Stuff About Cars

Yeh, I know. A bit pricey.

But that is apparently what a Dubai businessman paid for a personalised car registration - which he then gave to his dad! Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for splashing out on a nice prezzie for your dad every now and then, but I have to say that I reckon my dad would kick my arse if I told him I’d spent four hundred grand on him… and then handed him a set of plastic number plates!

Seriously though, it does go to show that personalised number plates are big business now. They are more popular than ever and, judging by what I see on the roads, people are getting more imaginative, and coming up with better plates. In the old days it was all fat millionaires in Rollers with initials on their private plates. Now, however, people seem to be going for the fun side of it.

I expect most of you have heard of the car which drives around with number plates that read PEN 15… Yeh, you’d have to be thick-skinned to take the stick that must attract.
But as well as the fun side, lets go back to my earlier comment about them being big business. Many people are buying these number plates as investments, and with recent prices of some plates in the UK reaching £300,000 it isn’t surprising. And it seems that this trend is international - the chap in Dubai was, in an interview I read, going on about all the plates he has bought for investment. Most of them he doesn’t even have on cars.

It certainly is a growing interest and a growing marketplace.

** Checks pockets **

Wonder what I can get for eight quid…

My car is due to be taxed at the end of the month, and I reckon the MOT is about to expire - so, of course, this is the time for someone to run into the back of the vehicle. That is exactly what a lady from the office down the street did.

To be fair, she did come and tell me that she’d hit my car, and she offered to pay for the small amount of damage done. Small amount it was, too. A plastic rear indicator cover was broken and, as far as I can see, nothing else.

Below is a still frame from genuine CCTV footage of the accident.

One might think that I should be grateful that I wasn’t in the car at the time, and that the impact wasn’t more severe. Well, I am; but my relief is somewhat soured by the fact that the little plastic lens is proving a bugger to replace. I’ve phoned a dealer and enquired at parts specialists and breakers by phone and Internet.

Nope. Nowt.

And, of course, my mechanic tells me that this means I can’t get my MOT, which means I won’t be able to tax my car, which means it could end up off the road because of a broken plastic lens worth about £2, which means I’m a bit pissed off.

Yeah, well… I’m sort of on a roll, so I might as well get a few more things off my chest while I’m at it.

Another thing that makes me pretty cross is people tailgating me. Now, I’m not a slow driver - which is why I haven’t managed to keep my license as clean as it could be - but neither am I a bloody nutter. When I’m on a motorway, particularly, I do not want people driving six feet behind me. I don’t want it at any time, but I especially don’t want it on the motorway.

By the wonders of modern computer graphics technology, we are able to bring you the following detailed reconstruction of a particularly dangerous example of tailgating. This reconstruction was prepared by trained professionals. Please do not try to re-enact this episode on the public highway.

If it happens, I will generally move over and let the idiot past - but then one encounters the occasional uber-idiot of mind-bogling stupidity who comes racing up behind flashing his lights, even if the lane to one’s left is full of tightly packed lorries that offer no immediate opportunity to move over. In this kind of situation I gradually slow down. Partly to advise the idiot that he is not going to hasten his progress by the tailgating/flashing approach, and partly because once I slow down to a speed below that of the theoretically slower lane to the left, the idiot invariably recklessly forces his way into that lane and over takes me on that side - leaving me to either resume my normal progress, or to move over as and when it’s safe.

On single carriageway roads at more moderate velocities, I simply slow down with the express intention or really, really annoying the offender.

Childish, I know. So sue me.

I seem to buy a new tyre almost every day.

Well, every week at least.

Well, every couple of months…

Oh, all right… Perhaps not quite that often - but look, the point is that I spend a fortune on the blasted things.

I don’t even get to wear them out properly. The problem is a combination of the conditions out in the area where I live… and the fact that the majority of other drivers are stupid oiks. I’ve complained before about people in posh motors who refuse to drive anywhere but in the middle of the damned road in rural areas. They are afraid that their Bentleys and Mercs will get scratched if they drive within a metre of a hedge… GRRR!

So, mugs like me drive into the side to avoid these stubborn idiots. On roads with high verges, the grit that accumulates at the edge of the tarmac acts like sandpaper, and very quickly wears away the tread on the outer edges of the nearside tyres. This renders them illegal and means they have to be changed. Even swapping them from side to side regularly just slightly delays the inevitable.

Below is a dramatised reconstruction of me being forced to the side by a Bentley driver. (No wildlife was harmed during the making of this reconstruction)

What is more, the sides of the road are where all the other crap accumulates. Cans and broken glass from the bottles chucked out of cars by townie chavs who come out into the sticks to joyride and burn their stolen cars. The end result being that as I am forced to the edge of the road by Bentley drivers, the chances are that any acute damage done to my tyres will be to the walls rather than the tread. So, when I get a puncture and go to the tyre specialist for a repair…

“Oh no, mate. Can’t repair damage to the wall of the tyre. That’s illegal, that is…”

Funny how them stitching me up when it comes to the bill isn’t bloody illegal…

Now, it’s not like me to moan and complain, as you know… but this lunchtime I encountered something that always makes me tut. And this time it scared the bejezus out of me.

I was driving happily along, when the car in front of me indicated to turn left. Fine, I slowed down as the other car drifted left - and then suddenly swung wide to the right before finally turning. Why do people do that? How big can the turning circle of a VW Golf be? This idiot frightened the life out of a fella who was coming the other way. I can just imaging what went through his head as an oncoming car indicating to turn into a side road suddenly swung out and looked as if it was veering over to his side of the road. Whatever he actually did think, it made him swerve too, narrowly missing some cars parked along the kerb on his side of the road.

Below is a dramatised reconstruction of the poor chap’s reaction to this madness…

If one is driving a stretch limo (although you’d have to be a prat to do so), an articulated lorry, a bus or a car towing a caravan, then I can see why one might feel the need to move carefully to the right before a left turn. But on fairly wide roads, to have to do it in a smallish hatchback is stupid. To do it so suddenly and dramatically that you scare oncoming traffic is particularly stupid.

What about that dodgy petrol, eh?

Fortunately (he said, recklessly), I seem to have escaped unscathed, but then I don’t generally fill up at supermarkets.

Regular readers will know that the engine management light in my car gives me sleepless nights. I reported a while back that it had come on again, after a spell where my local mechanic seemed to have sorted it. Well, it went out again a couple of weeks ago, so I’ve been relaxing a bit.

If it had come on again just as the contaminated petrol story broke, I would have been totally paranoid and convinced that somehow some supermarket fuel had teleported into my petrol tank.

See what that bloody little light has done to my sanity?

Could be a bloody expensive call now, innit? £60 plus three points on your license.
Don’t take that as disapproval. I think it’s fine to impose stiff penalties on anything that is likely to distract the driver from concentrating on the road. I’m looking forward to similar fines being introduced for:

• Having those stupidly loud booming stereo systems (can’t hear horns and sirens)
• Posing in sunglasses after dark (can’t see a damned thing)
• Hanging stupid CDs, dice, Barney the flippin’ dinosaur or whatever  from the rear view mirror
• Badly behaved, gobby children fighting in the back of the car
• Fag hanging from mouth (burned genitals due to dropped cigarette can be very distracting)
• Stupid decorative script number plates (distracts the driver behind as he tries to work out what the hell your registration is)

Equally, while we’re punishing people for using their phones in cars, how about banning the confounded things from a few more places. I’d like to see fines for mobile phone use:

• In pubs and restaurants
• In cinemas and theatres
• In conference and seminar sessions that cost an arm and a leg, and from which you want to get your money’s worth without being put off by the ‘amusing’ ringtone of the git who forgot to switch off his phone
• At funerals
• In schools
• In church (unless phoning god)
• And, until people learn how to have a conversation without stopping dead in their tracks, on busy pavements.

Not that I’m moaning or owt…

Recently I’ve got into the bizarre habit of building my own stuff. As a keen, but entirely incompetent, amateur musician I’ve made a couple of penny whistles out of plastic conduit tubing, and a mandolin out of a kit of selected tonewoods and parts that my marvellous wife got me for Christmas. A discussion with a friend who is a keen kite-flyer (with all the fancy stunt stuff going on) has me thinking about knocking up a home-made kite or two as well.

But if I had a bit more money, any mechanical ability at all, and a garage to do it in, what I would really love to have a go at would be one of these sports car kits from www.gtmcars.com. (Click the little pic for a better view…)

I think that looks great. And imagine when people ask where you got the cool car…

“Oh this? Ah, it’s just a little something I put together in the garage…”

I want one. My birthday is in May, and I did a pretty good job on the mandolin that Mrs RoadWhinge got me for Christmas… What do you think are the chances?

There seems to have been a subtle change in the landscape where I live. The police - or someone - are evidently becoming much quicker at removing abandoned and burnt-out cars from the country lanes.

Where before the oxidised shells of stolen, abandoned and torched, vehicles would litter lay-bys and field entrances for days, now it seems that the wrecks are whisked away before anyone actually sees them. The only (unmistakable) sign of what occurred is a roughly car-shaped and sized patch of scorched earth or melted tarmac.

These burn marks appear literally overnight, but without any evident associated car wreckage. The superstitious yokels are becoming uneasy at this unaccustomed efficiency on the part of whatever clean-up agency is at work.

There are even rumours of witchcraft or aliens…

Here’s an interesting short article. It’s about cars in songs, and it’s one of those things that gets you thinking in terms of lists of your favourite stuff.

Even though this article was written by a bloke from a personalised number plates magazine, it’s not bad and I found myself nodding as I read through the list of tunes.

The article is at http://www.articlesfactory.com/articles/autos/the-car-rock-and-roll-inspiration.html, and it’s available to use on other websites for free, but I decided not to reprint it here as I’m trying to keep my posts a bit briefer these days!

Does anyone have suggestions of their own that could be added to the list of songs about, or involving, cars and motorbikes?