Finding the `stiff upper lip` in motoring stories - free (virtual) pink gin for the winner.
First though there`s the ritual to go through in order for your brain to switch modes - from quivering jelly to hard baked scone.
Stand to attention and salute the British flag. You are wearing a Pith helmet - the Sun is setting over the British Empire, in India . The sweat runs down your back unnoticed and the starched white uniform and sword gleam as you stand ramrod straight for Queen Victoria.
Never in your wildest dreams would you believe that your great grandson would be sobbing and whimpering a century later - because he had a swirl mark on his metallic paint.
Although, it must be said - that stiff upper lip is STILL there when it comes to personal illness. Horrible indeed to British mentality if we all suddenly said ` stuff the car - it`s just an object - I have this SPOT THAT WON`T GO AWAY. Surely more concern than a stone chip? Or a heart attack (or other) over the motors DPF?
Anyway, now that you are in the mood (hopefully) do you know any stories of motoring that demonstrate the stiff upper lip of the British motorist?
( I know you just had a mental image of your Uncle Bert wearing a knotted hanky on his head - not a pith helmet - but that`s OK)
Over to you - and all the best.
oilrag
Edited by oilrag on 08/02/2010 at 05:19
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Driver carrying a large inflatable boat on his roof rack. The front fastening had broken free, and the boat was flapping up into a vertical position in a very alarming manner.
A sucession of passing drivers hooted, pulled alongside, gesticulated up at his roof.
He resolutely avoided eye contact, and pressed on at 60 mph regardless.
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A couple of years ago now but I was out for a late summer Sunday ride on my bike. I came up behind a queue of 5 or 6 cars which was following one of those giant combine harvester things, going at just under 30mph.
A break emerges in the oncoming traffic so I pulled out, passed the cars and the combine in one move, and was very surprised to find a mid-90s 'bubble' Micra, driven by an elderly gent in a tweed trilby with his wife beside him, about six feet in front of the combine.
I'd assumed the combine was setting the pace but no, it was Arthur & Ethel out for a Sunday drive :)
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An acquaintance of my daughter left the country in a hurry leaving a BMW 318 parked near here. It had a damaged gearbox in which all the forward gears worked but two of them made an unbearable clamour, and a clonk in the front suspension. I didn't want it myself but deemed it worth say 300 quid, and sold it on behalf of the acquaintance to a journalist friend urging him to get a second hand or reconditioned gearbox. He took it to some bunch of idiots who fixed the suspension clonk but told him that the transmission noise was coming from the differential.
He continued driving the ghastly jalopy in that condition for two or three years. I don't think his partner, a very posh African barrister, has ever forgiven me. She said it was the noisiest car she had ever been in.
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A sucession of passing drivers hooted pulled alongside gesticulated up at his roof. He resolutely avoided eye contact and pressed on at 60 mph regardless.
I did that once in a Defender, towing a large trailer. I thought people were simply impatient with my 40mph progress. In the end someone cut me up and forced me to stop. Turned out a wheel had come off the (double-axle) trailer and gone bouncing away across a field.
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Many years ago I was northbound on the M5 following an artic tanker with 4 double back wheels on his trailer. Suddenly, the rear nearside pair came off, complete with the hub, and overtook him, bouncing along northbound, gaining speed until they veered to the right, jumped the central Armco, bounced off the bonnet of a red Sierra and disappeared into the fields.
The driver had no idea what had happened to his rig, I caught him up, together with a British Gas van also pulling a trailer and stopped with him on the snow covered hard shoulder.
He was very grateful and we escorted him, slowly, up the hard shoulder into Frankly Services, a couple of miles up, with our beacons on, so he could get it sorted.
I guess he would be there for some considerable time !
Were you the driver of the Sierra ?
Ted
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...the rear nearside pair came off, complete with the hub, and overtook him...
I've only been in a car which has lost a wheel once, and the loose wheel also overtook us.
From orther stories I've read, this seems to happen quite often when a wheel becomes free.
Is there some stored energy in the spinning wheel which is suddenly released when it no longer has to drag along the rest of the car?
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Though I probably shouldnt admit it here, I lost a wheel trim once while accelerating onto the M60 at the pyramid. I remarked to the wife ' that trim looks like ours' as it peeled away to the hard shoulder, not realising it actually was mine until reaching our destination.
One of the few advantages of alloy wheels I suppose.
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Similar thing happened to my Grandfather up in Scotland (near Ullapool).
Front offside wheel bouncing along the road and eventually down the hill/mountain.
My Dad towed him (in his LWB Landie) to the nearest garage with his 1300cc Escort estate.
Try doing that without stench of burning clutch!
One of my proudest memories of him, that one.
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So that's how that dent got there........ :)
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Possibly more Schaudenfreude, but certainly required S.U.L from driver. Staying in a hotel in the South West last summer, and witnessed an "upper class" lady demanding that her friend (who wasn't a guest) be given free access to health club. Following morning she was at the next table to us at breakfast, and, immediately outside the window in the car park was a large roller (Carmargue?) that had "failed to proceed" and was having attention from The A.A. as you can imagine, many of the diners were commenting on the shame of the situation (with some relish) and it transpired that the Rolls belonged to our neighbour's Husband. Much stiff upper lip from husband.
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