Tony Blair is a c**t part 45

[Amor de Cosmos]

Berba is on to something here. Americans use car washes. I’ve never seen anyone do the British suburban male thing of soap and sponges in their driveway here. Even less have I seen adverts for those home car-wax things. The stuff where a middle aged middle class suburban man sees himself defined by the cleanliness of his Mondeo (or modern equivalent) but is too cheap to outsource the actual labour doesn’t seem to exist on this side of the Atlantic.

I don’t think clean cars are a particularly British obsession. But being so cheap that you choose to waste your weekend cleaning your own car might be.

Car washing is huge here too. All my immediate neighbours indulge regularly and most of them have three or four cars per household. I tend to think it's an anal protestant thing more than specifically anglo.

[johnr]

I tend to think it's an anal protestant thing more than specifically anglo.

A WhhhAAAAATTTT?

Edit: Ah, I get what you mean now. I thought it was a typo/predictive text.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I'm not an academic, so I might be wrong here, but I think the terminus technicus to describe your claim is "a pile of wank".

I worked for BMW - that's a car company - for 15 years. The most popular colour is, as you say, Grey or Silver. But not because of the dirt, otherwise the most popular colour would be, well, Dirt. It's to cover up the scratches.

Jesus.

If I could find a way to post a picture of my dad's silver/grey corolla, I think you'd agree that you see the scratches well before you notice the dirt. That fucker shows its time in Connemara like a prussian would wear their duelling scars.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Car washing is huge here too. All my immediate indulge regularly and most of them have three or four cars per household. I tend to think it's an anal protestant thing more than specifically anglo.

You have a weird thing about cars in canada too. I was surprised to see that WOM's imperial land yacht costs about the same as a new Toyota Corolla in Ireland. while petrol is 50% more expensive per litre. Do your family hand wash their cars?

[ursus arctos]

I dunno about the religion angle.

It works to some extent in the US, but they may be related to the fact that our core white Catholic populations tend to live in areas with lousy weather. In Germany, however, Bavarians are big on the practice and almost as big on Catholicism.

In any event, I thought Amor lived among well-to-do ex-hippies and Asians. When did the area turn Old Stock Presbyterian?

[Amor de Cosmos]

Car washing is huge here too. All my immediate indulge regularly and most of them have three or four cars per household. I tend to think it's an anal protestant thing more than specifically anglo.

You have a weird thing about cars in canada too. I was surprised to see that WOM's imperial land yacht costs about the same as a new Toyota Corolla in Ireland. while petrol is 50% more expensive per litre. Do your family hand wash their cars?

Yes the neighbours all hand-wash their vehicles in their driveways. I feel so inadequate, the Volvo is lucky if it sees the inside of the car-wash every three months. And don't get me started on lawn maintenance.

[Amor de Cosmos]

In any event, I thought Amor lived among well-to-do ex-hippies and Asians. When did the area turn Old Stock Presbyterian?

In Van that was true. But out here in the ex-urbs the vibe is definitely more Canadian Gothic.

[Janik]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring...heir-cars.html

"Almost eight out of ten British drivers are now too lazy to wash their own cars"

It's made my day to discover that simple sloth on my part pisses the Telegraph off.

But then, my car is grey. So it never looks dirty, anyway...

[San Bernardhinault]

I always assumed that grey/silver is the most popular car colour because people are monstrously boring and concerned mostly about resale value. I didn't realise that they'd found a way of rationalising their dullness.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I always assumed that grey/silver is the most popular car colour because people are monstrously boring and concerned mostly about resale value. I didn't realise that they'd found a way of rationalising their dullness.

It's not as boring as brown. Mid-brown. My car is mid-brown. What can possibly be more boring than a brown Volvo

[ursus arctos]

My father had a beige Chevette, which would give it a run for that prize.

He totaled it when he fell asleep while on a cloverleaf (he was fine, though obviously shaken)

[San Bernardhinault]

Beige and brown are at least hues. Greys and silvers and blacks and whites which make up what appears to be 95% of the cars on the roads here are defined by an entire lack of hue.

[Janik]

I always assumed that grey/silver is the most popular car colour because people are monstrously boring and concerned mostly about resale value. I didn't realise that they'd found a way of rationalising their dullness.

For me, the colour was irrelevant. I wanted a particular size of car and engine/age range/price bracket. When I found a car reasonably locally that fitted all of those (in fact came in a bit lower than expected on price) I wasn't going to quibble about the colour of it!

[San Bernardhinault]

And before anyone has a go - I don't mean people who own drab, colourless cars are inherently boring: most people just buy whatever's on the lot or available second hand. It's just that that's almost always deathly dull. The fault lies in car manufacturers who refuse to put interesting colours in their dealerships.

[Amor de Cosmos]

My father had a beige Chevette, which would give it a run for that prize.

He totaled it when he fell asleep while on a cloverleaf (he was fine, though obviously shaken)

Woah! He was extremely lucky.

[ursus arctos]

The cars whose drivers line up for alternate side of the street parking here tend to represent a broader palette, largely because they belong to real people who use them regularly. But on through streets or highways, there numbers are dwarfed by "black cars" (both traditional and those from ride hailing services), rentals and commercial vehicles, not to mention monochromatic cabs (yellow or apple green).

Yes, he was. It was one of those cloverleafs whose interiors are essentially a shallow earthen bowl. We were quite wary of having him drive after that and he rarely pressed it.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Beige and brown are at least hues. Greys and silvers and blacks and whites which make up what appears to be 95% of the cars on the roads here are defined by an entire lack of hue.

Yeah but, at least for someone my age, silver is redolent of German Grand Prix racing colours — Mercedes, Auto-Union et al. To my knowledge no one has ever raced in a brown car, nor would they.

[ursus arctos]

[Amor de Cosmos]

Not through choice though. Lumbered with UPS's corporate colours

[ursus arctos]

Well, the FIA made the Germans race in silver.

But yeah. There aren't many brown flags, either.

[Amor de Cosmos]

No, it is a defined heraldic colour though. I figure it wasn't used much as it'd be indistinguishable from mud on the battlefield

Well, the FIA made the Germans race in silver.

Is that right? They had no choice at all?

[ursus arctos]

No, they made the original selection, but it was then codified by the FIA. I have a vague recollection that either Auto-Union or Mercedes later wanted to race in a different colour and were denied permission.

[willie1foot]

Woah! He was extremely lucky.

Must have been a 4 leaf clover?

[Snake Plissken]

I think it is in the nature of terrorist organizations to have plans to do a lot of things that they never quite get around to doing.

Yeah. I’m like that with the hoovering.

[Flynnie]

No, they made the original selection, but it was then codified by the FIA. I have a vague recollection that either Auto-Union or Mercedes later wanted to race in a different colour and were denied permission.

The OG German national racing colour is white, the Silver Arrows motif comes from Mercedes and Auto Union stripping their cars of paint and racing with just the steel to save weight.

If you look at Caracciola's car from the first German Grand Prix (held in 1926 at AVUS), it's clearly white.




Likewise the US colours were originally white with blue, like the Cunningham raced at Le Mans, but Ford swapped them for the GT40 and promptly won Le Mans with it, meaning most cars, including the drop-dead gorgeous Eagle-Weslake T1G, used blue and white. Which is still a common motif to this day.

And yes, I mostly hammered this in to post a picture of Dan Gurney's Eagle-Weslake. Drool.