It seems that the european car of the year for 2005 has gone to the Toyota Prius with the C4 2nd, Focus 3rd, Astra 4th, Modus 5th, 407 6th and BMW 1 series 7th.
www.caroftheyear.org/pages/Voting05.htm
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european car of the year for 2005....
2005!! How, why? ?
It's still 2004 for heavens sake.
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>> european car of the year for 2005.... 2005!! How, why? ? It's still 2004 for heavens sake.
Cos the contest is run purely for marketing purposes and nobody, but nobody, wants last years model!!
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Interesting that the French judges plumped for the Toyota over the Citroen and the Reanult. What's happened to good old Gallic chauvinism?
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Mind you, it probably helps that TOYOTA now have a large factory in France.
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Interesting to read the judgements of the various judges (follow link above.)
What struck me most (& I realise this is nothing to do with motoring) was the standard of translation into English. Most were awkward; some sentences were incomprehensible. With 60,000,000 native speakers of English in Europe, surely they could have found someone who could have done the job better.
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What struck me most (& I realise this is nothing to do with motoring) was the standard of translation into English.
Don't worry, this problem is being worked on at the highest levels:
The European Commission has announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU, rather than German, which was the other contender. Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had room for improvement and has therefore accepted a five-year phasing in of "Euro-English".
In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make sivil servants jump for joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the "k" which should kleer up some konfusion and allow one key less on keyboards.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f", making words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e" is disgrasful.
By the fourth yer, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After siz fifz yer, ve vil have a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and everivunvil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. ZE DREM VIL FINALI CUM TRU!
[sorry, this isn't new, but couldn't resist ..]
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From the Swindon (Where they build them) "Evening Advertiser"
last week: "Honda have sold all of their 2004 CRV production, so they are releasing the 2005 model for sale early" (I paraphrase).
So if you are buying one, make sure you ask your dealer if it was built in 2005!
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