After hearing the pleas for the return of sfisher, I walked though
my files and bundled up my sfisher files and dropped them into
the british-car anonymous FTP archives as:
hoosier.cs.utah.edu:/pub/sol/sfisher_on_british_cars.text.Z
It's compressed, so use binary mode to ftp it back.
There's a groupload of text there, 9000+ lines. My feeling is that
he's down with british-car overload.
Some juicy quotes...
"The fact that the men (and women, few though they were in that
place and time) of Abingdon were able to make a sports car engine
out of this great pedestrian antediluvian lump of ferrous feculence
is further testimony that Syd Enever is, if not God, then at least
one of His more gifted archangels."
"How to troubleshoot an electrical circuit using a cordless
telephone and two large bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale:
ring ring... ring ring... "Hey Andy, can you bring your
DMM over to my house and help me find a wiring fault?" "
"Whenever anyone would ask how much MGs cost, I'd say "Four thousand
dollars." "Then the one I saw in the Pennysaver for $1500 must be
a good deal?" they'd ask. "No," I said, "it just means that you'll
have to spend $2500 to get it to work right after you buy it." I
think the numbers might have gone up over time, but the concept is
still right on the money."
"I don't think I'd want to drive an Isetta fast. They look like an
engorged tick, which can't be good for the center of gravity, and
somehow I don't think the Radio Flyer tires would stand up to high
speeds. But a Messerschmidt, now... visions of diving out of the
clouds at the feelthy Allied pigdogs, sidling up to Jaguar owners
with a cigarette holder clenched between your teeth and asking
them, "Zo, you zay your car vass made in Cofentry, ja? I haff
never zeen it -- from ze grount, anyvay" and the like."
"Oh, and for the record: Drinking and driving are like oral sex and
Jamaican Chunky Style Hell Hot pepper sauce -- great fun when
separate, but a real pain when mixed. I trust we're all grownups
on this tour, and that I need say no more about it to avoid any
liability problems. Besides, you don't want to bend your LBC, do
you?"
"Well, when we were a little boy of about five years old living in
Sacramento, our dad's best friend had a white XK-120 with a black
leather interior. We can still remember the way that car smelled,
warm leather, hair-jute pad slightly mildewed from poor seals on
the roadster's hood, hot Castrol sizzling off the aluminum cylinder
head; the sound as Dick Wells rev-matched the Moss gearbox through
its paces on gently winding country roads, golden swellings in the
earth nippled with dark green oak trees; the feeling of wind not
only through our astronaut-emulating crewcut, but all down our side
and back as the breeze of the Jag's passing swirled little eddies
up over the cutaway doors and tickled our kidneys and short ribs
like playful caresses. The XK-140 kept the same basic body panels
as the 120 but lost some of the grace in the trim as it gained Le
Mans victories to record on the boot-lid plaque. The XK-150 got
thick in the middle with roll-up windows and a drophead roof that
folded about halfway down like a VW Cabriolet, but in roadster form
still manages to look like the smoothest of the 1?0 line."
/\ Lawrence Buja Climate and Global Dynamics Division
\_][ southern@ncar.ucar.edu National Center for Atmospheric Research
\_________________________Boulder,_Colorado___80307-3000__________
|