Ah.......British engineering & Service

[Mega]

I bought a (New) Ford Fiesta 1 litre Turbo ST Line.......I paid £13,000 ....the Ford Dealership made a big fuss, they were lovely.
Here is a list of what's wrong..........................nothing, zip, zero 78,000 miles/5 years

Its Good to be poor!

Mike

[Mega]

Re: Ah.......British engineering & Service

[GRG55]

Re: Ah.......British engineering & Service

British engineering. Sigh...

Difficult to believe the nation of engineers that produced the Maidenhead railway bridge in 1838 (and still in service today!) and the Comet racer 100 years later, could take an MGB and deliberately screw up its classic British roadster looks so royally and unthinkingly. By then the indifference and rot had well set in. Brunel must be spinning in his grave with what's happened.

In 2006, the Brunel bi-centennial, I had a flat in London and made a point of visiting as many of his surviving projects as I could track down, from the Clifton suspension bridge over the Avon to a ride through the Bath box tunnel and over the Royal Albert bridge at Saltash.

Hopefully Brexit will bring the discipline and national pride necessary to compete and excel again.

[Mega]

Re: Ah.......British engineering & Service

The trouble is this, Modern cars are money pits........you need MASSIVE investments & testing + R&D.

I went on a Track day 6 years ago were I won a prize of driving an Audi R8 & Mc Laren........The "Mac-er" was badly built, "Lotus-like". One example, gear shift:-

Mac-er semi-auto, the shift "paddles" were behind the steering wheel....but they so large I could only just open my hands enough to grasp them & they were hard to operate.

The R8 used micro switches embedded in the steering wheel......dead easy to use, no trouble.

The guy running the event got a bit pissed off with me for driving (slowly) across a rubble strip on the way back to the pits & questioned why I done that!

"Oh, sorry I wanted to see how the stiffness of the carbon tub compared with the R8" I said.

"F*ck, don't do that, we already had it back twice for suspension/steering troubles, you can do that with the R8 all day long, but not the Mc Laren".

Mega

[GRG55]

Re: Ah.......British engineering & Service

The trouble is this, Modern cars are money pits........you need MASSIVE investments & testing + R&D.

I went on a Track day 6 years ago were I won a prize of driving an Audi R8 & Mc Laren........The "Mac-er" was badly built, "Lotus-like". One example, gear shift:-

Mac-er semi-auto, the shift "paddles" were behind the steering wheel....but they so large I could only just open my hands enough to grasp them & they were hard to operate.

The R8 used micro switches embedded in the steering wheel......dead easy to use, no trouble.

The guy running the event got a bit pissed off with me for driving (slowly) across a rubble strip on the way back to the pits & questioned why I done that!

"Oh, sorry I wanted to see how the stiffness of the carbon tub compared with the R8" I said.

"F*ck, don't do that, we already had it back twice for suspension/steering troubles, you can do that with the R8 all day long, but not the Mc Laren".

Mega

In their day the Brits defined the roadster sports car. Morris Garages, Triumph (which imo never surpassed the TR4/A with its Michelotti coachworks) and Austin Healey.

Then came the Japanese, which rapidly made the near frozen-in-time British efforts (even those of Jensen) seem quaint, outdated and produced by ex-railway engineers in love with leaf springs and solid rear axles. The irony of it is my hot rod 1972 Datsun 240Z (old snapshot below) gymkhana racer had a beautiful derivation of Sir Colin Chapman's independent strut suspension in the rear (and the overcomplicated Japanese Mikuni version of Solex side-draft carburetors).

Yes, it's takes development money. But if you don't reinvest intelligently and courageously when you dominate the market and have the income to do so, someone else will come along and dethrone you (just ask Boeing).

As for McLaren...why wouldn't one just buy a C8 Corvette?

[Mega]

Re: Ah.......British engineering & Service

I love to know where these guys get their money from.......

He had it for just 1 service & is ready to "Sell" it on already?

I noticed a number of guys whom seem to have no shortage on money (Credit) .................we need a collapse!

[Mega]

Re: Ah.......British engineering & Service

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ion-debts.html

Ah.................FRAUD