UK’s motor vanity fair (26) [Bâlciul deşertăciunilor cu motor din UK]

Again, I find no point in saying much; here’s another extremely interesting spyder photographed by my reader C.L., which was parked to the left side of this one.

To my great surprise, quite soon after I had posted the previous episode of this series, someone correctly identified the car brand. Would this happen again?

I couldn’t identify the symbol on the – let’s thank Wikipedia for the short English lesson! :-) – bonnet ornament (or radiator cap or motor mascot or car mascot) in the pic.

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

UK’s motor vanity fair (25) [Bâlciul deşertăciunilor cu motor din UK]

A strange looking car photographed by my reader C.L., I-don’t-know-where in the UK, inside what seemed to be (from other pictures) a sort of exclusive little scrapyard, as it is known in British English.

Or, if any one is more familiarised with the name in American English – a junkyard. A place where a bunch of former fancy cars – spyders (or roadsters by their American name) – had been put to rest (or to rust :-).

This carmine (do I correctly identify the colour, girls?!) car appears to me as one that has once been some mighty ‘king of the roads’, maybe in the 1960s or 1970s. But I’ve got no idea about the brand.

To any reader from anywhere in the world ever landing on this blog page (and being better informed about this car that I am, of course) I can only say: please, share your knowledge with us!

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

[EN] No comment / [RO] Fără comentarii (12) – To speed and to die / A goni şi a muri

[EN] An interesting photographic metaphor of my reader C.L., whether it was taken on purpuse or not: [RO] O interesantă metaforă fotografică a cititoarei mele C.L., fie că a fost făcută intenţionat sau nu:

[EN] Sports cars (worth at least £ 50,000 each, I guess) next to a graveyard. [RO] Maşini sport (valorând măcar £ 50,000 fiecare, socot eu) lângă un cimitir.

[EN] This is the final destination of excessive speed, as well as that of vanity, ambition, earthly dreams,  pleasures… [RO] Aceasta este destinaţia finală a vitezei excesive, precum şi a vanităţii, ambiţiei, viselor pământeşti, plăcerilor…

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

UK’s motor vanity fair (22) [Bâlciul deşertăciunilor cu motor din UK]

It goes well with exclusive golf courses, with luxurious mansions, with holding stocks or a top management position in the banking industry, with nobiliary titles and generally with a “I-am-not-an-ordinary-mortal” attitude.

It’s… Aston Martin, the oldest sports car maker (1914). Another iconic brand of the UK, produced in Gaydon, Warwickshire (West Midlands, England).

Only 5,000 such vehicles were sold in the world in 2010 (down from a peak of 7,300 cars in 2007) yet, despite problems of other British car manufacturers and the entire global automotive industry, the company is thriving.

As the economic crisis makes billions of people poorer, the few prospective buyers get richer, so that Aston Martin expects that 25% of its sales will come from Asia by 2016.

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

UK’s motor vanity fair (17) [Bâlciul deşertăciunilor cu motor din UK]

Any two-seat car is more of an instrument of having fun than a proper means of transport, and there’s no doubt that these MG cars make no exception.

Since 1924, the Brits could buy these automobiles for showing-off, and driving them would have probably meant “I may not be rich, but I can certainly afford it, I’ve got no worries, I am free, I’m Brit, so get out of my way!” :-)

I don’t know of any such ‘official motto’; I just imagined it, seeing how these cars appeared to be screaming “look at me”, especially while I was walking on the streets of Edinburgh.

Obviously, I did look at them, but didn’t find them neither useful (bigger that a Smart car or even a VW Beetle, therefore not saving too much parking space), nor particulary beautiful (feel free to disagree!), as I think Minis are (see here & here).

They didn’t seem as ugly as the creations of Saab Automobile, yet the later models surely lack personality compared to the ones from the 1920s to the early 1950s.

The good news from the company was that, after leaving BMW’s portofolio, it was brought back to life by a Chinese firm. In China, the old name (MG = Morris Garages) wouldn’t have meant anything, so they turned it into MG = Modern Gentlemen.

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

UK’s motor vanity fair (4) [Bâlciul deşertăciunilor cu motor din UK]

Just trivial to some, interesting to a few, indifferent to most of my readers – this is how I perceive the reaction of my readership to this series. However, I will go on with it, at least to prove that I’ve really been to the UK :-) for quite some time, and that I am also able to observe (every now and then, for someone with his head in the clouds like me :-) some aspects of this passing world, no matter how much I try to keep my heart lifted into the only real world.

I thought this ‘motor folly’ that so many people of today suffer from is a good topic of debate, but until I get relevant comments on this issue (I only received one e-mail making scarce references to my series), I can only move on in the usual way – to post as many pictures as I can, and write as few words as I can, so that I won’t write too many stupid things…

So, here are other cars that the Brits seem to love – Alfa Romeo spyders. UK motorists are fussy, and have always been spoilt by manufacturers, consequently Alfa Romeo had to come up with limited editions for the UK market like many of its competitors. Again, the price range seems affordable (from £ 25,500 to £ 31,000) but are these ‘motor idols’ really worth it?!

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

UK’s motor vanity fair (2) [Bâlciul deşertăciunilor cu motor din UK]

Maybe there is not much left ‘sacred’ in this faithless UK (here’s another view about this from today’s Daily Mail), yet – similarily to how ‘primitive’ peoples deify various objects, rocks, trees, and animals –, many ‘civilised’ Brits worship their cars.

Certainly, this is by no means only a typically British feature, as in all consumerist societies the two-seater car is probably a ‘god’ of the day. What I mean is that this religiosity surrounding the idea of having good cars, and perfect roads is somehow more obvious in the spiritually barren UK.

Like all idolatries, its rotten fruits are obvious: some men get into financial trouble to buy them, sometimes die stupidly due to overspeeding, or at the very least they are devoured by envying those who own such vehicles, while some women sleep with bald and fat men in order to take rides in car like these.

Moreover, many children are falling in love with these ‘motor idols,’ saying to themselves: ‘When I grow up, I wanna have…’, instead of saying ‘When I grow up, I wanna be…’ People everywhere are crazy about these spyders (as the Brits call them) or roadsters (as the Americans call them), and the Brits make no exception. However, it would be unfair to consider them more obsessed with motor vehicles than other nations.

Some of these most fashionable ‘motor gods’ that I witnessed on UK’s roads are two Mazda cars – MX-5, and RX-8. I was astonished to see so many of these two-seaters (especially in Scotland, the part of the UK that I visited most), but I couldn’t be sure if it was just a mere onlooker’s impression (of someone not mad about cars, who can easily jump to the wrong conclusions), therefore I had to make a little online inquiry.

And what I found out proves my initial assumption – that the UK is one of Mazda’s best markets! Ever since the eary 1990s, the Japanese company has been stubbornly pushing to conquer the British market, and their marketing strategy seems to have paid off.

Not only that I don’t know, but I don’t even care how good these cars really are. However, it seems clear to me that the price is appealing, thus making a Mazda MX-5 more affordable than a Porsche, Ferrari or Aston Martin. A price ranging from £ 18,600 to £ 21,100 looks like a tempting offer for anyone who thinks that owning cars like these is a ‘purpose’ worth struggling for in life...

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]