WB Rumblings, May 2005

Maybe I am an old-fashioned fool but I dislike the use of ‘sat’ for ‘sitting’ “we were sat in the front row”, for example. So dismay overwhelmed me when I was made to say in March’s Lancia story that a Lancia Kappa had push-rods ‘sat’ within the block. Not in my write-up, it didn’t; they were ‘set’ therein.

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They were LGOC (London General Omnibus Company, not LGDC) ‘buses which were used as troop carriers on the Western Front in 1914-18. Open-top, solid-tyred B-types, often with their civilian drivers.

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Jenks wanted me to run in Motor Sport a monthly series of ‘Gone for Ever’ racing cars, quoting a FN-BMW raced in the TT then converted into the single-seater F2 OBM, the Alfa Bimotore which became the Alfa-Aitken, an 1100cc Maserati which turned into the Appleton Special, Mays’s TT Vauxhall emerging as the Vauxhall-Villiers, and several Specials which lost their originality, like the twin-JAP-powered Fuzzi which changed into the Ford V8-engined Fuzzi II, and of course the P3 which ended up as the Multi-Union. DSJ was also, by 1979, unhappy about four more replica 250F Maseratis, two more such Dino V6s and D-type Jags, and a ‘new’ Bimotore Alfa.

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Why do cars have to be ‘sexy’? The latest to be so described is the newest Maserati, and TV advertisements emphasise the situation. A car can be attractive, beautiful even, but it seems an unhealthy trend to stand admiring the lines of your car, and perhaps hoping your neighbours will do likewise, when what you should be doing is enjoying driving it. If I had such a car that would be my aim. It is none of my business as to for what purpose you employ a car, especially by those who have old-fashioned parents and cannot afford hotels. The term motorsport covers everything from F1 to a limousine with blinds drawn — one of our readers once sent us a letter describing what he could accomplish in his Austin-Healey Sprite… But this doesn’t mean the car has to look ‘sexy’, an idea never expressed in older times.