Even more ridiculously bright are the front lights.
Automatic into neutral at lights?
- Thread starter Vicario
- Start date
Even more ridiculously bright are the front lights.
Jeez, don't they make something that was once so simple - a handbrake with cables and levers utilising the rear shoes - so complex?
Friend has a Range Rover with some extremely over complex BS handbrake system that has caused him no end of problems and expense. Not long ago it was making a strange noise like a donkey being killed with a pneumatic drill. Still, the local main dealer is happy. £££££££££$$$$$$$$$$
75 - odd years ago, the old gits were saying much the same about electric start...
Yes, but the electric start was a massive improvement on standing out in the rain, spinning a handle and poss breaking a finger. Old style handbrakes kept cars immobile, new style handbrakes also keep cars immobile - when they're not malfunctioning.
Enjoy all the aggro of ever increasing tech, you impudent whippersnapper.
Last edited:
Yes, but the electric start was a massive improvement on standing out in the rain, spinning a handle and poss breaking a finger. Old style handbrakes kept cars immobile, new style handbrakes also keep cars immobile - when they're not malfunctioning.
Enjoy all the aggro of ever increasing tech, you impudent whippersnapper.
Anything that was invented before one becomes curmudgeonly is a massive improvement! Douglas Adams sums it up rather well:
"Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
Old style handbrakes were famously rubbish at keeping cars still. An oft heard phrase from my teens to my 30s was "Oh the handbrakes were crap on those". People used to leave them in gear and turn the wheels to the kerb when parking on hills. Hill starts often required 3 feet. This got even worse when cars started moving from drums to discs at the back, with various complicated workarounds (like putting a small pair of shoes inside the disc bell). As cars got heavier and asbestos was banned from brake linings, servo ratios went up. On the plus side, your brakes would now work after driving through a flood, and you wouldn't die of asbestosis. On the downside, you needed massive servo ratios, so in the event of a servo failure it felt like you had all but lost your brakes, and handbrakes were struggling to pass the type approval requirements when the car was fully laden.
Tech has been increasing ever since the motor carriage was invented. Before the war, it was hydraulic brakes, heaters and starter motors. In the '50s and '60s it was front wheel drive, transverse engines and seat belts. In the '70s and '80s, it was alternators, ABS and fuel injection. In the '90s it was cruise control, aircon and cats, in the 00s it was DPFs and CANBUS, in the '10s it was AdBlue and Electronic Stability Control...