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As a fellow Jew who is also related to people who died in the Holocaust, there’s something in this post that really irks me. It was not the 130 H. That car was simply named the Mercedes 130. The follow-up, the 170 H had an “H” for “Heckmotor,” but the earlier car, despite also being a heckmotor, was simply the 130. Get yourself a factchecker, Torchinsky.
it is ok get over it. as a non-Jew there is a lot that irks me today too….Palestine for example so STFU
Huh? That’s kind of a heavy response to a tongue in cheek comment.
That was totally uncalled for. Are you trying to give human rights supporters a bad name?
I, too, have a dictatorial taste in cars, in the sense that I admire simplified commodities for the proletariat, but every car I’ve owned has been relatively frivolous.
Same. Stretch Citroën CXs for me, please, and a Grosser Mercedes.
I believe a major problem we face as a society these days is that we don’t really understand what horrific people from history were actually like in real life. Because they were so terrible, we have a tendency to assume we would immediately recognize that in them and be put off in every possible interaction.
But the thing is, most really evil people are pretty normal in a lot of ways. They can even have similar views to you, and seem charming and agreeable. So when they suddenly say things like, “Jews/Black people/Immigrants are the cause of all of our society’s problems and we need to carry out crimes against humanity to fix it” we have a tendency to sort of brush that under the rug and be like, “He can’t be a racist, I saw one time where he was nice to a little kid!”
I think we naturally underestimate how much in common we might have with really evil people on most subjects. Personally I think it’s a big part of the answer to the question of why seemingly good people commit horrendous crimes under the lull of evil men. The banality of evil goes both ways – regular people can be convinced to commit heinous acts, but part of that is because evil people are in most ways pretty regular and boring.
It’s important to consider things like this, so when someone does something evil we don’t minimize it by saying something like “yeah, that sounds bad, but one time I talked to that guy about cars and we seemed to really get along. He can’t be that bad.”
this is people on Facebook seeing their friends sharing or posting some horrible thing and wondering where the hell that came from because they’ve never noticed or seen when they’ve been with them IRL
And then saying “Don’t call Uncle Donnie a racist, he goes to church!!”
Sadly, for people of colour, minimizing things like this on a daily basis is essential to our survival and mental well being.
many of the notorious people have had family that loved them. maybe for somebody he is evil but for somebody he is Dad
Do you like convertible Half-Tracks?
I’m sure others have already said this, but keep in mind that horrible person was probably looking at the vehicle more as a propaganda tool more than something he actually enjoyed. Remember, he himself rode around in a massive Mercedes and sponsored German motorsport records, and the purpose of the ‘people’s car’ project was to get people into family cars and off motorcycles. I’m not going to say he didn’t like weird small cars, but to him it was less about the charm of something with the friendliness of a puppy, and more about the value to his politics and philosophy to have expressways and an affordable car at every home.
I would happily sit down and share a beer with Hammond and May – especially James, as I fear he and I are both curmudgeons of similar stripe. I enjoy Hammond’s enthusiasm, but Clarkson?
Yeah, no. Even in areas where we agree, I still wouldn’t be able to tolerate him for long. He’s like Piers Morgan, but taller.
Same. I like James best out of all of them, although Richard is a close second. Jeremy just sucks so much. He’s like an overgrown, overeducated toddler who has never been told “no” once in his life. Even when he was rightfully shitcanned by the BBC for acting like said toddler, Daddy Bezos was right there ready to scoop him up as if nothing ever happened (although it’s also fair to note that James and Richard went with him).
Once at a bar, a stranger said I looked like James May and that was probably the highest compliment I’ve ever received!
I think the reason Amazon hired Clarkson was due to his decades of automotive journalism and documentary experience, and for reinventing the car program into a more mainstream form of entertainment, resulting in the most successful auto show of all time.
To characterize it as an undeserved hand out from Bezos is absurd.
I always thought steak-gate was strange anyways, as the Grand Tour Bahamas special was filmed before Steak-gate.
I think this comes under the heading of “a stopped clock is correct twice a day”. Even one of the most evil humans in the history of humanity did one thing that is not completely evil. He wanted a “People’s Car” to get the German public on wheels, and he used his position of power to kinda/sorta make that happen. Though it was really the British that made it happen after the war, to be honest.
I’d love to sit down and have a meal and a drink with Clarkson. But I would *infinitely* rather do it with May. I think he would be far more interesting to talk to. Hamster kind of in the middle.
Hammond acts as a dumb foil for the other two, but when you see him present his own videos he’s more intelligent and thoughtful; less ignorant of the outside world than he seemed on the grand tour. All of which makes me wonder what it’d be like to dine with him like this.
I’d love to dine with Hammond, as long as they injected him with whatever he was on for The Great Escapists
My perception has always been that Hammond is just really jazzed about learning.
I like all of them, and I really like his web series. But if I have to rank them, he’s in the middle. Probably the real fun would be dinner with all of them together!
If May and I sat down to dinner, I’d dazzle him with my Honda Civic knowledge, and I think we could bond over that; as we seem to share similar levels of deep devotion to knowledge on insignificant things; and a desire to do things properly. I’d also be very complimentary to his gin, which I’m sure won’t be weird at all.
Same here on the trivia. But I’d be much more into Hammond’s whisky. I hate gin – guuuh.
He built Autobahns, too. Sometimes awful people make the right decisions, possibly for the wrong reasons, but still.
Exactly. Even Trump has to have done one or two things that don’t completely suck.
I mean, a desire to remove what you see as excess or undesirable is a perfectly fine attitude regarding machinery, but not regarding populations.
One would hope
How does that rear suspension on the Tatra 77 work?n The swing axles mean that those leaf springs must be moving in some very not leaf spring directions. Are there some shackles I’m not seeing?
It’s similar to the mono-leaf they use in Corvettes right? So the loads are latitudinal instead of longitudinal?
It looks very similar to the leaf spring and swing-axle setup you’d see on a Triumph Spitfire.
Very much like the original Herald/early Spitfire setup. Fixed transverse leaf spring acting as the upper control arm. Looks like Tatra added an actual lower control arm, Triumph just uses the half-shaft as the lower arm, with a longitudinal locating link. Looks like Tatra maybe is using an A arm for the lower link, combining both.
The later Spitfires like mine mount the spring in a center pivot, and roll stiffness is mainly via a large front sway bar. This all but eliminated the wheel tuck issue.
The early spitfires and Tatra both actually run a swing-axle setup, with no U-joint at the outer end of the axle, letting the wheel swing from positive to negative camber as the suspension compresses, and the spring has shackles on the ends that let it act purely as a spring and not as a control arm. This setup (albeit without the leaf spring) is shared with the Beetle/356, the A110 and all its Renault relatives, the 300SL and the early Corvairs. Also the Tatra 8×8 trucks.
The setup you described, where the driveshaft acts as one of two control arms, is called Chapman Strut and is common to the Lotus Europa, early Esprit and the E-Type.
Edit: I see what you mean, the leaf spring uses an oversized shackle that helps keep the hub upright to mount the brake and trailing link. I wonder how much wheel hop such a system would have with sticker tires. The one I drove had bargain basement tires and was a joy to steer with the throttle.
I have owned a Spitfire for 30 years – I well know how the rear suspension works. I never said they have u-joints at the outer end of the axle. The spring absolutely is the upper control arm and a lateral locating member, there are no shackles, the spring is bushed directly to the hub carrier uprights. The hub can pivot in the carrier and so the axle acts as the lower control arm. If the hub were rigidly mounted, the suspension would not work at all as the spring would need to change length substantially as the suspension moves up and down due to being mounted well above the pivot axis.
As I said, the difference between early and late Spitfires is how the spring is mounted in the center. The rest of it was more or less the same from beginning to end. The Rotoflex setup as originally used on early GT6s is a different kettle of fish entirely – those do have pairs of CV joints and seperate lower lateral links. But Triumph stopped using that setup on the late GT6s because the center-pivot swing spring setup was simpler and just as effective on a low to the ground car with limited suspension travel.
The defining characteristic of a Chapman strut is the combined coil spring and damper. Chapman was simply “adding lightness” by using the axle as a locating member. And even he combined it with a lower A-arm on some of the cars.
I just want to precede this by saying I value your experience, and any claim I make has the objective of learning from you through discussion, I have no intention of “winning” any debate here.
First off, you’re absolutely right about Chapman Strut, I had learned about it and the later stressed-axle wishbone designs in the same article and accidentally conflated them as being the same thing in my mind
I don’t think we disagree about the Spitfire, I suspect we’re just using different words for the same thing. I think what you referred to as the hub upright is what I was referring to as the shackle.
To my mind, on an early spitfire, the component that the leaf spring mounts to is a large shackle, rather than a hub, because it can pivot without affecting the wheel’s camber. It’s a very cleverly-designed shackle that performs double duty, as it attaches to the trailing link in a way that seems to largely curtail the aggressive anti-squat that plagues the Volkswagen design.
I called it a shackle because it has two hinges, one at the hub (the component housing the wheel bearing and holding the brake assembly) and one at the spring’s eye, which makes it act like a shackle, where its pivoting action serves exclusively to prevent spring binding. Please correct me if that observation is wrong.
The reason I don’t think it’s a control arm is that unlike a control arm, it doesn’t control the wheel’s camber like a control arm normally would.
After thinking a bit about what you said and how the system works, though, I can see that it does help control toe, torsion and track, so in that sense, it is a control linkage, as the trailing link (and therefore the suspension) isn’t fully constrained without it. I may still not call it a control ARM, per se, but it’s definitely a linkage.
Exactly. The hub carrier is not a shackle as one would see in a longitudinally-mounted leaf spring. It’s a hub carrier and of course it needs to let the hub pivot as the suspension moves through it’s range of motion – but in that respect, it’s really no different than having upper and lower control arms, just that the axle is effectively fixed to the control arm, because it’s doing both functions. But the leaf spring is constrained to only allowing movement in one axis (at least until the bushing fails), and so serves as a suspension link as well as a spring. It’s a very clever (and cheap and cheerful) arrangement. And once they added the pivot in the middle it actually handles quite well too! The early Spitfires and Heralds were definitely rather unruly at the limit (BTDT – I also owned a Herald, and a friend has a Spitfire III), the “swing spring” tamed that considerably. In particular, the much higher CoG and roll center of the Herald REALLY made them a lot more subject to the wheel tuck issue. I really don’t see any way you could get a wheel to tuck under on a late Spitfire, even driving like an idiot, without sliding sideways into something. The downside is that they really don’t work well with wide tires, and even 175s are going to suffer some inner half wear due to the large camber angles this suspension runs (though when setup correctly, they do straighten out quite a bit when running down the road).
Can lead to some amusing views under acceleration – here are my brother and I in my car accelerating hard up a hill – look at that squat!
https://flic.kr/p/2jSmmjR (like two apes in a bathtub, he’s almost as big as me and a good bit taller – much longer leg’d.)
What a photo!
I remember hanging on the door with my arm from Green Bay to Detroit in an orange 1973 to keep myself from sinking into the seat, which I’d describe as a mix of a hammock and a playground slide. Sometimes I’d get some pretty solid pebbles hitting my elbow from cars going the other way.
The offset pedal box had my hip in pain halfway through the 12-hour drive, but a few weeks later we went to autocross together and the Triumph was back to being a giggle factory.
I am sure my Spitfire would happily make a 12hr drive. But as I would no longer be able to walk after that, it will not be me driving. In my early and much younger years of ownership, I did venture all over New England in it. 3-4hrs is PLENTY. The offset pedals never bothered me though. I have had the stuff to rebuild the seats (again, second time in my ownership) for a few years, but not the ’round tuits’ to get that done. Actually a whole new interior with a change from black vinyl (ouch) to biscuit leather, including the door cards and dash and door caps.
Here are a few more photos of my little dude. ’74ish chassis, ’69 small-bearing dual-carb engine bored to 1350cc’s, dual carbs, road cam, ported and polished, etc. Euro-spec lowered suspension with Konis, electric overdrive. Used to have headers, but they rotted out. Need to get another set. Fun car! Previous owner built it to autocross, it was 90% complete when I bought it other than the interior. Re-did that 25+ years ago, but needs doing again. Entropy always wins.
https://flic.kr/p/2oTGqu9
Got to love a car that makes a 1-series BMW look huge. Or a Miata for that matter.
https://flic.kr/p/2jSmmuL
https://flic.kr/p/2jSmkD2
Why yes, that is a Nalgene bottle coolant overflow – the original fell off and I ran over it while I was driving around Rhode Island 30 years ago. It works, so never got replaced. This pic was quite a few years ago – I have the correct battery hold-down now.
https://flic.kr/p/23QrVDj
The one I drove was that same color, but with a 1500 breathing through a common Weber 2bbl, I still hope I get to drive an earlier engine with the twin SU’s at some point, they’re fascinating to me.
When I was in college, our Formula SAE team, who built open-wheel cars (but roughly go-kart-sized), always used a Nalgene for their overflow.
The big difference is the early motor loves to rev (relatively speaking, it’s still a very British small bore long stroke motor). And they don’t wear out nearly as fast.
The bottle was just dumb luck. It happened in front of an LL Bean outlet store, they had them, and it was just the right size to fit the bracket! I just made a hole in the top and was back on the road again.
Thats’s what I hear too, I’d love to get my hands on a Mk2 Spridget if I ever end up with enough space for a second car, mainly because I hear the unibody construction provides a roomier footwell. And hey, sometimes luck just works out!
Spitfires are MUCH roomier than Spridgets. I don’t fit in those at all, but I don’t even need the seat back all the way in a Spitfire. At this point in old age and decrepitude getting in and out is very much a challenge. And I can’t really do it at all with the top up anymore. But the MB A-series is an overall better motor than the Spitfire 1296, I will give them that. Beware that late Midgets got the Spitfire’s 1500cc mill with all the baggage that comes with it.
Given I am probably selling my place in Maine, I am seriously debating if the time to part with the Spitfire is approaching. It’s not the right classic sportscar for Florida. I think another Alfa Spider, a late one with A/C, would be a better fit for down here. I had an ’86 Veloce – it was delightful too, albeit in a much more refined way. More comfortable, A/C, and much, much better on the highway than even my Spitfire with overdrive is. I drove that Alfa from Maine to DC and back a couple of times. No way would I do that in the Spitfire, I’d be crippled by the time I got there.
I believe that, fortunately I can fit in just about any car without sliding the seat all the way back, and I’ll be avoiding any more long road trips in a classic roadster, I’ll stick with my (relatively) modern roadster for that job.
Though now that we got a dog, I may have to find some sort of 2+2 GT car.
And I’ll definitely be keeping my eye out for an earlier one with the 1275, especially as the later cars also feature the rubber bumpers and lifted suspension, both of which can be rectified but would cost enough to just buy an earlier car in the first place.
For some reason, this makes me think about the old joke regarding the difference between European heaven and hell –
In heaven, the French cook, the Germans build the cars, and the British are the police.
In hell, the British cook, the French build the cars, and the Germans are the police.
I honestly wonder what it would really be like to be around Clarkson in a quiet room, no cameras, no celebrities, and just the quantity of alcohol he needs to function. Can you have a normal conversation like a normal person with him? Or is he the caricature through and through?
I have to believe he was playing a character and hamming it up more and more as the years went on, but “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
Won wood hop
He seems much more likeable on Clarkston’s farm, but also genuinely incompetent. You can see him learning over the seasons though, as he realizes just how hard being a farmer is, and he seems genuinely interested in being good at things, just suffering from thinking so highly of himself and his own sense of cleverness.
He also seems to actually care about other people; so I don’t feel as icky about enjoying his pastiche.
Harry Metcalf’s videos with him just chatting about Range Rover’s and Jag’s seems to be the closest on camera we’ll ever get to the true Clarkson.
Would that elevator be known as “Shitler’s Lift?”
This post reminds me of Tesla:s on the Whitehouse lawn!
Not all good ideas come from good people and not all bad ideas come from bad people…
…or something liked that. : D
I wonder what Adrian’s take on this is?