Holly Bolly Celebs Clones (11 pics)

Hollywood Bollywood Celebrities Look-Alikes -

A look-alike is a living person who closely resembles another living person. In popular Western culture, a look-alike is a person who bears a close physical resemblance to a celebrity, politician or member of royalty. Many look-alikes earn a living by making guest appearances at public events or performing on television or film, playing the person they resemble. Here are some Bollywood celebrities look-alike Hollywood & Bollywood itself.

Priyanka Chopra & Gunjan Baskhi - Mumbai model Gunjan Bakshi looks a lot like ex-Miss World and actress Priyanka Chopra. Gunjan, who has done commercials for well-known brands like Airtel, Nokia, Hide and Seek and Dabur, says it's amusing when people mistake her for Priyanka.

"Once I was having dinner with my cousin and a small kid walked up to me asking me for an autograph. I wondered why. While I was signing it for him, he was like 'I really liked you in Krrish.' That's when I realised he had mistaken me for Priyanka," she said in an interview. But will Gunjan continue to acknowledge the similarity once she enters Bollywood?

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Aston Martin power point

Aston I tested in 2007, photographed Isle of Bute
There seems no point in bigger engines in bigger cars, which do 200mph, or would if there was anyplace to do it and anybody brave enough to try. I’ve managed 185 (electrically timed) on a test track and I can not think of a road where I would care to. Neil Lyndon, articulate as ever in The Sunday Telegraph, admits to being enamoured with Aston Martin for 50 years, but says it, “…must be rather like being a fan of Manchester City. Occasional eruptions of fervently inventive world-beating creativity interspersed with ages of miserable underachievement.”

Prompted by the Duke of Cambridge’s appearance in the Prince of Wales’s DB6, Lyndon ruminates on a make Ford acquired in 1994. “It seemed (Aston’s) ship had finally come in. At last it was in the care of indulgent patrons who wanted exactly what all Aston lovers longed for. Ford built a factory at Gaydon the equal of Ferrari’s at Modena They seconded top designers, wrote them a blank cheque and said they were to achieve nothing less than their best work.”

Beautiful proportions, the DB7, even though cobbled from Jaguar parts.
Ford backed away, leaving Aston looking for new backers but, “Cars in the last four years have, at bottom, been variants on existing models. The Virage Coupé is a kind of genetic extrusion from the DB9, which appeared in 2004 and was a rethink of the DB7 of 1994.” It’s all too true. Like Lamborghinis, Astons have become bigger, more powerful, more complicated, faster, and more expensive. At £160,000 they begin to look faintly absurd. Owners no longer appear macho or even sportif so much as profligate. It’s even worse with Bugattis.

The traditional Aston radiator shape has been preserved - just.
Aston’s 6 litres and 500 horse power is fine for a toy you use on a track day, or even real racing, yet it is excessive for a road car.

They should get back to high-efficiency smaller cars, exquisitely engineered. There were great 2 litre Aston Martins.

There was a memorable 1750cc Alfa Romeo of the 1930s, of watch-making precision that made fierce mechanical noise. Ferrari’s first masterpiece was a 2 litre V12. The DB 2 Aston was a modest 6-cylinder of 2½ litres designed by WO Bentley. The DB4 of 1958 was 3.7 litres. Jim Clark’s DB4GT Zagato, of cherished memory, had 314 horse power. In 1969 the DBSV8 was 5.3 litres.

Aston Martin DB2/4, engine design by WO Bentley
There is a hint of desperation among supercar manufacturers, announcing ever more extravagant cars at ever more ridiculous prices. Jaguar has said it will sell 250 CX-75s in 2012 at £700,000. Its engineers’ flights of fancy were once D-types, which won Le Mans. Now, it seems, they are just flights of fancy.

Borrowed plumes. The late Victor Gauntlett, who owned the company, lent me his personal DB2/4 for the RAC Golden Fifty Rally.

Wolseley Fourteen

I grew up with a Wolseley 14 like this. It was very smart in grey and blue. Most parents’ cars were black. Ours looked splendid. The little Wolseley badge on the radiator lit up, or at least it did for a time. Dad didn’t replace the festoon bulb when it failed as most of them did. This 14/56 cost £265 when it was new and we kept it throughout the war, so the chrome bumper was painted white to show up in the blackout. I wonder the chrome didn’t show up better, but white paint was the rule. In 1944 or so, when the blackout was relaxed, I scraped the paint off with a penny. It took ages but I was so keen, as a ten year old, for the car to look its best that I scraped till my hands were sore. I still like cars to look their best. The headlamps had wartime black hoods in case German bombers spotted father coming home after dark. Even the yellow Trafficators (the signal arms that popped out and lit up to show he was turning into the front gate) were painted over. You’d have thought Heinkel pilots would have more to do at 10,000 feet than spot Trafficators, but there you are. I stripped the paint off them as well. Father eventually snapped a Trafficator off on the gatepost.

I can still see the Wolseley’s art-deco facia, like a mantelpiece clock, with a speedometer needle that jiggled through 30 degrees whenever the car moved. Father didn’t drive very fast so it didn’t much matter. You got into the boot through the back of the rear seat, which I did sometimes when the car was moving and pretended I was in a boat. Father got a special “supplementary” petrol ration because he used the Wolseley for war work so I got dropped off at school. The Wolseley, VD6829 replaced a Vauxhall Light Six, a Twelve I would guess, HS8635. I thought the Wolseley much smarter although I was badly put out to find Norma Marshall’s father’s Morris, only a 10 as I recall, had much the same Pressed Steel bodywork even down to the curvy lines on the side. A blatant copy, I concluded, of our upper-crust Wolseley. At ten I hadn’t heard of badge engineering. Mr Martin, the plumber next door, always had Rovers with real wood facia and a freewheel which, even then, I could see was more up-market. Not that I was class conscious…

Crazy Creative Illustrations By Chow Hon Lam (22 pics)

Funny Crazy, Creative and Humorous Illustrations -

These artworks are created by designer Chow Hon Lam. Every illustration is ingenious and creative, spiced with humor and brilliance.

Chow Hon Lam is a t-shirt designer and a humorous illustrator from Malaysia. He has been completed this crazy project called Flying Mouse 365, which is create 1 design per day. I hope his illustrations can bring some smile and entertainment to the world. Enjoy these Crazy Illustrations By Chow Hon Lam.

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Winning Jaguars

I met Peter Lindner in 1962. As part of its sponsorship of a six-hour saloon car race at Brands Hatch, The Motor arranged to test the winning cars afterwards and Lindner had driven one of the leading Jaguars. That’s me in the lower picture (below), in a white shirt, talking to him and co-driver Peter Nöcker as we prepared to take the cars away. Lindner was already a successful racing driver. I was a new member of the road test staff yet I recall him as genial and understanding, not a bit aloof or patronising, even handing over his precious Jaguar to a callow journalist.

I see from Octane magazine that an immensely painstaking restoration of Lindner’s Low Drag Lightweight E-type has been accomplished. This was the car he crashed fatally at Montlhéry in 1964 and it has been rebuilt from the original wreckage, Classic Motor Cars in Bridgnorth taking 5000 hours bending every bit straight again. A magnificent tribute worthy of the gentle German.

Roger Bell, Charles Bulmer and I took the cars to the MIRA test track for performance testing that included hours on the banked track, measuring their steady-speed fuel consumption. That was the dreary bit. Driving them on the circuit let you feel what a car prepared for racing was like. Driving them back and parking outside my small bachelor pad in South Kensington was thrilling. Taking them out at night on to a still incomplete M4 might explain why we didn’t get any Jaguars to test after the following year’s race.

TEXT:

The Motor Six Hours THE MOTOR October 17 1962
This select load consists of the Lindner/Nocker Jaguar and the class winning MG. and Mini-Cooper. The transporter (for getting the cars to the M.I.R.A. test track) was used purely for convenience all the cars tested were subsequently driven on the road.
TESTING the WINNERS
Five of the fastest cars were tested by “The Motor” shortly after the race • They were the two leoding Jaguars and the class winning Sunbeam Rapier, MG 1101 and Mini-Cooper. • David Piper’s inipressions of the other class winner—the Lancia Flaminia — appear on page 474
THE only people barely moved h the drama on the day following the Six Hours Race were members of The Motor Road Test staff. They found themselves with not one but two 3.8 Jaguars to test, since it now appeals likely that the issue will he decided in favour of one of them. The two Jaguars (the blue Equipe Endeavour-entered 3.8, No 1 in the race, and given as winner on race day driven by Mike Parkes and Jimmy Blumer, and No. 4. the green Peter Lindner/Peter Nocker 3.8. placed second overall) differed in their preparation. The British car is starker and seemed to have undergone the six-hour ordeal more successfully than the German one. Weight reduction is noticeably more ruthless, all the trim, headlining, carpets, sound-damping, and even draught-excluding material having been removed. The wooden facia on the passenger’s side has been taken away and replaced with a stiff board. The result, with a dual, unsilenced exhaust is not unexpectedly a very noisy car. There is very little difference in the noise level outside or in, occupants having not only the yowl from the exhaust, but the screech of wind passing outside the body and also through it by holes in the bulkhead and the gaps round the doors. Winding mechanism has been discarded in three Perspex side windows (the driver can wind his glass one down and watch the mechanism, there being no trim panel( and Perspex is used also for the rear window.
Power as well as noise is supplied in great lumps by the 3.8-litre engine with two 2-in. S.U. carburetters instead of the two 1¾-in. units fitted as standard. Air cleaners are banished, but the engine, apart from being air-flowed internally and balanced, is completely standard, Stock inlet and exhaust systems are maintained together with the optional “ blue top” high compression cylinder head.
Other obvious modifications under the bonnet are an improved oil breather system at the front of the two cam boxes, a large crankcase oil filler with a snap-action cap, removal of the heater installation, and the substitution of a lightweight battery. There are additional oil breathers for the gearbox, and the car is distinguished at the rear by an enormous fuel filler cap supplying three tanks, and by two small breathers for the rear axle.
The Endeavour Jaguar used 7.00-15 Dunlop racing tyres which had their 50-odd-lb. pressure educed to 40 for our use on the road. The racing tyres, high-geared steering (2.9 turns lock to lock) and the Jaguar competition seats combine to give this saloon a completely different character, The handling is improved out of all recognition and the car can be guided with precision whether complete adhesion between the tyres and the road has been maintained or not. The throttle pedal is used to commit the car to a line and keep it there, although inevitably, the result is a rather extravagant consumption of
tyre, a great deal of which seems to adhere to the road.
THE LINDNER JAGUAR
The Lindner car is a little less stark; the cloth headlining, complete wood facia and door trim (non-standard and rather sketchy) by comparison giving an impression almost of opulence. The interior heater had not even been taken out. Most of the modifications undertaken on the Endeavour ear had also been applied to the German one, but important differences lay in standard 1¾ in. S.U. carburetters, 6.50-15 tyres and the use of a normal heavy battery. A well-made cool air duct has been run from the left hand horn grille over the top of the engine to the intake side, and an oil cooler fitted.
Registered in Weisbaden. West Germany, where its owner sells Jaguars, the Lindncr car has left-hand drive, which must be a handicap on racing circuits where most corners are right handed. Steering and handling were vastly improved, like those of the Endeavour Jaguar, but noise seemed little subdued by leaving some of the trim in place.
Both cars have overdrive, and both had new pads fitted to the disc brakes immediately after the race as a safety precaution. The seat harness in the Endeavour car looks immensely strong, the shoulder straps anchoring behind the back seat.
Performance of both cars was affected by clutches which had suffered somewhat during the race. Racing starts with either were impossible although they performed satisfactorily during the other testing and when the cars were used in all their grandeur on the road. Both could he used in traffic but were much more at ease on fast roads, far from disturbable public and policemen with ready ears for a racing exhaust. But they could be (and were) used on the road and only the Endeavour car showed signs of distress during the 30 m.p.h. constant-speed fuel consumption tests.
Proof that both cars remain close to each other’s (and standard) specifications can he obtained by reference to the data panel. This shows how closely matched their performances are with the balance fractionally in favour of the Endeavour entry, which finished four laps ahead. While substantially ‘same-as-you-can-buy.’ these are nonetheless exciting racers.
[caption] Firm suspension of the leading Parkes/Blumer 3.8 counters body roll at Southbank bend. Racing tyres at high pressures also helped to give the car a harsh ride on the road. Below: Lindner (in car) briefs The Motor. Nocker is on the right.
Endeavour Jaguar, 27½ cwt. Standard 3.8, 30 cwt.

Creative Knitted Food Art (18 pics)

Interesting Knitted Food by Ed Bing Lee -
Philadelphia artist Ed Bing Lee has been perfecting his knotting artistry for over 25 years and now is able to create practically anything using basic macrame knots. For example art pieces that look like food. He gathered them into "Delectable series". Look at them and you’ll be suprised by talent of the artist!

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The Blue Train Bentley

Bruce and Jolene McCaw of Medina, Washington settled any doubts about which 6½ Litre Bentley beat the Blue Train. Following research. They bought both. Was it the fastback (above) or the saloon, pictured below in June 2006 Motor Sport?

1930 GURNEY NUTTING 6½ Litre BLUE TRAIN SPEED SIX
Notwithstanding Terence Cuneo’s well-known painting, there was some conjecture that the Blue Train from Cannes to Calais had been outpaced with a different car. Barnato referred to it only as “my Speed Six saloon”. The car in the Cuneo painting, GJ 3811 was commissioned by Barnato with a sweeping roofline, and one of the first ever fastbacks in which the rearmost seat was placed sideways. The rakish black (and later also dark olive) Gurney Nutting body had smart gadgetry, a cocktail cabinet, and reputedly accomplished the dramatic drive in March 1930 as a result of a wager in a gentlemen’s club. The Blue Train ran from Cannes to Calais, Barnato aiming not so much to beat it, as show how easily it could be done. The company needed all the publicity it could get, it was on the brink of receivership, and as principal shareholder he was fretting.

In reality the contest demanded neither great speed, nor exceptional staying power, except perhaps from the crew of the car. Barnato set off with his golfing friend Dale Bourn, not from the railway station at Cannes - that would have looked like a stunt - but from the bar at the Carlton. They waited for word that the Blue Train was departing, finished their drinks, and left. There were no autoroutes. Fuel was arranged in advance overnight, Esso filling stations remained open at Aix-en-Provence and Lyons, and a tanker lorry at Auxerre, while the train made its leisurely progress. From Cannes it went west along the Cote d’Azur, stopping for 70 minutes in Marseille, before heading North for Paris where it wasted three hours going from the Gare d’Orleans to the Gare du Nord. The Bentley pressed on without a pause, reaching Boulogne with an hour to spare before the ferry, and getting to London in time for a celebration drink at Bourn’s club, The Conservative, in St James’s Street. It was 3.20 on the London Victoria clock, according to Barnato, and the Blue Train was not due in Calais for another four minutes. The pair then parked outside the RAC in Pall Mall for the hall porter to stamp their cards having averaged 43.43mph (69.89kph).

Writing this in The Complete Bentley, I was careful to take into account a possibility that the Gurney Nutting fastback was not the car that took part. In 2006 Mike Cassell wrote in the Financial Times about a re-enactment, trying to clear up the confusion. After US businessman McCaw bought the Gurney Nutting coupé illustrated in Cuneo’s picture, research suggested that Barnato may have used his saloon 6½. The McCaws tracked this down from its chassis number, reuniting it with its original Mulliner saloon bodywork, which had been re-mounted on another chassis.

They then owned both. Mike Cassell’s re-enactment left the Carlton Hotel in Cannes before dawn, finding a sprinkling of snow on the mountain peaks of the Napoleonic route. They were not burdened with finding where Barnato’s pre-arranged refuelling stops were, nor did they suffer a puncture. However they did manage a meal and a decent night’s sleep near Dijon, completing the 750 miles in 37 hours against Barnato’s in 20hr 35min.

INTRODUCTION first registered May 1930
BODY Gurney Nutting Speed Six.
ENGINE 6-cylinders, in-line; front; 100mm x 140mm, 6597cc; compr 5.3:1; 180bhp (134.23kW) @ 3500rpm; 27.28bhp (20.34kW)/l.
ENGINE STRUCTURE 4-valves, double springs; 8-bearing camshaft, 3-throw coupling rod drive; cast iron cylinder block with stainless steel jacket plates; single port block; 2 vertical HVG5 SU carburettors; two Champion plugs per cylinder; Bosch magneto and Delco-Remy coil; Autovac fuel system; 8-bearing crankshaft, with damper; water-cooled
TRANSMISSION rear wheel drive; sdp clutch; 4-speed C-type gearbox, right hand change; spiral bevel final drive 3.53:1.
CHASSIS pressed steel frame 0.188in (4.77mm), 7 cross-members; semi-elliptic leaf springs; Bentley and Draper friction dampers; self-wrapping, Dewandre servo mechanical brakes, front Bentley-Perrot; 15.75in (40cm) drums; worm and sector steering; 25gal (113.6l) fuel tank; Dunlop tyres 21 x 6.00, rear 21 x 7.00; Rudge-Whitworth centre lock wire wheels.
DIMENSIONS wheelbase 140.5in (356.87cm); track 56in (142.2cm); length 187in (474.9cm); width 68.5in (173.99cm); ground clearance 7.25in (18.4cm); turning circle 47.5ft (14.5m).
EQUIPMENT Smith and Jaeger instruments, white figures black faces, German silver parallel-sided radiator shell; Green Label badges. Zeiss headlamps; Bosch electrics; Hobson fuel telegauge; brake vacuum gauge
PERFORMANCE maximum speed 92mph (147.7kph)-100mph (160.9kph); fuel consumption 15mpg (18.83l/100km).
PRICE chassis £1800.
Detail from Dove Publishing: The Complete Bentley

Always a winner, Woolf Barnato (right with Sir Tim Birkin) the only drivers to win all three Le Mans 24-Hours races he entered. This picture captioned "a quarter of an hour before the start, 1929."

Unintended consequencies

Not before time, there's proposed safety legislation not obsessed with speeding. Proposals for new powers so police can issue tickets for bad driving are all very well, but begs the question of how you catch the miscreants. One sees drivers weaving in and out of motorway traffic, risking theirs and everybody else's necks, and just wish there was a patrol car there to scoop them up. There never is. And with the passing of a regime that thought it could enforce safety by speed cameras while reducing traffic police, maybe we are on the threshold of a new era.

We need more patrol cars like this Vauxhall Insignia
Unfortunately making new regulations does not follow logical processes. This 1993 Sunday Times column was concerned about unintended consequences. The original copy for "proposed law..." is attached.


The AA has just taken delivery of a fleet of new Ford Transits.
Sunday Times: Motoring 02 May 1993
DEATH BY DANGEROUS DRIVING

The creation of a new offence of causing death by driving is to be looked at by the AA as soon as the proposals are drawn up for a new criminal justice bill in the autumn. It is barely a year since the Road Traffic Act introduced two offences, causing death by dangerous driving and causing death by careless driving while over the prescribed blood-alcohol limit. Instead there will be a new single offence with double the existing maximum jail term of five years.

Courts will need to take account of the circumstances of accidents to make a distinction between misdemeanours with unexpectedly tragic consequences and minor shunts. 'We need to make sure that motoring offences do not get out of proportion,' an AA spokesman said. 'Causing death while at the wheel of a car must relate to similar offences in other areas, although we acknowledge public concern over the powers judges have for dealing with the lunatic fringe who drive without concern for life.'

A driver who runs into a car stationary at traffic lights is clearly culpable. But the difference between the consequences may be no more than a matter of chance. The driver of the stationary car may get a stiff neck when his headrest cushions the blow, step from his damaged vehicle and exchange names and addresses before driving off, aggrieved but alive.

Another stationary car might have no head restraints. They are a relatively recent safety feature. In an identical accident with the same degree of carelessness by the offending driver, whiplash could break the driver's neck and kill him.

Consequences in traffic accidents can often be a matter of luck - running into a car with safety features against running into one without. Driver B could face a custodial sentence of up to ten years against driver A getting a caution, a fine, and a few points on his driving licence for essentially the same misdeed, running into the back of a stationary car.

Drink-driving is a different issue. Impairment through drinking is a serious business, the courts take it seriously, and the distinction of a separate offence of causing death while unfit to drive through drink should remain.

But there is a distinction between the driver who crashes carelessly or recklessly into a bus shelter when it is empty, and the one who kills all the occupants. The difference rests only on whether anyone was in the shelter at the time. In one case it might mean a wigging by the bench, in the other a long term of imprisonment.

The logic of increasing penalties according to the consequences of transgressions, would imply decreasing them where the risks are small. Speeding at 3am on an empty motorway in clear weather would become less serious than recklessly flouting the law on a busy afternoon.

Reckless, careless, driving without due care and attention, or whatever it may be called under various road traffic acts, now generally comes to light when there has been an accident. Yet it is the bad driving that is the offence, not whether the driver knocks down a tree or kills a sheep.

In the last four years nearly 100 cases of apparently lenient sentences on drivers involved in accidents have been referred by the Attorney General to the Court of Appeal. Fourteen involved fatalities. The protests the Home Office receives over sentences on killer-drivers are overwhelming.

It is difficult not to take account of fatalities in assessing culpability, but leaving aside the drink-driving issue, not many drivers set out to kill, and pressing for fierce penalties on those who do will not do much for deterrence and could look like a cry for vengeance.

Solar Charging Outdoor Rocking Lounge Furniture (14 pics)

Solar Charging Outdoor Rocking Lounge Furniture -
Recharge yourself and your electronics while relaxing with friends outdoors in Killian Court. The MIT SOFT Rockers are smart, clean energy charging stations disguised as outdoor rocking lounge furniture.

Unlike conventional ‘hard’ urban infrastructure, The SOFT Rocker leverages its environment in a dynamic manner by using the human power of balance to create an interactive 1.5 axis 35 watt solar tracking system. Soft power electronics designed for this project charge the 12 ampere-hour battery and store solar energy harvested during the day.

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Prohibition on Ben Nevis

A hundred years ago Henry Alexander took his Model T Ford up Ben Nevis. It wouldn’t be allowed now. No, really, it isn’t being allowed. The greenery-yalleries have forbidden it. The John Muir Conservation Trust, which is apparently responsible for the Ben Nevis summit, will only permit a replica carried up by volunteers and then reassembled in commemoration.
Edinburgh Ford dealer Alexander wanted to show how rugged a Model T was, but knew he probably couldn’t drive it all the way. He was right; I’ve climbed there. The track is narrow and rocky. Anything off-track is steep. You might manage a mountain bike.

Henry’s team had to manhandle and dismantle to manage up to the summit, 4,406ft when I was at school. A Model T was only 1200lb (544kg), ten hundredweight in old money so manageable for a robust team of helpers, who took five days over boulders, through snow-drifts and over dangerous loose sand paths. A lot of press, including a chap from The Autocar, assembled at the top to greet the pioneers, who had built little bridges over streams and waterfalls. It took them less than three hours to come down gradients steeper than 1 in 3.

The Ben Nevis Challenge Tour, from 16 - 21 May, is organised by the Model T Register celebrating the 100th anniversary of Alexander’s achievement. Over 60 Model Ts will give daily runs, providing opportunities to see privately-owned examples of Ford's first Universal Car on the picturesque roads around Fort William. There will be a display of Ford vehicles and memorabilia at the Nevis Centre. Other vehicles from the Ford Heritage Collection will include a replica of Henry Ford's first vehicle, the Quadricycle, and a 1910 Model T.

Henry Ford sent eight American Model T’s to Olympia, London, on 13 November 1908. He was keen on exports and they went on to Paris afterwards. Fords had been imported since 1903, the Model Ts coming in through The Central Motor Car Company Ltd, of 117 Long Acre, London WC. Among radical features were cylinders cast in one block and an integral engine, clutch and gearbox. The epicyclic gears drew inspiration from the works of Frederick Lanchester along principles that would form the basis of modern automatic transmissions. There were three pedals; the middle one engaged reverse, the left engaged low when pressed, high when released, and the right operated the transmission brake. A steering column throttle controlled engine speed. Transverse road springs meant only two were needed instead of four; a useful economy. Crosswise springing also offered less resistance to side-roll and twisting on corners. Ford was a passionate advocate of vanadium steel, which he believed made cars stronger and lighter to it was used for the Model T’s frail looking but sturdy drop forged front axle, spindly crankshaft, and parts of the transmission.


Ford Motor Company (England) Ltd began making Model Ts at Trafford Park, Manchester in 1911. The first British Ford was assembled from imported parts on 23 October, Ford’s Irish factory supplying chassis items until Joseph Sankey, of Hadley Shropshire, took over but it was the 1920s before Model Ts were wholly home grown. A Detroit-style moving production line came in September 1914. Assembly had been a stationary affair with axles and chassis laid out on the floor, now building a Model T took 12 hours. Moving assembly tracks had been used elsewhere, but Ford waited until components could be made accurately enough to be interchangeable, cutting build time to an hour and a half. The following year the flywheel magneto operated an electric lighting set, not altogether satisfactorily, since being dependent on engine speed, the lights grew dim when driving slowly. The Model T’s success was so overwhelming all other Fords were discontinued.

INTRODUCTION 27 September 1908, produced until 26 May 1927.
BODY Various styles; 2 or 4-seats; weight 1200lb (544kg).
ENGINE 4-cylinders, in-line; front; 3.75in (95.25mm) x 4in (101.6mm), 2896cc (176.7 cu in); compr 4.5:1; 20bhp (14.91kW) @ 1800rpm; 6.9bhp (5.1kW)/l.
ENGINE STRUCTURE L-head side valve; gear-driven camshaft; non-adjustable tappets; detachable cast iron cylinder head and block; Holley or Kingston single jet updraught carburettor, mixture adjustable by driver; low-tension flywheel magneto, distributor and separate trembler coil for each cylinder, standby battery for starting; splash lubrication; gravity fuel feed; 3-bearing crankshaft; cooling by multi-tube radiator (brass shell in UK until 1916 thereafter black), thermosyphon, and fan.
TRANSMISSION rear wheel drive; epicyclic 2-speed and reverse gearbox, steel disc clutches for low speed and reverse by contracting bands on epicycle drums; multi-disc clutch for direct drive top; propeller shaft enclosed in torque tube; final drive passenger cars and light vans straight-tooth bevel gears; ratio 3.64:1 high 10:1 low.
CHASSIS straight steel channel-section chassis; transverse leaf springs front and rear with radius rods; mechanical brakes foot – contracting band on direct-drive clutch, hand – expanding shoes in rear wheel drums; steering by epicyclic reduction gear in steering wheel boss, drop arm on end of steering column, transverse drag link, 1.25 turns lock to lock; 10gal (45.46l) fuel tank; 30 x 3in front, 30 x 3.5in rear, variations on balloon and straight-sided tyres; hickory-spoked artillery wheels, non-detachable, fixed rims; detachable rims after 1919; wire-spoked wheels 1925.
DIMENSIONS wheelbase 100in (254cm); track 56in (142.2cm) later 60in (152.4cm); length 134in (340.4cm); width 66in (167.6cm); ground clearance 10.5in (76.2cm).
EQUIPMENT from 1909-1915 no electrical system; 1915-1919 8v headlamps and horn from flywheel magneto; 1919-1927 dynamo and battery for 6v starting and lighting.
PERFORMANCE maximum speed 45mph (72.2kph) approx, claim by Ford, 15mph (24kph) in low; 27.2kg/bhp (36.5kg/kW); fuel consumption 28mpg (10.1l/100km).
PRICE Various models, roadster, tourer, 2-door, 4-door saloons, and town car, chassis 1919 £170, 1921 £250, 1924 2-seater £110.

Data from The Ford Centenary File: Dove Publishing, 2011Seventeen years after taking the Model T up Ben Nevis, Henry Alexander made the ascent with a new Model A. I don’t expect that would be allowed now either. The John Muir Conservation Trust is sure smelly old petrol cars with nasty exhaust emissions will ever catch on.

The Biggest Loser - Amazing Transformations (17 pics)

The Biggest Loser - Amazing Transformations -
These are some before and after photos of people who participated in the television show 'The Biggest loser'. It is amazing how much weight these folks lost. They certainly don’t look like the same people.

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Saab 9000

Saab is in a bit of trouble again. Can’t seem to pay its way. Yet it is one make of car for which drivers feel affection. It forged relationships with journalists through events that involved lots of driving. In 1985 Ray Hutton, then editor of Autocar and I did more than 1000 miles in a few days. Best of luck Saab. It deserves better. Saabscene was Saab GB’s magazine in 1985

One of the few disadvantages attached being a relatively small manufacturer is that new car launches are few and far A between. As is common knowledge, the, Saab 9000 is the company’s first all new model for 17 years.
The larger manufacturers have not only infinitely greater financial resources but also the ability to draw together a larger demonstration fleet. For this reason, Saab has to make the most of every opportunity to present its developments to the press in the most attractive and imaginative manner possible. It has done this to remarkably good effect.
Leningrad, Baja California, Prague and most recently, the North Cape are four of the fascinating destinations chosen by Saab Scania to demonstrate Saab’s durability, roadholding or innovative design to the world’s press. But it’s not just a question of choosing an exciting location for a launch; a comprehensive itinerary to provide the journalists with a thorough examination of the car is essential.
We reproduce here, by courtesy of Fast Lane, Eric Dymock’s impressions of the 9000 Turbo 16 en route to the North Cape. [Saabscene] Saab’s 9000, due in the UK in October, proved to be the ideal transport for Eric Dymock’s foray north of the Arctic Circle. Fast Lane
Spain or the Seychelles are all very well, but you can’t expect people to be surprised any more. These days everybody’s been to Spain or the Seychelles, but say you’ve been fishing in the Arctic and see what happens. No need to waitfor a gap in the conversation. Just say, “Look here, I’ve just been fishing in the Arctic.”
You can’t beat it. Spain and the Seychelles become boring. You don’t even need to brandish holiday snaps. In fact better forget about holiday snaps because the place is about as photogenic as the Falkland Islands unless you actually like brown (earth), white (snow) and grey (sea and sky).
It is also not much use holding up a picture and saying you shot this at lam. Everybody knows about the midnight sun. Much better to tell about having dinner with Erik Carlsson one night and finding it broad daylight outside. “Ah well,” says Erik, “we’ll just have to keep drinking till it gets dark.”
Which is about September.
Erik Carlsson of course can mean only one car — Saab. And it was to show how good the Saab 9000 is for long, fast, tough drives that they hit on going to the ends of the earth. It is about the latitude of Alaska and Siberia, and well north of the Arctic Circle, making Iceland look almost tropical. It is fortunately milder than Alaska and Siberia on account of the Gulf Stream which one would have thought had lost most of its warmth by there but apparently not.
Further north you cannot go, in Europe at any rate, without falling over the edge. North Cape is a sheer 307 metres into if not quite the abyss that used to so worry ancient man, at least into the Arctic Ocean which must be about as inhospitable, Gulf Stream or no Gulf Stream.
We flew on a scheduled airline to Helsinki then by private charter to Rovaniemi, smack on the Arctic Circle. From there we set off in Saab 9000s across into the northern part of Norway and up to North Cape, some 350 miles further towards the Pole as a very frostbitten crow would fly, or about 550 miles the pretty way.
I must say I expected dirt roads, I suppose something like a gigantic Kielder Special stage, but for the most part the surf aces were quite splendid. They were tarmac, except where the ravages of winter were being repaired, and virtually free of traffic. You had to watch out for the occasional elk; one traffic injury in six in Scandinavia is caused by wandering animals and when they are elk-sized you have to take them seriously.
As we forged north through drenching rain, mild summer sunshine, high snow banks, and chill Arctic night, the forests thinned out. It was like going beyond the snow-line part-way up Everest. (This is a bit of artistic licence: I’ve never been part-way up Everest). Actually the trees get smaller before they disappear altogether, more like scraggy stunted broomsticks about two feet tall.
Up on North Cape itself it is scaly bare rock and except for the snow looks rather like the surface of the moon. I haven’t been on the moon either; it is what I imagine it would look like. Neil Armstrong driving the lunar rover would hardly have come as a surprise.
There are some cars that exactly fit the job in hand. I remember years ago Joe Lowrey, a distinguished Technical Editor of Motor, said of the Panhard 24CT that if he lived at one end of the Ml and had to commute to the other he could think of no better car. It had good aerodynamics, high gearing, and a very economical 848cc flat twin engine. He also said he could think of no other circumstances whatsoever in which he would like to drive or own one.

The Lunar Rover must be a bit like that: fine on the moon but not much use anywhere else. Now the Saab, for this journey was sensationally good. It is one of these cars which, when the going gets a bit rough and tumble, or the surfaces deteriorate, or the weather
closes in, or the going gets slippery you feel, “Never mind. This thing won’t let you down. It’s not going to stop out here miles from anywhere. It’ll cope with anything and it won’t need any special skill to get out of trouble. And my goodness, isn’t it FAST.”
Driving very quickly indeed over these empty roads in Europe’s last great wilderness the turbo never got much of a chance to slow down, so the huge reservoir of power at the top end of the rev range was always in use; great long surges of speed in fourth and fifth taking you up to the maximum of over 22Okph (137mph) with great swiftness. How very satisfactory to find a car so ideally suited to the grand tour; I can think of almost nothing that could do this sort of job better, a true road car with 61 per cent of the weight in the front. It is beautifully stable, with little body roll and that wheel-at-each-corner feel that suggests a car developed by a driver such as Erik Carlsson, rather than one churned out by the cost accountants. You lope along and come to an. unmade stretch, slackening speed only a little, confident in the knowledge that the good ground clearance and the clean underside together with the big wheels and supple springing will all cope. Saab must have learned a lot about making strong cars when Erik was rallying them.
So like Joe Lowrey’s Panhard, the Saab does have one wholly ideal role. And conversely while there is hardly anything about it which is dislikeable, there are some aspects at which the market will look askance. Like most of its forebears for example, it is not a car designed with much of an eye to haute couture. The Swedes are far too practical for that. It has been designed, as you might expect like an aircraft, strictly for practicality, giving aerodynamics their place in the scheme of things but rejecting extreme solutions that get in the way of really important considerations such as seeing out. The 9000 does away with the feeling you get in the 90 or 900 of looking out through a letter- box slot.
However the result is a rather anonymous shape, which lacks the striking dignity of the new Mercedes-Benz 200-300 or the feline grace of the Jaguar. How often one has to compare any car in this class with these two bench-marks of automotive excellence. The Saab does look good from some angles, but by and large it does not appear distinguished.
Saab is fond of pointing out that it is a large car by the American Environmental Protection Agency’s standards of measurement. Subjectively it feels spacious enough in the front although the back seat cushion falls a bit short of a size suitable for lounging. Perhaps it helps the measurement from back cushion to front seat-back to have it like that.
The sweep of the broad, flat facia panel, curving into the central console is less successful aesthetically than the superb arrangement of the 900 with its splendid aircraft-style instruments grouped carefully according to function. That surely was one of the best-designed layouts ever. The 9000 has rather a lot of black with nothing to fill the space; if they didn’t surrender to the stylists outside it is surprising to find they have done
so inside. They have also given in to idiot American owners who became tired of instructing parking attendants in the mysteries of the Saab ignition key which locked the car in reverse. This highly effective thief deterrent has now been abandoned in favour of a conventional steering column lock which can be unpicked by any competent thief in about thirty seconds.
It is hardly relevant to discuss how close or how distant a relative of the Lancia Thema and the Fiat and Alfa Romeo Type Fours the Saab 9000 is. It is distinctively hallmarked as a Saab which is what was intended even though the differences of opinion between the engineers on what constituted a Saab and what Lancia turned out wider than anyone thought when the co-operative venture was conceived in the mid-Seventies.
Long-haul fast driving with the turbo boost well up much of the time is thirsty work for a 16-valve 2-litre. Just as well that the intercooler is reducing the temperature of the ingoing charge, really. Besides getting more oxygen in you can’t help feeling it must help prevent the whole lot melting down into one glowing incandescent mass.
Fuel consumption for nine cars over 550 miles averaged out at 22.3mpg, one pussyfooter getting 31.0 and a couple of hooligans around 17 and I refuse to be drawn on their identity. [This was Ray Hutton and me]
Taking fish from the Arctic can hardly be described as exciting sport, most of the cod etc seeming only too pleased to come up into the comparative warmth even if their eyes bulged a bit when you took the hooks out. Fighting denizens of the deep kept clear of the small group of hacks dangling their lines from the twin-hulled diesel Saab had thoughtfully arranged to take us to the northernmost tip of the Continent.
You can’t help thinking that what with no frozen lakes in June, real trees that grow real leaves, no elks and hardly a trace of snow, Britain is, as any meteorologist worth his isobars will tell you, comparatively mild.

JAGUAR E-TYPE ANNIVERSARY

This is FSN 1, an E-type I drove often, with Jimmy Stewart, Jackie's elder brother. Like the Sprite in the next blog, it is at Turnberry for the RSAC Concours d'elegance
1961 JAGUAR E-type 3.8 FHC: From The Jaguar File, revised for EBook
The E-type epitomised the classic sports touring car. Introduced at the Geneva Motor Show, in the Parc des Eaux Vives within sight of the famous jet d’eau, it created shock-waves throughout the motor industry. The social elite of Geneva queued up - literally - to be whisked up a hill-climb course by test driver Norman Dewis and Jaguar public relations chief and accomplished D-type racer, Bob Berry. So many people turned up that the police were called to keep order.
The E-type looked the quintessence of quality, its UK price was less than £1500, and it was expected to reach 150mph (241.39kph). Officially the successor to the XK series, it evoked the lines and style of a D-type, slimmed and refined to create a beautiful car, which became an enduring symbol of the 1960s. More attainable than a Ferrari, more charismatic than a Rolls-Royce, racier than a Mercedes-Benz, the E-type stamped its image on a generation and its shape became an icon of the so-called swinging sixties. Its basis was straightforward. Both the open and closed versions had a cockpit made of small spot-welded steel pressings, with the independent rear suspension carried in a cradle underneath.
E2A, the Briggs Cunningham prototype that had raced at Le Mans, showed what had motivated thinkers at Jaguar, who wanted something that did double duty as a sports-racing lookalike and a practical road car. The front was constructed of Reynolds 541 square section steel tubing containing the engine and carrying the front suspension. A smaller tubular sub-frame was bolted to the front, supporting the radiator and front bonnet anchor. The bonnet hinged upwards for access to the engine and front suspension, and comprised the entire nose-section with complicated ducts and electrical connections. It was an elaborate and expensive item of equipment, as anybody unfortunate enough to damage one soon found out.
The Autocar and The Motor road testers managed the required top speeds, but only just. A certain amount of duplicity emerged after production E-types seldom got much past 140mph. The model’s reputation was sullied through overheating of the inboard rear disc brakes. Yet it changed the world of the sports car, setting standards in ride and handling that lasted for years, banishing for ever the notion that fast sports cars should feel “difficult”. It arrived at the dawn of the motorway age in Britain, when people could still dream of dashing from one end of the country to the other at unfettered speed. Timid ministers of transport, desperate to impose motorway speed limits, were still years off.

Announced at the Geneva Motor Show in March, 1961, one of the first E-types I drove was a works press car, taken to Scotland for the Kelvin Hall Motor Show, that I drove to the offices of The Hamilton Advertiser to have it photographed. Jaguar apprentice Clive Martin came with me to make sure I could handle the power.INTRODUCTION 1961 produced to 1964.
BODY coupe; 2-doors, 2-seats; dry weight 1143kg (2519.8lb) kerb weight 1226kg (2702lb).
ENGINE 6-cylinders, in-line; front; 87mm x 106mm, 3781cc; compr 9:1, 8.1 optional; 197.6kW (265bhp) @ 5500rpm; 52.26kW (70bhp)/l; 348.7Nm (257.2lbft) @ 4000rpm.
ENGINE STRUCTURE two chain-driven ohc; aluminium cylinder head, cast iron block; 3 2in SU HD8 carburettors; Lucas ignition; SU electric fuel pump; 7-bearing crankshaft.
TRANSMISSION rear wheel drive; 25.3cm (10in) Borg and Beck sdp clutch; 4-speed synchromesh gearbox; hypoid final drive 3.31:1; options 4.09, 3.77, 3.27:1; Powr-Lok limited-slip diff.
CHASSIS steel monocoque centre, bolted tubular front sub-frames; ifs by wishbones, coil springs; anti roll bar; irs by lower wishbone, upper driveshaft link, radius arms, twin coil spring/telescopic damper units; anti roll bar; hydraulic servo disc 27.9cm (11in) front 25.4cm (10in) inboard rear brakes; rack and pinion steering; 63.3l (14gal) fuel tank; Dunlop RS5 6.40-15 tyres, optional Dunlop Racing R5 6.00-15 front, 6.50-15 rear; wire wheels.
DIMENSIONS wheelbase 244cm (96in); track 127cm (50in); length 444cm (175in); width 165cm (65in); height 122cm (48in); ground clearance 12.7cm (5in); turning circle right 12.3m (40.4ft), left 11.7m (38.4ft).
EQUIPMENT spare wheel and toolkit in recessed floor of boot; optional HMV radio; chrome wire wheels £60 21; Sundym glass in hatchback.
PERFORMANCE maximum speed 242.1kph (150.4mph); 37kph (23mph) @ 1000rpm on RS5, 39.58kph (24.6mph) on R5 tyres; 0-100kph (62mph) 6.9sec; fuel consumption 15.8l/100km (17.9mpg).
PRICE £2197. PRODUCTION 7669.

Lotus 7

Every driver has motoring milestones. First drive on a public road. Passing the driving test. First 100 miles an hour. First drive in a great classic. First cars owned.
I might do a series. First drive on a public road was aged 13 in the family Wolseley ESM667. Passed the driving test first time; couldn’t face brothers if I hadn’t. We were a driving family. Passed in father’s Austin 16, HOJ 972.

My first 100 miles an hour was in a 2½ Litre Riley, LLF1, in Glencoe. First fast classic sports car; Frank Dundas’s Plus 4 TR Morgan PSM508. I could not believe the cornering. First ownership was Austin A30, GES945. First MG JCS648; red MGA almost always open even in Scottish weather. First Austin-Healey Sprite Cherry Red BXS467; second Old English White DGM777. I haven’t looked up these numbers. I remember them.
The Sprite on a nice day at Turnberry
Motoring milestones. Good idea for a series. First drive on a banked track, 1962 at MIRA - last one the Mercedes-Benz vertical turn on the test track at Stuttgart. Press release came in the other day saying Team Lotus Enterprise has purchased Caterham Cars. The people behind Team Lotus Formula 1 are to develop the brand. Caterhams were Lotus 7s, designed by Colin Chapman in the 1950s as kit cars. The design was sold to Graham Nearn in 1973 when Chapman got too busy with other things.
My first drive of a Lotus 7 was a motoring milestone. It was 1963, it belonged to Barry Watkyn, with whom I worked at The Motor; lived in Sevenoaks or somewhere. What a revelation. Here was a bare stripped-down racing car you could take on the road. It had lights and muguards and a sketchy hood, but it had the steering, handling and roadholding of a track car. You were close to the ground; it was cold, draughty and uncomfortable. It had that gritty, coarse feel of a racing car, you felt every ripple, bump and camber change through the steering, yet it reached levels of precision, sensitivity, grip and traction I never felt before. When you moved it moved. It was light and darted from corner to corner. There was little inertia pulling you this way or that. Barry’s Seven had a Cosworth engine of no great power, yet it didn’t matter. It showed what a car designed by an engineer-artist could achieve. It set a benchmark.
Barry Watkyn (left) and Roger Bell from The Motor at Goodwood in 1963.
The Lotus 7 remains a point of reference. It’s an ideal balance of power and intuitive handling. It is also one of the most-raced cars in the world and was the inspiration behind the Caterham-Lola SP/300R race and track day car. To celebrate its new ownership, Caterham Cars will build a limited run of Team Lotus Special Edition Sevens.

There will be 25 Team Lotus upgrade packages, applied to any variant up to the 263bhp, 150mph Superlight R500. Another 25 will be made for export. For an extra £3,000 the Sevens will be in Lotus green and yellow, and come with bespoke Team Lotus extras, including an invitation to the F1 factory in Hingham, Norfolk.
Cockpit plaques carry signatures of Team Lotus F1 drivers, Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen and owners will get a Seven history book signed by chief designer, Mike Gascoyne. Caterham managing director, Ansar Ali, said: “Caterham Cars is starting an exciting and important chapter, so it’s fitting that we celebrate taking Colin Chapman’s ‘less is more’ philosophy global. Owners of Special Edition Sevens will have not only a fabulous British sports car, but a genuine piece of automotive history.”
The new custodians of Colin Chapman’s concept say they will remain true to the rascally late genius’s philosophy of lightweight, minimalist sports cars. The current range starts with the Caterham Classic at £13,650.
More information on http://www.caterham.co.uk or +44 (0)1883 333 700
My memorable motoring moment? Collecting my teenage daughters from school in a McLaren F1.


The A30 on a snowy road near Tinto, Lanarkshire.

Unique & Creative USB Flash Drives (17 pics)

Unique & Creative USB Flash Drives -
Those who use computer should have at least an Universal Bus Controller (USB) flash drive but how many of you have a nice designed USB flash drive? Just to share with you a collection of creative and unusual USB flash drives; maybe you can consider to get one unusual USB flash drive. Enjoy!

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Rolls-Royce

Twenty-one years ago Rolls-Royces were still made in Crewe. They were a decade away from fundamental change. Yet their dignity seemed unshakeable as this motoring column from 17 June 1990 shows. And 'personal imports' to beat Car Tax and VAT was still newsworthy.
SUNDAY TIMES: Motoring, Eric Dymock
ROLLS-ROYCE SILVER SPIRIT II
Upwards of a thousand Rolls-Royces are converging on Castle Ashby in Northamptonshire today for the Rolls-Royce Enthusiasts' Club Annual Rally. It will be a meeting of hearts and minds as well as cars. Rolls-Royces are as close to Britain's soul as Big Ben or Land of Hope and Glory, yet as with other pillars of the establishment, it is easy to expect too much of them.
Dignified and regal, beautifully made and long-lasting, Rolls-Royces are as imposing as ever they were. You are more likely to be taken for a pop star at the wheel of one nowadays than a Member of the House of Lords. They tend to be bought more by 'new' money than by the old aristocracy who seem to be happier in Range Rovers and green wellies.
Adjusting one's expectations means not assuming a Rolls-Royce will handle like a Mercedes-Benz, nor be as quiet as one of the new Japanese luxury cars. It means driving them in a fitting manner, not too fast, and avoiding harsh braking or acceleration. The older parts of the suspension were not designed to avoid the diving and leaping that go with clumsy driving.
Rolls-Royce chauffeurs like Rolls-Royce cars are expected to keep their composure at all times. At the chauffeurs' school they are instructed how to open a door, then shut it with a satisfying clunk, like the door of an old First Class railway carriage, as the passengers sink into the Connolly-leather chairs, kick their shoes off, and curl their toes into the shaggy carpet.
Rolls-Royce's tradition of naming cars after ghosts began in 1907, when Claude Johnson, responsible for the creation of the marque as much as the two euphonious partners, had their thirteenth 40/50 finished in aluminium paint, and the carriage lamps and fittings silver-plated. It was named The Silver Ghost
The latest Silver Spirit is less ethereally quiet. It is probably noisier than some of the graceful old cars gathering at Castle Ashby, the difference is that it does 120mph, and accelerates to 60mph in a vigorous 10 seconds.
Its worst shortcoming is the tiresome hum from the air intake of the 6.75 litre V-8 engine which would pass unnoticed in a Sierra or a Cavalier, but as in the tale of the princess and the pea, quite spoils the cushioned luxury of a car that costs £85,609, and does between 12 and 15mpg. With a little effort you feel the fuel consumption could reach single figures.
The heavy thirst is the result of the blunt aerodynamics and the car's weight of 2350kg (5180lb, 46cwt). The controls are all light, but at seventeen and a quarter feet (5.3metres) it is a large car. The ride is now extremely good, with the new adaptive ride control which senses speed, steering, and the disturbance made by road bumps. The sensors then stiffen or slacken the springing within milliseconds, making this the best-riding and best-handling Silver Spirit yet.
Body roll on corners is firmly checked, and the old floaty motion has gone.
The interior of the Silver Spirit is of matchless quality, with further refinements to the two-tier air conditioning system. Unlike those of BMW and Mercedes-Benz, it divides horizontally, giving the occupants the choice of warm feet and a cool head as opposed to a cool driver and a warm passenger.
There is usually so much noise in a car that the quality of an elaborate stereo system is squandered. The Silver Spirit is quiet enough for pop stars to appreciate its ten speakers (two tweeters in the demister panel, mid-range and bass units in the front doors and tweeter and mid-range units in the rear doors) and, for those of their lordships who still have them, to hear Today in Parliament in perfect peace.
ENDS 661w
SUNDAY TIMES: Motoring, Eric Dymock
ROLLS-ROYCE, CREWE
Rolls-Royce has at last had to concede that machines make cars better than people can. Sir Henry Royce, whose engineering credo was that, "There is no safe way of judging anything except by experiment," would probably have agreed. He would go to any lengths to achieve excellence and had he known about it, he would have embraced computer-controlled machining with enthusiasm.
Changing the habits of a lifetime has not come easily. The old wartime factory at Crewe still has machinery, which still looks as though it made Merlin engines for Battle of Britain Hurricanes and Spitfires. They did, and are gradually being replaced by automatic cutters and drillers to turn out better components than the most skilled craftsman.
Rolls-Royce offers the production engineer a singular challenge. It is relatively easy for robots to turn out thousands of identical parts, but Rolls-Royce made only 3,243 cars last year, just under 70 every working week, so it does not want thousands of anything very much. What it does want is seventy or so axle casings, or cylinder blocks, or exhaust manifolds machined to a consistent accuracy that befits the car.
This could no longer be accomplished with the relics of industrial archaeology on which Rolls-Royce Motors had to rely following the receivership of 1971. Like Ferrari, Rolls-Royce has had to adapt to changing circumstances, which meant commissioning a highly automated paint plant a year ago, and bringing in sophisticated new machinery, the latest of which was brought into operation only last week.
Unlike Ferrari, in which Fiat has invested heavily, Rolls-Royce has had to generate its own resources. Profits have gone up from £14.1 million in 1984 to nearly £25 million last year. Sales are up 18 per cent world wide, the Pacific basin is doing well with sales in Japan up, North America holding its own, and the UK up by over 8 per cent.
Just over half the cars made by the company are Bentleys, and when the new model arrives by the mid-90s, the Rolls-Royce and the Bentley ranges will separate for the first time since 1945. The pre-war "Silent Sports Car" will have an identity of its own again, with a separate body style.
More pressing however is a new engine to replace the thirty year old V8, which is neither as smooth nor as efficient as a Rolls-Royce ought to be. Vickers, Rolls-Royce's parent now owns Cosworth Engineering which is not only an outstanding manufacturer of racing power units, but also notable in the production engineering of engines.
Among Cosworth's notable achievements was successfully designing and producing the 16-valve heads for the outstanding Mercedes-Benz 190 2.3-16, in an astonishingly short time. Rolls-Royce is fully extended making cars - it makes most of its own components down to the Spirit of Ecstasy on the radiator shell. Cosworth, rich in talent, would not find it difficult to design and engineer a new power unit adaptable for a 1995 range of Bentley sports cars and Rolls-Royce limousines.
Meanwhile the crafts at Crewe which even the cleverest robots could not replace, continue to thrive. Ferrari lost none of its cachet through installing modern production methods and neither will Rolls-Royce. Ferrari quality and reliability has improved and so will Rolls-Royce's. The irreplaceable features, the sumptuous leather and the carefully-grained woodwork which no manufacturer in the world does as well, will give the cars their own distinctive character for generations to come.
ENDS 600w
SUNDAY TIMES: Motoring, Eric Dymock
Mrs Alberto Pirelli will flag off 125 pre-1966 cars taking part in the 2,000 mile Pirelli Classic Marathon from Tower Bridge at 0800 today. The third annual Marathon which commemorates the old Alpine Rally travels through six countries in seven days, finishing in Cortina Italy, on Saturday.
The 15 special tests, start at Lydden Hill, Kent at 11.00. Spectators will be admitted to a slalom-style event which will decide the first day's leaders before the cavalcade sets sail for the first overnight stop at Ypres, in Belgium.
Stirling Moss has declared himself fit to drive an MGB following his recent motorcycle accident but has not yet discarded both his crutches. Victor Gauntlett has withdrawn his £200,000 Austin-Healey which leaves Indianapolis star Bobby Unser's rather special Jaguar E-Type as probably the most valuable car in the event. Together with all the other precious classics, the Jaguar will be put to some strenuous tests such as a timed climb of the famous Stelvio Pass, Italy's highest Alpine road, nine miles with 48 hairpin bends, which will be specially closed for the occasion.
ENDS 195w
SUNDAY TIMES: Motoring, Eric Dymock
BMW SAYS EURO-PRICES BUNK
Despite a recent rise of 3.3 per cent, BMW claims that the prices of its 3-Series cars are much the same in the UK as they are in the rest of Europe. Taking the prices of extra equipment into account, optional in Germany but not always optional on the UK market, personal imports cost the customer more.
BMW allowed £300 to cover petrol, hotels, and ferry fares and local taxes were taken into account. No allowance was made for any administrative expenses, but BMW calculates that on an exchange rate of Dm2.8 to the pound the costs are as follows:
personal import UK retail extra cost of personal import
316i £12,525 £12,425 £100
320i £15,638 £15,550 £ 88
325i £19,179 £19,175 £ 4
The more expensive the BMW, the more BMW says you save by buying it in the UK.
ENDS 161w

Mink Brar - Zor Ka Jhatka Photoshoot (9 pics)

Mink Brar - Zor Ka Jhatka Photoshoot -
Mink Brar grew up in Germany. She is known as Dev Anand’s find in the industry who launched her in 'Pyar Ka Tarana'(2003). She did roles in few films like ‘Hum Aapke Dil Mein Rehte Hain’ and ‘Saat Rang Ke Sapne’, all with limited knowledge of the Indian film industry and a serious language barrier! She also did some films like Dipak Tijori’s 'Oops!' and small role in 'Ajnabee'.

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Liberty Belle

Found this marvellous beautiful engine when I went to Duxford for my birthday treat. Aviation writer Bill Gunston says no aircraft engine equals the Liberty V12’s record of quick design, quick qualification and quick mass production. It had a long active life in aeroplanes up to 1935. One is still going, revised a bit, in Babs the exhumed Land Speed Record car of John Godfrey Parry Thomas, who died in it at Pendine Sands.

Produced in a hurry to meet a wartime emergency, the Liberty was designed by Jesse Vincent of Packard and EJ Hall of Hall-Scott in a Washington hotel between 30 May and 4 June 1917. One says ‘designed’ but of course it used features such as the water cooled separate 5x7 inch cylinders from Hall-Scott’s existing San Francisco engines as well as bits of Packard. The Vee was set at 45deg to fit narrow aircraft and the valve gear was exposed. By November 1918 20,478 had been made of the 27 litre engine which, coincidentally, was the same capacity as the 5.4x6in Rolls-Royce Merlin designed in 1933. Not many people know that. Surprise your friends.

Coil ignition was unusual for a 1917 engine

Engines had to be narrow to fit in slim aircraft

Valve gear lived outside
Babs was dug up in 1969 by engineering lecturer Owen Wyn Owen from what had become a military firing range and restored as a tribute to the brave Parry Thomas. The original Liberty, damaged in the crash had rusted over the years and was replaced by one built by Lincoln Cars, its twelve separate cylinders mounted on a Packard-Liberty crankcase.

Pictured at Brooklands in 2007, Babs was being worked up for a demonstration run. The chassis is braced by strut and wire, much as contemporary Bentleys were, to improve stiffness. Lots of batteries were needed to crank the enormous V12. What a noise history makes.