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With a 12-year-old copper addressing him by his first name without permission...
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I suspect that a drive from 80 years ago would be wondering:
* why we still wiggle a stick and push a pedal to change gear
* why we drive cars that are so hard to see out of (they'd probably suspect that glass had become a scarce commodity)
* how on earth our cars need so litle maintenance
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* why we still wiggle a stick and push a pedal to change gear
Because it's fun
* why we drive cars that are so hard to see out of (they'd probably suspect that glass had become a scarce commodity)
Because they look cool
* how on earth our cars need so litle maintenance
Pass
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I think it might be the sheer number of vehicles on the roads. I remember my dad telling me (and there may be an element of exaggeration here, fading memory etc) that when he was growing up in the early 1930s in a sizable village in Yorkshire (maybe 3-4000 people?) that he could only remember a few people who had cars - the local doctor (to visit patients - now there's a thing!- in other local villages), the vet (to go to outlying farms) and his dad who was the district roads surveyor (posh eh?). Some had motorbikes (and sidecars) including my other grandfather, who was a bootmaker and needed to get to the local "gentry" to fit their riding boots. Otherwise, for most of the time, people stayed/worked in the village, went on holiday (if they could afford it, which wasn't many) by "omnibus" or train and most local deliveries etc were done by horse and cart. Mind you, I can still remember our milk being delivered by horse and cart and I'm very young(!!!). Weren't trucks limited to 20 mph until recently??!!
--
Phil
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Windscreen wipers that don't stop when you push the throttle.
As an aside, I was recently looking at a 1905 brochure and the price list showed the doors as an extra.
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Wasn't that much different when I was a young whippersnapper in the early 60's, certainly not in our area. As you say doctor, chemist, vet had their cars as a bolt on to their profession but by the 60's more of the tradesmen were using cars and vans, milkman, greengrocer, butcher, etc., many of them had learnt to drive while serving in the Forces and realised that they could justify the expense as a benefit to their businesses.
My father was regarded as a bit extravagant as he had a van for deliveries and he also owned a car! People used to ask how he could justify the expense. He ran the only off licence covering three villages and used to employ a delivery driver to deliver to all the local farms and outlying regular customers.
Certainly a different world, I used to accompany our deliveries out to the various farms at harvest time were we used to go and set up a barrel of mild where the labourers were going to stop for lunch and go and collect the empty in the afernoon, the farmers used to provide two pints of ale for lunch as part of the wages!
Our street then probably contained a dozen parked vehicles at most it's now a street you have difficulty getting down due to vehicles parked both sides for its entire length.
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I think our friend Bill would be quite perplexed and confused by all the new methods of traffic enforcement, both present and proposed.
He would be surprised at drivers' behaviour (and stupidity) on our roads.
Complexity of modern cars would take him by surpise.
On the plus side, he would be impressed with.
Performance
Economy
Reliability (mentioned here a few times)
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Emissions? What are they?
Global warming? Whats that?
How the hell did you get that woman in that tiny little box, and if she is as bad at reading maps as your mother then there is no way I am turning left in 100 yards!
------------------------------
TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Two Diesel things.
A Jaguar Diesel.
And a Beemer with a derv engine that ca rip the heart out of any petrol engined pretender.
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If Bill Burper lived near London he'd have been familiar with something approaching current levels of congestion!
By the way, I've just read that AUDI are contesting this year's Le Mans 24 hour race with diesel engined cars. Not the first Le Mans diesel - there was the Judd/Caterpillar a year or two ago which ran OK until the gearbox failed and another diesel in the early 50's.
cheers, SS
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If Bill Burper lived,
he would be shocked that we can put a man on the moon and talk on an internet thingy rather than the phone
that we still use the ottoman theory to propel vehicles,
that bits of rubber still clean windscreens,
that poor heat exchangers still heat the interior of vehicles,
that we put air in rubber things to keep journeys smooth (tyres pneumatic ),
that cars are still stopped by little pistons in a calipers/cylinder and are controlled by hydraulic fluid running in little pipes.
i could go on ................but its late...........
--
\"a little man in a big world/\"
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All the above plus "street furniture" and signposts/road paint. My Pa (1920-2005) was reputed to have driven around Eaton Square and Sloane Square one evening .... on the pavement, in about 1948. His father (1860-1935) would have been amazed at just about everything modern as his godson informed me that he considered the road his own and allowed his sons to drive the car from an early age.
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If Bill Burper lived near London he'd have been familiar with something approaching current levels of congestion!
>
Not quite, from what I remember. Streets round here are now completely lined with parked cars both sides, and it can be hard to find a resident's slot late at night. Very different from the late 50s and early 60s. Density didn't reach its present level I wd say until early 70s. Of course it has all been made far more intense by the strange fashion for restricting traffic flow among local politicians. Those responsible deserve the last circle of hell, with El Qa'eda and the Animal Liberation Front.
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