Mercky said:

I see sadly it slipped back in to Top Gear style BS last night! Disappointing considering how good episode 1 was.

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I think he crushed that lada because of the damage it did to the reputation of the Fiat 124.

I ran a R5 for over 220,000 miles . Happy memories.

I've often wondered if Renault would bring out a modern version of the Supercinq.

Drove a R5 GT turbo for a while back in the 80's, now that was fun at the time but probably fairly primitive now compared to an Abarth which has the same size engine.

Watched last night's French episode and noticed that the TG team manage to make a programme one week that's informative and/or very funny and the next produce one that is fatuous or plain stupid. Last night's managed to be a bit of each.

Citroen and Renault were as important as FIAT and VW when it came to making small cheap cars and many companies produced militarised versions of civilian cars. One that wasn't mentioned was the Citroen Mehari which was a cut down version of the Dyane, and VW made the Kubelwagen which was a similar idea but based on the Beetle and had 4 doors, so why James saw fit to fire guns at the poor old R4 and 2CV l'll never know.

If the programme was supposed to be about Microcars, they seemed to have been noticeable by their absence. Here, as an example, is a photograph of the kind of car we first had when I was a nipper:

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isetta"]Isetta - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@<title>Isetta - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</title>@@AMEPARAM@@Isetta[/ame].

Although I don't actually remember it, I was only about 2 or 3, I'm reliably informed that one day my parents took me for a drive in the country only to find the lane they were driving along was closed due to lambing. When they got to a gate across the road they stopped, opened the front door, picked it up by its bumper and turned it through 180 degrees and just drove off in the opposite direction

The Beard said:

Isetta - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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Petrolicious did an episode on the Isetta, delightful little car.

Soon after the Berlin wall came down, I drove to Warsaw through East Germany. Totally empty roads for mile after mile, but you could always smell a Trabant about ten minutes before you breezed past it!

The stink of a badly built two stroke was awful, and as you got nearer you put your headlamps on so the poor Trabant driver knew you were coming through the blue fog! In fact, we always held our breath for the last few hundred yards, and breathed again after we'd passed the horrible contraption - often loaded down with all the family, plus grandma and grandad, dogs and chickens, and all their worldly goods tied on the roof.

Sweetsixteen.

When there is little or no competition, what you get is the Trabant. That's doubly sad because prior to WWll the likes of Skoda were as good as almost any manufacturer in the world. After WWll the rest of the world moved on, except for those behind the Iron Curtain.

What was important in the UK was touched on briefly by James; namely that microcars could be driven on a motorcycle licence as long as reverse gear had been blanked off. The difference in price between a microcar and a normal car might seem trivial to us now, but as little as £50 would be the difference being able to afford a small 4 wheeled car and ending up with a 3 wheeler. My Dad went from a BSA 500 motorbike and sidecar to the Isetta to an Austin A30 in 3 years.

This takes us back to the Trabant again. Competition is what drove improvements in manufacturing, safety, environment, comfort and equipment in "The West". The lack of competition is why the East European motor trade was a disaster. The same can be said of their truck, tractor, tv and audio industries. Even their military industries produced 2nd class products. With the exception of the T34 tank and AK47 assault rifle they've never produced any world class equipment.

The Beard said:

With the exception of the T34 tank and AK47 assault rifle they've never produced any world class equipment.

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SU-37 comes to mind

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zGnk_IrNSzo#t=42

The Beard said:

With the exception of the T34 tank and AK47 assault rifle they've never produced any world class equipment.

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Weren't their cameras quite good? Not that I could take a good photo with any camera.

Watching it now...james may currently standing in front of a 500 and a beetle and mini. Really good fun so far.

portland_bill said:

Weren't their cameras quite good? Not that I could take a good photo with any camera.

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Er, no. The Zenit was the most famous brand but they were heavy, lacking in any of the finesse that could be found on the Olympus OM1 or 2, or indeed my own Nikon FE. Having said that, the Zenit with a 50mm f3.5 standard lens cost about £50 whereas my Nikon FE had a 50mm f1.8 standard lens cost just over £200. In the early '70s the Zenit E had a Selenium light meter which didn't require a battery whereas the Japanese cameras did. Conversely, the Zenit's operation was totally manual whereas all the others were Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority.

Although ultimately it's the photographer rather than the camera that's responsible for a picture, the chances of getting a great action photograph of, say a football match or a motor race with Zenit was almost nil. Take the same picture with a Nikon F2, FE or F3 and you could sell it to a national newspaper or Motor Sport.

Thanks for the lovely detailed answer. Highlights why photography and me are incompatible. There was a guy with a very nice camera taking pictures at a bowls match. He set it up for me, so I could just point and click. My pics were rubbish.

I once bought Mrs. Beard a Nikon TW35 which was (by today's standards) a large "Compact" film camera. She lost it so I gave her my Lumix bridge camera. She didn't take many good pictures on either, yet she's taken some great ones on her iPhone.

She has a better "eye" than me for a photograph, or perhaps more accurately, a picture. I have to look at things from all different angles and to think conventionally, in other words from what others have done, whereas Mrs. B just sees the picture.

The Beard said:

Er, no. The Zenit was the most famous brand but they were heavy, lacking in any of the finesse that could be found on the Olympus OM1 or 2, or indeed my own Nikon FE. Having said that, the Zenit with a 50mm f3.5 standard lens cost about £50 whereas my Nikon FE had a 50mm f1.8 standard lens cost just over £200. In the early '70s the Zenit E had a Selenium light meter which didn't require a battery whereas the Japanese cameras did. Conversely, the Zenit's operation was totally manual whereas all the others were Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority.

Although ultimately it's the photographer rather than the camera that's responsible for a picture, the chances of getting a great action photograph of, say a football match or a motor race with Zenit was almost nil. Take the same picture with a Nikon F2, FE or F3 and you could sell it to a national newspaper or Motor Sport.

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I used to have a Zenit as described brilliantly by The Bearded One.
In fact I still have it and it still works!!
The only problem with it (well 2 actually) were that in order to see through the lens to focus, it had a ring to turn which opened up the aperture to F3.5 to let the light in, but you had to remember to turn the ring back again before pressing the shutter or else your picture would be massively over exposed. Also there was a slide up clip to open the back, and the clip catch coincided perfectly with the edge of the back part of the case. As the case was made of nuclear grade leather it was so string that as you walked around the case actually opened up the bacl of the camera and exposed your roll of film! Brilliant! I ruined many a roll of film like that back in't good old days in Rotherham. In the days when taxi drivers just drove taxis.

It's odd how we were used to checking things because we expected there was a good chance they wouldn't work properly, whereas now, we just take it for granted that it will.

You had to check that you weren't about to inadvertently open the back of the camera, my Dad still repeatedly checks that the handbrake is off as he drives along. I just take it for granted that it is, on the basis that there is no warning light on. He still turns the heated rear window off when it's 75% demisted in order to save the battery and coasts up to traffic lights to save petrol even though there's no real advantage in doing this. It's a habit from when petrol cost about 2/6d a gallon, and he thinks I'm bonkers when I tell him the clutch on the MJ is still original after 90,000 miles.

Mind you, I still adhere to the slow in, fast out, style of cornering where many are used to ESP being fitted on their cars. Having said that, I do drive a Panda so maybe that's why.

Like me, I'm sure you can remember your parents turning the television on, then the kettle. The kettle usually boiled before the valves in the TV warmed up sufficiently to actually see anything on the screen. Bill and Ben, where are you now? Probably doing a 15 stretch for child abuse, thinking about it. Now, I have to wait about 5 seconds for the You View box to come on and I get more and more irritated as I wait.

5 seconds! Come on, this is the 21st Century isn't it? Alternatively, I don't mind waiting a couple of minutes for my Laney guitar valve amp. to warm up and don't mind at all.

Th clutch in our 500 has done almost 69k miles and I'm sure it's worn, but still feels like it's got shed loads of life in it. Wouldn't be surprised if it makes it to the scrapper on the original clutch....

Thinking about my Dad, two things he said that stick in my mind:

One day probably in the mid to late '60s he was reading the Manchester Evening News (I would have been reading about the exploits of Alf Tupper in The Victor) and he threw the paper down on the chair.

"Ridiculous!"
"What's the matter Dad?"
"Ridiculous."
"What is Dad?"
"George Best, ridiculous!"
"What Dad?"
"George Best, £200 a week, ridiculous, nobody's worth that!!!"

He told me recently that in 1966 after he'd been to sign the final documents on a new, 4 bedroom, linked detached house in leafy Hazel Grove with a back garden that led out directly onto a park he got on the bus (my Mum was using the Austin A40, put his head in his hands and said to himself:

"What have I done? We'll never pay it back. £4,500, it'll break us."

Needless to say it didn't.

And the other was after hearing petrol had gone up to around 0.90p per gallon:

"It'll never go past £1 a gallon you know!" I think he thought there'd be riots in the street and large scale insurrection of a type never seen since the student riots of the late '60s.

Of course it did, and there weren't.

The Beard said:

Thinking about my Dad, two things he said that stick in my mind:

One day probably in the mid to late '60s he was reading the Manchester Evening News (I would have been reading about the exploits of Alf Tupper in The Victor) and he threw the paper down on the chair.

"Ridiculous!"
"What's the matter Dad?"
"Ridiculous."
"What is Dad?"
"George Best, ridiculous!"
"What Dad?"
"George Best, £200 a week, ridiculous, nobody's worth that!!!"

He told me recently that in 1966 after he'd been to sign the final documents on a new, 4 bedroom, linked detached house in leafy Hazel Grove with a back garden that led out directly onto a park he got on the bus (my Mum was using the Austin A40, put his head in his hands and said to himself:

"What have I done? We'll never pay it back. £4,500, it'll break us."

Needless to say it didn't.

And the other was after hearing petrol had gone up to around 0.90p per gallon:

"It'll never go past £1 a gallon you know!" I think he thought there'd be riots in the street and large scale insurrection of a type never seen since the student riots of the late '60s.

Of course it did, and there weren't.

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If your dad tells you the sky is blue I bet you go outside just to check

The Beard said:

Thinking about my Dad, two things he said that stick in my mind:

One day probably in the mid to late '60s he was reading the Manchester Evening News (I would have been reading about the exploits of Alf Tupper in The Victor) and he threw the paper down on the chair.

"Ridiculous!"
"What's the matter Dad?"
"Ridiculous."
"What is Dad?"
"George Best, ridiculous!"
"What Dad?"
"George Best, £200 a week, ridiculous, nobody's worth that!!!"

He told me recently that in 1966 after he'd been to sign the final documents on a new, 4 bedroom, linked detached house in leafy Hazel Grove with a back garden that led out directly onto a park he got on the bus (my Mum was using the Austin A40, put his head in his hands and said to himself:

"What have I done? We'll never pay it back. £4,500, it'll break us."

Needless to say it didn't.

And the other was after hearing petrol had gone up to around 0.90p per gallon:

"It'll never go past £1 a gallon you know!" I think he thought there'd be riots in the street and large scale insurrection of a type never seen since the student riots of the late '60s.

Of course it did, and there weren't.

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I remember my parents buying a 3 bed semi in the socialist republic of Rotherham in 1970 for just over £3000 and my Dad being a nervous wreck bless him. My Mum still lives there.
I bet your Dad was like mine - he used to lambast anybody who left the immersion heater switched on. He couldn't grasp the idea of a thermostat. As far as he was concerned if the little disc on the meter was spinning like a 78 rpm record then that cost money and had to be stopped!
Plus my Mum used to get it in the neck for spending too long on the (party line) telephone to her mother in Bolton.
"I'm not Rockerfeller you know!" Says Dad.
"And don't we know it!" says Mum...

306maxi said:

If your dad tells you the sky is blue I bet you go outside just to check

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It's his predictions that worry me most, such as:

The weather will be nice tomorrow.

United will win the European Championship this season.

That FIAT will never last.

£4,500 will break us.

The only one I would agree with would be:

Ridiculous, Wayne Rooney, £300,000 a week, nobody's worth that.