Extinction Rebellion

[kwackers]

Hi Kwackers , If you want more hearsay & make believe, one should read up on the VW Group "Diesel-Gate" scandal!
Lies, Damn Lies & VW Statistics . IGICB MM

In what way is Diesel-Gate hearsay and make believe?

My understanding is VW admitted it all...

[reohn2]

Afternoon all, Always makes me laugh out loud when I see one of them new fangled "Mini Countryman" things, emblazoned with Union Flags. Many things wrong with them but I'll stick to two for now - (1) "Mini" should read "Maxi" is in the long lamented BL job, great concept, poor build quality.
(2) They're actually built in Poland from German supplied components, so please delete the symbol of the UK!
Oh, well I'll add a third one (3) As they pass all I can hear is the sound of Alex Issigonis spinning rapidly in his final resting place. Bet him & Dr Moulton are having a good old chin wag? IGICB, but without a car, MM

^^^^
Wot he said!

Plus, They look awful, the body design was obviously done by the same team that styles
Porsches, brutal, ugly and unsightly, nothing like the proper Mini, a design classic in so many ways......

Al

It's probably why the new Mini is so unpopular

The new Mini isn't an old Mini thankfully,the old ones weren't good even in their day despite they're cult following.If the UK car industry had sunk money into R&D and looked after it's workforce things may have been different as it was it was too little too late and was run in to the ground for short term profit with a reputation for crap cars.
Yes there were some good 'uns but they were far and few between but the Mini wasn't one of them.

[kwackers]

The new Mini isn't an old Mini thankfully,the old ones weren't good even in their day despite they're cult following.If the UK car industry had sunk money into R&D and looked after it's workforce things may have been different as it was it was too little too late and was run in to the ground for short term profit with a reputation for crap cars.
Yes there were some good 'uns but they were far and few between but the Mini wasn't one of them.

I'm still a fan of the old mini, won't hear a bad thing said against them.

They were crap - but in the time honoured tradition of defending rubbish I'll refer to it as 'character'.
I broke my welding cherry on old mini's. can't be many bits I haven't replaced on them - and on some of them there aren't many bits I didn't replace!

You wouldn't want to crash in one though - a friend of mine died when he hit another vehicle and I can't help but thinking if he'd been in a 'proper' car he'd have lived.
In a new mini he'd almost certainly have walked away, he wasn't even going that fast.

[pwa]

The Mini was a love it or hate it car. It went round corners like it was on rails. It drove a bit like a go kart. I liked them. But like other cars from way back it was not a car that translates well in the modern era. By today's standards it was cramped, noisy and in a straight line it was slow. The new Mini is better as a practical way of getting about, but it isn't mini. The use of Mini styling for something so lumpy was and is plain daft. It is a pastiche, a pretend thing, like VW's Golf dressed up as a Beetle and Fiat's Panda dressed up as an oversized 500. It is a car that could have been better if it had not had the brief of having to look like it was related to a car from the 1960s.

[Tangled Metal]

I bet you'll find decline of UK motor brands wasn't as simple as crap cars made by companies in for the short term. America was the ultimate bye- word for crap cars but it survived. They used to come out with beer cans dumped into doors and other shoot went on. It probably included a bit of union action and government inaction to cause its decline too. Add in trend towards financial and service economy rather than manufacturing I think you'll get closer to the reasons for decline.

[Tangled Metal]

The Mini was a love it or hate it car. It went round corners like it was on rails. It drove a bit like a go kart. I liked them. But like other cars from way back it was not a car that translates well in the modern era. By today's standards it was cramped, noisy and in a straight line it was slow. The new Mini is better as a practical way of getting about, but it isn't mini. The use of Mini styling for something so lumpy was and is plain daft. It is a pastiche, a pretend thing, like VW's Golf dressed up as a Beetle and Fiat's Panda dressed up as an oversized 500. It is a car that could have been better if it had not had the brief of having to look like it was related to a car from the 1960s.

This is so worth a +1. Well said indeed.

Looking back on cars with modern eye and you will probably find very few cars are still as good as they were in their own time.

[kwackers]

Looking back on cars with modern eye and you will probably find very few cars are still as good as they were in their own time.

I've driven (and ridden) loads of the vehicles I'd lusted after back in the day and IMO they are without exception something better remembered with fondness than experienced, time hasn't been kind to them.

As for the design, be it the beetle, mini, fiat 500 then definitely you could make a better car if you weren't trying to make them resemble the old one but the reality is they're all still very good cars, just not quite as good as they could have been.
In the case of the mini the upright windscreen is the worst aspect. Increases wind noise and drag and thus reduces efficiency.

(Overall though imo they've done a fantastic job because they're all instantly recognisable whilst actually looking nothing like. A neat trick to pull off and to be able to do it requires a good eye of the kind I don't have.)

Oh - as for speed, the mini was pretty light. I had a ponced up 1100 that could sit on the tail of the then much venerated XR3's without much of a problem.
Easy cars to tune and engines that generally didn't explode when you did.

[al_yrpal]

My Mrs had a Mini Clubman 1275, pocket rocket. Left practically everything standing away from the lights. All vehicles of that vintage rusted and were dangerous in a crash compared to modern vehicles, they were of an age.

But, I do hanker after the simplicity of those vehicles. All the modern sophistication adds a lot of unecessary cost, complete flim flam and denys people of the ability to do their own maintenance and repairs...its called progress? There has to be a better way of making long lasting economical ecofriendly vehicles that the sensible wing of XR would approve of, but there is little incentive to do so. The vehicle industry needs to keep making lots of cars, longevity is not their aim.

Al

[Cyril Haearn]

Pacers are still delighting travellers after decades, most cars of that age have been scrapped

[Tangled Metal]

The fiat panda has been around ages and ages. I think it hasn't really changed much. A reputation for keeping going for several times round the clock. Telegraph motoring section did a survey a decade or more ago to find the car model with the highest mileage. Fiat pandas were the most frequent model in the top 10 in that list.

In the 4x4 version I believe the panda was the car of choice for people living in the mountains near the fiat factory at one time. Personally I've grown to love them.

[Tangled Metal]

Pacers are still delighting travellers after decades, most cars of that age have been scrapped

Pacers are not delighting anyone who has the misfortune of being a passenger in one. Trust me. They're rubbish trains and so past their replacement date, which imho should have been straight after the first one was built!

[kwackers]

Pacers are not delighting anyone who has the misfortune of being a passenger in one. Trust me. They're rubbish trains and so past their replacement date, which imho should have been straight after the first one was built!

Since I apparently use one every day I feel I should add my tuppence.

They're not that bad.
They're local trains and tbh I don't expect comfort - if for no other reason that I'm often sat next to the bike on one of the foldy out seats that is basically a bit of plywood with 1/4" of padding.
For me sitting in a real seat is the epitome of luxury.

[Tangled Metal]

The one I occasionally go on goes from Lancaster to Barrow. Not a short enough journey for a rattley rust bus train. Fortunately I'm only 8 or 9 minutes down the line. It might even come from Preston I can't remember. Always seems to be standing room only. It's not the usual train I'm pleased to say.

[atoz]

Overhead electric cabling for trains is very expensive and difficult on existing lines too. This has been the stumbling block for the Great Western electrification which is years behind schedule and over budget. It makes no economic sense to electrify small branch lines which is why it doesnt happen.

A major source of pollution is shipping which often uses filthy low grade Saudi crude. You can see the yellow horizon ring on calm days in the channel. They recently made UK ferries toe the line and upgrade their engines to use less polluting fuel.

What ER want, whatever that actually is, aint going to be easy or popular.

Al

In economic terms, it doesn't make sense to run railways- unless you are talking busy commuter routes and express routes, most of our network is run at a loss- which is why in practice it is subsidised, even though in theory it's "privatised". In fact we don't have many real branch lines left, they are usually secondary routes. Electrifying them means you can run more stock through, which makes timetabling diagramming a lot easier. It is well known also that electrification puts up passenger numbers- ask any railway professional. The alternative is highly polluting diesels, and in my area, old rolling stock over 30 years old that doesn't meet accessibility requirements.

[atoz]

Pacers are still delighting travellers after decades, most cars of that age have been scrapped

And at least you can get your bike on them, because it's Northern who still has them. Better a Pacer you can get your bike on than a First Transpennine you can't because you have to reserve your non-existent bike space on the ludicrously overcrowded class 185s.

In fact a lot of Pacers got new seats and a facelift. The new seats are actually more comfortable than some of the Transpennine 185 units- just the dodgy bogies and suspension lets them down.

As for the Transpennine service- back in BR days in the 1980s it was a six coach rake loco hauled with buffet car. This with less passengers than now- quite a lot less in some cases. With proper guard space so bikes were easily carried.

As for slagging off BR- which part of BR do people hate, the much cheaper fares, or the fact that you were much more likely to actually find a seat..