Occulomency

As in Freezer.

Ok, the car hunt may have changed direction.

I sat in a Daimler Double Six coupe today. I just could imagine myself driving it. Next to it in what could laughingly be described as a showroom was an XJ-S. Now the XJ-S looks aggressive and beautiful, so it appeals to that ancient part of our brain which excites us and makes us a little bit scared. the Daimler Coupe isn't frightening at all. It is as frightening, in fact, as Findus crispy pancake.

Actually, when you sit in the comfy leather seat with the enormous steering wheel in front of you and you picture yourself driving along sun-splashed English country lanes on that one perfect day you get each decade in beteen the incesscent drizzle, and you imagine burying the right pedal into the pluch carpet and the enormous V12 responding by propelling you towards the horizon at great speed you get a gut wrenching vision of the speedometer going beyond 40 miles an hour. 40 Miles an hour is simply too fast for this ancient car built by West Midlands communists during their brief interludes between standing around a brazier holding placards.

I have seen shanty towns in South America with better build quality than this Daimler. It was a pup.

So.

XJ-S anybody?

Tiidium

I have become aware that one of my antipodean readers has made a dreadful error.

A dreadful, dreadful error of mind blowing proportions that will effect every aspect of that persons life, future and happiness.

I allowed the same mistake to be made a few years ago as well and I was forced to return to the UK in punishment. Look how happy I am.

Yes, I have to reveal faithful readers, that another person has bought a Nissan Tiida.

If anyone were ever to ask me if I had driven a Tiida, which is bloody unlikely as who the hell is interested anyway, I would have to think carefully for several minutes, then I will probably say no. This will of course be wrong as I was forced to drive the bloody thing and it was such an underwhelming experience that I honestly have no memory of it.

This is strange as I remember pretty much every other car I have ever driven, the individual quirks and foibles that either made me love, like, dislike or hate the car in question. Some stick out more than others, the Renault 4 (Mavis) that tried to kill me in a fireball, the 205GTi that escaped one day, the Blue Mini of Doom. The Tiida evokes no such memories,  nothing at all.

Turn the engine on, and there was no sound, press the accelerator and you didn't actually move any quicker nor did you get a pleasing noise from the engine bay, you got nothing. It could do 60 mph, but only just. Frankly, it was barely capable of independent movement and worse, the inside was a horrible place to be, filled with plastics that Peak Freans would reject as too fragile to hold it's biscuit assortments, and my God it was grey, a never ending sea of grey plastic and vulgalore. Awful.

It also was incredibly heavy and cumbersome to drive, which is strange as it appeared to have been constructed entirely from metal so thin I could have bloody read through it.

So, in order to stop this sirt of thing happening again, the only sensible course of action is for you lot to not buy a car before you have run the idea past me first (Peanut and Mother are exempt as they have immaculate taste in cars at least). It will save you from yourselves; if you follow my advise I promise you will never buy a car because of a word ending in "-ible".

Update on my second car hunt.

Daimler Double-Six Coupe - 1976 - Blue (not pictured) is the front runner at the moment, have to decide by next Monday, but I think it could be the one. Depends on what mechanical work needs doing.

**Addendum**

Got in my car, would it start? Would it bollocks.

I'd caused the notorious 'short-start' problem which causes rotory engines to flood. The RAC sorted me out in an hour and all is well now.

Karma is a bitch sometimes.

La comédie des erreurs

So a Rolls Royce would be three and a half inches too long for the garage. I have found a cheaper, more modern and in my view, more desirable option.

So...

A V12 anybody?

Discuss.

Welcome to the Church of Clarksonology.

The Sunday Times has been re-hashing old Clarkson reviews, grouping them into first the best 25, and then the worst 25 cars he has driven.

In the latter category, he included the Mazda 3. Now, I know that several of you out there have (or have recently undertaken to buy) one of these cars, and it therefore gives me no pleasure at all to laugh, point and dance my special new "Jeremy put my car in the top 25 category" dance.

If you just let me choose your cars for you, you'd be a lot happier. Broke, and possibly spending more time standing at the side of the road surrounded by steam than you are presently accustomed to, but happier....

And please remember, in Scientology it has been discovered that mental energy is simply a finer, higher level of physical energy. The test of this is conclusive in that a thetan "mocking up" (creating) mental image pictures and thrusting them into the body can increase the body mass and by casting them away again can decrease the body mass. This test has actually been made and an increase of as much as thirty pounds, actually measured on scales, has been added to, and subtracted from, a body by creating "mental energy." Energy is energy. Matter is condensed energy.

So don't worry about that eighth case of Krispy Kremes, so long as you supress your inner thetan, and think happy thoughts, you'll lose up to 7 or 8 kilos!

I love LRH....

21

His name is Jezza.

We fetched him yesterday from Cannock (birthplace of Stan Collymore).

He is good. Very good. Quick, but easier to drive at a given speed than Eddie (the 206) and nicer inside too. Handles nicely to, took him out to Southwell and parked him up by the Minster, which I have embarrassingly never seen before. Anyway, the roads out that way are twisty, well made and fairly wide, perfect for having a bit of a play.

It's a lovely well balanced car, nicer to drive than Elvis, although he is noisier and  sprung a little harder.

Really though, the best bit is the engine, a 1.3 litre Wankel. You remember the A10 Warthog plane the yanks used to blow up tanks? Remember it a had a gun so powerful that it could cause the plane to stall if it was fired for too long. It sounds like that gun, it really does. It's like the sound of ripping linen, but very very loud. It's great. It really really is.

The Prof likes it too, so I don't have to trade it in for a Prius.

Renesis

I'm now so excited at the prospect of getting the (as yet) un-named car, that I can hardly type.

Finished my job application, the Prof is about to proof read it and if it's OK we'll e-mail it in tomorrow.

So, this car has a Wankel Rotary Engine. Actually it has a Renesis engine, which is wanky advertising speak for rotary-genesis or some such cock.

Mazda says: 'an engine boasting innovative technologies such as side intake/side exhaust porting - is a 654 cc x two rotor unit that produces 177kW (ECE) at 8200 rpm and 211Nm (ECE) of torque at 5500 rpm when combined with a six-speed manual transmission. Renesis also shows greatly improved fuel efficiency and emission improvement over the RX-7’s engine.

Manual models accelerate from 0 to 100kmh in 6.2 seconds.'

I say Woohoo!

And it has an enormous carbon footprint, and will definitely cause the planet to heat up. This is a good thing, because I'm bloody freezing at the moment, and I hate penguins anyway and don't care if they broil.

And I hate koalas.

Hairy Japanese bastards.