Only Connect

A tale of three four Transits...

It's the curse of modelmakers. You have a great idea to make something unique that isn't available commercially and spend hours working on it, but no sooner is it finished than a manufacturer announces something very similar that can be bought off the shelf and would have saved all that effort. I'm sure we've all suffered from this curse at one time or another, but it's managed to strike me no less than three times in a short period while modelling Ford Transit Connect vans! Here's the story of this run of bad luck...

In defence of Ray Wilson

Genesis seem to be one of those bands that have a strictly divided fan base, with fans who either like the Peter Gabriel era or the Phil Collins era, but very rarely both (personally I fall into the latter camp as I'm not a huge fan of Gabriel, who is a little too bizarre for my taste). One of the few things both factions seem to agree on though is that neither of them think very much of Ray Wilson, and he has gained a reputation as the man who ruined Genesis and caused them to split up. Having spent a lot of time recently listening to Wilson's work, I've come to the conclusion that this reputation is entirely unfair and unjustified, and the unfortunate Wilson deserves much greater recognition in the annals of the band's long history.  

Is this man really guilty of ruining Genesis?

A Perkins peculiarity - the Automatic Diesel Montego

I seem to have neglected this blog for rather too long due to other circumstances. Did anyone miss me? Anyway, I'm back now with another example of my favourite subject, an obscure and unknown car that few know ever existed - I certainly didn't, even after I had seen it with my own eyes!

A scruffy old Montego that hides an interesting secret.

Among the many interesting vehicles in the car park at last year's Festival of the Unexceptional was a rather scruffy looking maroon Rover Montego estate that was just the sort of car that looked right at home at this event but didn't seem that remarkable in this context. I photographed it and then thought no more about it until I came to upload the photo to my Flickr site the next day and checked the vehicle details on the DVLA website. Imagine my puzzlement when it reported "fuel type: diesel, transmission: automatic". I was intrigued but knowing the DVLA data is riddled with silly errors and finding no evidence of such a combination ever existing, I put this down as nothing more than a mistake in the vehicle record but queried it anyway in my Flickr caption. A couple of days later, along came its owner with a very informative comment confirming not only that it is indeed a diesel automatic Montego but it was also an official factory-backed project and not an aftermarket conversion. Even AROnline, the encyclopaedia of all things Austin-Rover that is filled with all sorts of fascinating prototypes, makes no mention of this vehicle, so this may be the only place on the internet where you can read about it. Hard facts are in short supply so I admit this piece includes a lot of speculation and assumptions in the absence of anything definite.

Your abusing are language

Today I want to vent my frustration at some of the careless grammatical mistakes that seem to be becoming increasingly prevalent in written communication and are gradually mangling the beautiful English language into something incomprehensible, yet when the offenders are challenged they fail to even understand what they've done wrong. While I have no formal language qualifications beyond a GCSE in English and I'm not immune from getting things wrong, I do feel I have an above average grasp of my native tongue (which I hope is apparent in my writings on this blog) so what to me are such basic mistakes really do annoy me as it should be very easy to get these right. Don't get me wrong, I would never have a go at anyone who has a genuine communication difficulty such as dyslexia or similar, and I'm talking about what should be basic fundamentals of grammar learned at primary school.

Consider the following sentence: "Your write, we except Paypal has payment for are products". There are so many things wrong with that, yet it is made up entirely of valid English words and to a growing number of people appears to be a perfectly coherent sentence as they don't know any better.

A burning issue

Please don't set fire to your models!

Something I've noticed recently that is spreading among the younger members of the model bus community is a trend towards depicting a burnt out vehicle by setting fire to it. For many reasons this really isn't a good idea at all so I cannot condone such behaviour and I feel I must write something to warn of the dangers and hopefully put an end to this idiotic practice before someone gets hurt.

This makes me cringe. So dangerous and not even realistic.

Clearing up a Facebook misconception

Facebook seems to be one of those Marmite things that you either love or hate. For all its faults (and there are many) it serves a useful purpose, but there is still strong resistance to it in some quarters, especially among the older generation who may not fully understand the world of social media. One particular misconception is especially prevalent among those who don't use it: there is a widespread belief that Facebook is one of those platforms that is completely invisible and unusable unless you have an account, which is not the case at all and there is a great deal of content that can be viewed without a Facebook account being necessary. Read on to find out how so much of the world of Facebook is available to you even if you don't have an account.

The worst F1 car ever? That's Life

Formula 1. Supposedly the jewel in the crown and the pinnacle of international motorsport, but quite honestly something that no longer interests me at all. With entry fees alone costing many millions and an extremely complicated and restrictive rule book, only the largest and wealthiest teams can afford to compete and the racing has become very clinical and boring as a result. It wasn't always like that though: in the late eighties and early nineties, the fees were much lower and the rules more favourable to smaller independent teams, resulting in entry lists so large that many races had to feature a pre-qualifying session to weed out a few of the weaker cars before the qualifying proper. All sorts of small and now forgotten outfits came and went during this period, usually trundling around at the tail end of the field and rarely even managing to start a race, yet alone finish. The strange stories behind them provide far more interest than the mundanity of today's top teams, none more so than the ill-equipped and ill-fated Life Racing Engines. The very reason for this team even existing is hard to fathom...

Putting the car before the horse

Uriah Smith and the Horsey Horseless

One of my favourite places on the internet is the Autoshite.com forum, a little corner of the web where those who appreciate old and unloved cars gather to share their mutual interest. Like all good communities it has its own collection of memes and in-jokes that outsiders wouldn't understand, one of which involves regular mentions of a mythical veteran car called a Horsey Horseless. I had assumed this was something that had been made up by a forum member some time before I joined, but it turns out the Horsey Horseless was a real car - well, sort of: it certainly existed on paper but there is no proof any were actually built.

The only known image of the Horsey Horseless. Would this mutant horse-car fool our equine friends?

Atlas Editions get weirder

My recent article on Atlas Editions and their strange business practices has proved popular and readers generally agree it accurately reflects the truth, but far from persuading them to buck their ideas up, in recent weeks they actually seem to have defied all expectations and got even worse, if such a thing is possible! Instead of learning from criticism like most other companies, they're simply burying their heads in the sand, censoring complaints and pretending all is well, which is a truly bizarre mentality.

R.I.P. Glenn Frey

Just a week after David Bowie's death, another of my musical heroes has passed on. The name Glenn Frey may not mean much by itself to some younger readers, but I guarantee everyone will have heard of his band, the Eagles, and their biggest hit, 'Hotel California', as they are among the greatest of all on the American country-rock scene and have sold simply vast quantities of music over a period of almost 45 years. Even more so than Bowie, the Eagles, both as a band and as solo artists, have had a profound influence on me: they rank among my all-time favourite musicians and have provided the soundtrack to my life through good times and bad ever since I discovered them in my early teens, so Frey's death came as a great shock and I couldn't let it pass unmarked.