every case, the modern vehicle is a completely crumpled wreck.

In almost every case, the collisions have resulted in serious injuries, or death.

 

Whether one 'comes off worse'  when in a collision with a modern, again, is so full of variability .

 

I had a friend who regularly drove a Peugeot 504. he was in the middle of a multi car pile-up on the M1.....with injuries and fatalities left,right & centre.Yet, his was the only car [out of close to 50!] that could be driven away once released. he was the only one whose injuries were considered to be 'minor'.....he remained convinced about the life-saving qualities of the Peugeot 504 from there on.

 

The incident happened this century..the 504 was by then well over 20 years old.

 

The point being, experiences and anecdotes can be promulgated to support any argument.

I prefer not to run my life according to the experiences of others.  Otherwise I wouldn't dare go out the front door...let alone drive my Dellow [often at speed].....in today's [or, any day's?] traffic.

 

Like I said, much is down to perception........and many is the time I'd rather have been in an old car, than a modern.....

[alastairq]

3 hours ago, Hobby said:

I was just commenting how vulnerable you are, which is fact,

 ............and which I agree with you..and have noted as much in my post.

 

from my post

Quote

My Dellow could be deemed just about as 'vulnerable' as one could get on 4 wheels.

and

 

Quote

In practical terms  I am no more vulnerable than if I were riding a motorcycle....probably a lot less so.

 OK, perhaps I should have said ''just as vulnerable''...rather than 'no more vulnerable?'  Except I can't fall off my Dellow....

[alastairq]

5 hours ago, Owd Bob said:

or more like until i've got the bottle up to drive it

 What about the Daewoo Matiz, then?  That's tiny in terms of footprint.

yet still an excellent motorcar  [in its category]

[Joseph_Pestell]

14 minutes ago, alastairq said:

 What about the Daewoo Matiz, then?  That's tiny in terms of footprint.

yet still an excellent motorcar  [in its category]

OK then. In what way is a Matiz excellent?

[alastairq]

It has seats

It's more economical than a Morris Minor

Tyres are cheap

Parts are cheap

It'll still be able to stay to the left of the centre white line when passing parked cars.....so, by default [obstructions on both sides excepted]....has priority therefore must be given way to, by oncoming vehicles that are ,or want to be, across the centre line.......important when looking for a decent claim on another's insurance...

CAn be had cheaply enough....mainly from owners who were scared witless by the sheer size of other folks' cars.....

 

I'd have one in a trice.....much preferred over any [and I mean, any] of the cars on offer, new or nearly so, in today's marketplace.

But that's just me.....what can be expected of someone whose daily driver is a 25 year old Fourtrak...running mostly on veggie oil....[although I have recently tipped in some stale petrol....I really mean, stale]....

[russ p]

When I worked for central trains at Norwich one of the other drivers had a silver  one, I suggested to him that he had two sunroofs installed he was puzzled then I said I will definitely look like a giant toaster

[alastairq]

Giant??

[5 C]

53 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

OK then. In what way is a Matiz excellent?

 

Rubbish car fan and collector Ian Seabrook, aka HubNut, loved the Daewoo Matiz he bought new in 1999 so much, he tracked it down and bought it again.

 

He can probably explain far better than I can: 

 

[Owd Bob]

1 hour ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

OK then. In what way is a Matiz excellent?

...well at least the 13" wheel rims fit our Bedford Rascal Bambi just fine

[PhilJ W]

I hired a Matiz when I was on holiday in Malta in 2002. Not a great car but cheap.

[PatB]

My main objection to the Matiz, and a number of other small moderns, is not one of size or safety. It is more that vehicles that could easily have been fun little roller skates, with responsive, revvy engines and light, positive, direct controls, have been, apparently deliberately, been made to feel as if they're made of foam rubber. There are a few honourable exceptions. Little Daihatsus worked well, and the Italians don't seem to have got the memo that small cars must be dull. Overall, though, the prevailing view that driving must be a tedious chore seems to have taken firm hold. 

 

It may be, though, that my view is coloured by being in Australia where the choice of interesting tiddlers is far more limited than in Europe. 

[peanuts]

4 hours ago, PatB said:

My main objection to the Matiz, and a number of other small moderns, is not one of size or safety. It is more that vehicles that could easily have been fun little roller skates, with responsive, revvy engines and light, positive, direct controls, have been, apparently deliberately, been made to feel as if they're made of foam rubber. There are a few honourable exceptions. Little Daihatsus worked well, and the Italians don't seem to have got the memo that small cars must be dull. Overall, though, the prevailing view that driving must be a tedious chore seems to have taken firm hold. 

 

It may be, though, that my view is coloured by being in Australia where the choice of interesting tiddlers is far more limited than in Europe. 

may of posted this before some years ago whilst working for agency i got sent into the local branch of Arnold Clark to move cars & trucks between branches of theyre hire car dept. on day two arrive six am to be told your off to edinborough to collect a car take the runner . in this case the runner was a six month old Kia piacanto 1.4  the very definition of a small dull shopping trolley ! off north i head up the M6 having just crossed the border into a snow covered Scotland the matrix signs ahead inform me that the M74 is closed a head due to an accident .off i come at Abingdon on to the A702 and this is where the shopping trolley came into its own on the twisty wet roads if the borders through penechuick it was in its element pushed hard up and down the gearbox setting it up on the breaks for bends and dips in true "drive it like you niked it " style realy pleasurable drive arrived at Edinborough branch to return with an Audi A4 quatro my eyes lit up thinking ofthe fun i coud have on the return far from it with all the daft abs traction control anto yaw etc etc it wasnt halfas much fun or easy to drive or set up in the same manner for the road .know which i would have again for the same cross country journey and it wouldnt have four rings on the grill 

[Hobby]

Not everyone drives like you two, though, the vast majority of owners of such vehicles couldn't care less about "go kart" handling or "revvy engines", they just want a comfortable car which gets them from home to the shops and back with minimum fuss.

[PhilJ W]

7 hours ago, PatB said:

My main objection to the Matiz, and a number of other small moderns, is not one of size or safety. It is more that vehicles that could easily have been fun little roller skates, with responsive, revvy engines and light, positive, direct controls, have been, apparently deliberately, been made to feel as if they're made of foam rubber. There are a few honourable exceptions. Little Daihatsus worked well, and the Italians don't seem to have got the memo that small cars must be dull. Overall, though, the prevailing view that driving must be a tedious chore seems to have taken firm hold. 

 

It may be, though, that my view is coloured by being in Australia where the choice of interesting tiddlers is far more limited than in Europe. 

My 'shopping trolley' is a Hyundai i10, quite nippy and fun to drive and with a good performance. The biggest drawback is all the extras that are driven from the engine, I have to switch the aircon off before tackling a hill. Using the aircon can lose up to 10 mpg.

[polybear]

Whilst on holiday in Riva del Garda, Italy this week I came across this - well actually it was quite hard not to, since the (German?) owner decided to unload it off the back of the trailer smack bang in the middle of the ZTL (pedestrian) zone at about eight in the evening, with a couple of hundred onlookers.  I guess he wanted to make an entrance...

Anyway, I suspect he was no expert at unloading cars from trailers (the latter being some form of tippy uppy type) - by the sound of it he had lots of slack in the winch cable and then all of a sudden the car shot backwards at a rate of knots and off the trailer; I suspect it only came to a rest when the winch cable went tight all of a sudden....

I was observing this from a distance - I would've got closer but I had an important task scoffing a serious Pizza, so no contest really.

I'm no expert on such things, but I'd hazard a guess at it being a 1928 Model A Ford.

There was a classic car meet/rally held over 3 days, so classics were a regular sight around Lake Garda during the week.

 

[alastairq]

Whilst thinking about the 'size-v-safety' aspect....?

 

Much emphasis seems to be placed on the physical size/appearance of moderns...and a [false?] correlation with protection in a collision?

 

Are we forgetting the Citroen C1/Toyota Aygo range are really quite small? In as much as the occupants are not very far from the  outside world?  OK, I know these cars have a 'safety cell' surrounding the occupants...of special steels....but, even so, getting sidewindered by a Transit van doing 50 mph is still a worrying aspect, is it not?

 

Over the decades we have gone from [currently] having cars that literally crumple up/fold up on impact..so as to preserve the integrity of occupants...to , decades ago, of cars which were somewhat tank-like in that they didn't really crumple up [often being able to drive away?]......but which, as a result led to the insides of occupants being turned to jelly?

 

Yet another reasonably local smash the other night...much folded bodywork, serious casualties...new cars too.... Given how protective of life new[er] cars are......Is it a case of, we're now busy hitting each other ever harder? Because I don't see the passive safety advances working too well of late?

Are we becoming too convinced we are actually being protected by the increased acreage of very thin sheet steel [years ago, that would be glass windows?]....? Volvo Syndrome?

[Like the experiment where the exact same tea was sampled by a number of folk, who all preferred one cup over another...until they were told the preferred cups had all had a small weight glued underneath?] Psychologically, we relate heaviness with quality .

Or, as with today's motors, apparent heaviness?

 

Some years ago now, I was sideswiped from the left whilst negotiating a roundabout...in my Cannon trials car...an open 2 seater of minuscule proportions, much pre-WW2 running gear....but with stout tree bars between the [open] wheels.....tree bars made of old electrical conduit, actually. Whilst my lightweight car was knocked sideways somewhat...it actually was quite controllable in that, after being hit and knocked sideways, I blithely continued on to my exit before parking up. 

My eyes did light up at the prospect of a nice insurance claim...only to be disappointed to discover my only damage was a bit of chipped paint. [Ruddy hard stuff, that Hammerite!]

Whereas the small van that had hit me at a speed of around 25 mph..[I'm being generous there, it could have been more?]...was but a mangled wreck, as far as his front end was concerned....[plastics shattered, sub structures bent out of shape, etc]

Police were in fact, witnesses to the incident...and continually tried to get me to seek medical assistance...even though [as it turned out] the effects on me personally were probably less than I usually sustained whilst attempting an observed section on a trial... Van driver needed medical attention.....bet his boss wasn't very pleased, either?  Oddly, [as has happened quite a few times to me]....i could 'see' it was going to happen...I could have accelerated out of the way...but didn't bother. Really only split second stuff I suppose...so maybe I was able to 'brace & deal' with the impending impact..rather than it being a total surprise? I have been sideswiped and  bunted up the rear a few times..often in my 'old cars'...lately in the Fourtrak [sideswiped, twice within half an hour, one each side]....I recall on every occasion being able to mutter ''oh, FFS!''   before the impacts. [Not after!!]......

Situational awareness?

 

Probably. [ from decades of having to exercise that skill [latterly for the benefit of others].....?]

 

So really, perhaps  I have a personal advantage compared to most out there driving?  Which probably makes my comments elsewhere  a little, erm, influenced?

 

[25 years a bus driver, 20 years a Specialist Driver Instructor, with MoD]

 

 

 

[runs as required]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

Whilst on holiday in Riva del Garda, Italy this week I came across this - well actually it was quite hard not to, since the (German?) owner decided to unload it off the back of the trailer smack bang in the middle of the ZTL (pedestrian) zone at about eight in the evening, with a couple of hundred onlookers.  I guess he wanted to make an entrance...

Anyway, I suspect he was no expert at unloading cars from trailers (the latter being some form of tippy uppy type) - by the sound of it he had lots of slack in the winch cable and then all of a sudden the car shot backwards at a rate of knots and off the trailer; I suspect it only came to a rest when the winch cable went tight all of a sudden....

I was observing this from a distance - I would've got closer but I had an important task scoffing a serious Pizza, so no contest really.

I'm no expert on such things, but I'd hazard a guess at it being a 1928 Model A Ford.

There was a classic car meet/rally held over 3 days, so classics were a regular sight around Lake Garda during the week.

Interesting because hadn't Riva been Austrian until the end of WWI ? (the film "A Farewell to Arms" was our first date).

So a German speaker with a (Koln built?) model A may still feel at home in Riva.

dh

 

PS 

I recommend the car ferry (you don't need a car) because it serves an excellent trad 3 course dining room lunch on the way up/down Lake Garda

Riva-Desanzano.

Edited September 21, 2019 by runs as required

[Hobby]

I am beginning to wish I hadnt made that initial comment since Alastair seems intent on prolonging it. I saw personally the outcome of a clash between a modern Audi, A3 or 4 I think, and a very large truck and the concrete central reservation on the A16 on France. The result was bits of Audi all over the place but the guy walked away from it. The truck moved over as he overtook it and he could not get out of it not even with heavy braking. I know in many of my previous cars I'd have been seriously injured and in some dead. So yes modern safety systems in modern cars do work.

 

Any chance we could go back to admiring old cars instead of this discussion which I regret starting?!

[polybear]

Another Classic from Lake Garda - Lazise on Thursday.  No idea what it/they are though.....

Incidentally, there's plenty of classic Fiat 500's kicking around the area, as one would expect.

[Hobby]

A close up of the radiator and it's cap may help with ID?

Edited September 21, 2019 by Hobby

[alastairq]

Amilcar    ?

 

[runs as required]

3 hours ago, Hobby said:

Any chance we could go back to admiring old cars instead of this discussion which I regret starting?!

Just before we do, I was thinking about the 'small then/large now' origin of the above vulnerability discussion after the news [posted on the Electric (EV) thread] that our son, acting upon the advice of his accountant, had just acquired a 2016 hybrid Porsche Panamera.

I was disappointed at the picture of the lumpen brute after he'd described it as a "stretched 911" so I compiled the attached graphic. 

I was surprised to find that the (already well used) DS19 Citroen he'd been a baby in and then the equally over-the-hill Quattroportale Maser he'd discovered (at 15 that he lusted after for many years) his eccentric French exchange family drove are all bigger than his current hybrid. 

All are to approx same scale within the same overall length/height frame. 

Highest is my old Diesse, the longest by far is the Frua Maser.

911 admiration came from a couple of years working in Amsterdam. He'd made a bit on the side with a colleague by importing rust free 911s from California in a couple of containers and selling them on in Europe.

I got lent (a basic) one of them for a bit and delighted in it - just like the firm's beetle I used to hammer along over murram corrugated roads in East Africa.

dh

Edited September 21, 2019 by runs as required

[New Haven Neil]

Someone mention Beetles?

 

This was in Peel last week - UK plated, B suffix IIRC.

 

I hate them personally.

 

Also this local car, right up Alastair's street, a Buckler.  I know the owner. Malcolm, er, Buckler.....