[q cars] affordable, traditional motoring

Pilgrim FT 2000 - not mine but almost exactly the same - my AA badge was nicked.

It's well known in Britain about the dreaded "Q" car and I'm not talking police here. I mean the Q reg or old, discontinued reg for cars which their owners like to think are "custom" and detractors call "bl--dy kit cars".

I know the Americans are also interested - I recall a 56 Buick being restored by my friends.

The thing is, to buy a restored classic is big biz in most western countries and the mark-ups are phenomenal. Along with that is the restoration time and the fact that they're essentially metal and so they rust.

How, today, to enjoy the pleasure of traditional motoring in the old manner, genuinely so, out there on the road with the wind streaming through the long vanished hair and the throaty roar of a sporty roadster?

FT at the show - note the long nose and running board.

Q is one way to go.

The problem is, they're like French and Australian wine. Buy an Australian wine and it's almost always going to be very, very good, with a reasonable price tag. You can say this about the bulk of the sedans on the road today. They do their job well.

But buy a French wine and you have to know what you're doing because the worst is like bilge water - way below any Australian wine. The best though - ah, yes, the best.

So it is with Q cars, whose manufacturers range from the quite frankly dodgy, shoddy and appalling, especially with cobra muscle car and Lotus 7 replicas up to a level of manufacture which puts some firms, like Pilgrim of Small Dole, near Brighton, into the elite class in themselves. And before you sniff at GRP, remember the Europa and Bolwell Nagari were GRP.

For a start, you're going to have to want this sort of motoring - the BMW and Volvo are seductive with their push button, dial-in, silky sliding luxury and sheer hush power. And you pay for it. This is different - it's raw, sporty motoring the way it used to be.

Dickie trunk treatment of surprising size inside, with mounted spare wheel.

Having got past that point, this site with the appalling name has some good starter info and one thing becomes clear very quickly - you get what you pay for and put time into. For example, one of the most popular companies has a build time, using donor components like Fords of 142 hours and the cost is 2, 600 pounds.

Good luck.

On the other hand, a company like Pilgrim, which does an Austin Healey 3000 replica as well as dedicated designs such as my FT, is all about quality and to hell with money and time. Thus you can pay up to 27 000 pounds and spend up to 3000 hours building the damned thing.

The ones in the photos above were not mine but this is the only photo I have of my baby, in North London.

Now why would you do that, when there are a multitude of real production marques under that price? The answer is "love".

I bought my FT because firstly, it was not a replica but a design in itself, secondly it was within my price range [almost], thirdly, because of the build quality and certainly not the least point - it was such a pretty little thing with a beautiful note to the exhaust.

I took her for her MOT and the chief mechanic said it was the best of its type he'd ever seen built. It should have been so - the man who constructed it was a stickler, a pedant. Even the boot/trunk was plushly carpeted and the upholstery was leather. The rag top was double thickness and made by a woman [his wife] who produces these things.

I am telling absolutely no porkies when I say I drove it in October/November round Scotland, through storms and it neither leaked nor did I freeze. The rag top purred like a sail rather than flapped. In fact the heater had to be turned down.

An example of poor interior design, with two clashing styles of wood panelling but still illustrating build quality.

Of course, where it came into its own was in the summer, top down and neatly stowed in its cover at the back, girl beside you, hair streaming backwards, up hill, down dale, to some ridgetop moorland pub for lunch. That was hard to beat. And motoring up a hill, cresting the top, only for the English sun to burst out from behind a cloud - that was close to idyllic.

The down side for some but I quite liked it, was that with that long, long, nose, you had to "drive" it in an arc round corners rather than "turn" it. Turning circle was not really a concern in the 30s. It took getting used to and I loved the way it moved.

The other thing was that with those black wings scooping the air out front and a 2 litre tweaked Cortina engine in a 1600 pound [about 730 kg] body, there was a tendency to rocking and even flight at speed - 30s designs were not meant to go over 80 mph. I did actually take off once on the M25, going under the A110 flyover and how many people can say that?

The site labels this "as good as it gets" - do you need more comfort than this in an open sports car? This is the Sebring.

Popular? You can say it was. Coming out of Debenhams' car park, the old chap on the gate said: "Ee, it does my heart good to see one of these again." I didn't have the heart to tell him what marque Pilgrim actually was.

Also I recall being at a Yorkshire pub, walking outside and the car was surrounded by men. Oh dear, I thought, here's trouble. "Yes, gentlemen?" A twenty minute discussion ensued about my FT and as we drove away eventually, my girl and I, it was in a serene mood, helped only marginally by the XB we'd consumed inside.

If you can do it, I'd urge you to try one of these, one of the classic designs or maybe the Sebring because it's a world which, outside the city, brings the drab grey motorway commuting suddenly to life and adds pleasure to your existence.

Plus the girls like it.

Or at least they did in the old days.

Sebring is a company which makes a nice vehicle, originally using Rover parts.

Taking It for Granted

Matt, of Buckeye Thoughts, has been in the blog wilderness and explains here:

After a week and five days of no Internet connection at my apartment, I returned from Labor Day Weekend (even though today is Labor Day!)to find my computer able to connect to the Internet again.

This just proves to me how badly I take a network connection for granted.

I will keep on doing so but with a new found appreciation of how easy it is to access critical material for classes, so I no longer need to go into one of Purdue's many computer labs.

Happy Labor Day to all, whether you are Stateside or out in the wide world!

[child support] nice little conundrum

The way it ought to be

Warning - please do not read this if you're prone to either high blood pressure, tears or anger with Higham over his outrageous statements. This post is about something which has touched a raw nerve and it pulls no punches. Thank you.

Plus it's all hypothetical.

Lord Nazh started a train of thought on the abortion issue, putting a hypothetical where if a man didn't want the child [I think] and she did, then she had the child and:

A period of time later, you split up (in no relation to said pregnancy). Here's the question: should it be his choice whether to support the child or not?

That's a difficult one.

It seems to me that there are two issues to payments overall.

Firstly, the upkeep and upbringing of the child and it would be a pretty low father who wouldn't contribute to his child's education, clothing and so on because it's his own flesh and blood.

In principle, here, there's agreement.

However, just as it was within the marriage, so it must be outside. If the woman expects payment to be made for the child, then the man has a right to be in on the decision as to what is being paid for, e.g. new school, new outfit, holiday with a school group and so on.

If he completely disagrees, e.g. she wants one school but he wants the son to go to his old school and she's known this for a long time, then he has every right to refuse to pay on this particular issue. Trouble is, as so much divorce is due to unreasonableness on the part of one or both, it's likely to be so here as well.

Then we come to the question of her new husband or boyfriend. There is so much dishonesty going on here and I can vouch for that because I've been in both positions - both the boyfriend and the poor sod who was paying.

As the boyfriend, I was told that I wasn't officially living with her, that we didn't officially sleep together and that I was officially "just a friend", otherwise she wouldn't get a penny from him. She couldn't see that I might sympathize with my fellow man here. I was in a position to keep her myself and wanted to but it wasn't enough cash for her plans.

With the boot on the other foot, how much should the new man pay? I can't do much about her living with someone who is not the father of my child and I do feel that if I'm to have any say in my child's upbringing, logically I need to pay for that right but again - how much should the new boyfriend also be contributing?

On this first issue, I'm open to argument.

The second issue is money directly to her to keep her in her lifestyle - alimony. Over my dead body. Now she knows this and therefore presents it as payments for the child but my way round that is to directly go to wherever payment is required - school, health insurance, whatever - and pay the cost for my child over the counter and get the receipt.

Of course she doesn't like that and wants a set payment each month. My response is - of course I'll pay a set amount each month, no problem. Just send me the bills and I'll pay them - even beyond the set amount and no quibbling.

But she's not getting a penny for herself.

Into this comes the risibly named Child Support Agency, the only group whose premises I've ever considered blowing up. Of course, as every father knows, it has zero to do with child support and everything to do with extorting the maximum possible out of the ex-husband to supplement her life with her new man.

As I said before - over my dead body.

I'd rather go to prison, seriously. Regulars here know that if I've been unfair and you can show that, I'll backtrack. On this issue though, I feel strongly that it is completely unreasonable that if a woman has chosen to depart, that any further payments need to be made to her except for the children and then directly.

The objection to this is what if she's alone and not working?

Now we get into a really nasty area. Is she alone? I know she's as pretty as a picture and a charmer, I know of three guys alone who would have moved onto her once I departed so what's the score here?

She stays alone and brings a boyfriend in for the occasional adultery, charms men into doing the maintenance work she doesn't want to herself and therefore has a case to be financially supported from a distance, no?

I say not. She has to take responsibility for her actions. She chose to separate her child from his father so she has two choices - be truly independent, as the feminists would say, leaving him to cover the bulk of the child's costs and that's all. Or else she makes some arrangement with the men she brings in.

That's her business in which I shouldn't interfere.

But in all of this there is one body, one group, who have zero say in any of it - the Extortion of Ex-Husbands Agency. That body is something up with which I flatly refuse to put.

[austin healey sprite] when motoring was motoring

Lee family Sprite 2A [shot from 1974]

There are certain things that make me go weak at the knees or at least sigh deeply. Two of these are cars I used to drive - my Pilgrim and the Austin Healey Sprite, which Swearing Mother seems to be in love with too.

There is an expression in sailing - "seat of the pants" - and it means not concerning yourself with the technical details but just getting out there and working it out as you go - that's my kind of sailing and my kind of driving.

The Sprite IIA was just such a car to allow you to feel you were very close to the action - the Lotus was another which gave this sensation. Much as the Frogeyes were the most popular, I never got into them but the IIA I adored and it was pure British roadster in miniature - big on tweaked up performance and a bit weak on creature comforts.

One felt one was back in the pioneer days of motoring and the most important thing of all - it was sheer fun at a time when cars were becoming boxy and predictable.

MG Midget says:

From the outset, the Sprite had been designed to be of unitary construction, with the floorpan and body being built as one strong, rigid structure. Stiffness was provided by box-like sections sills and crossmembers, a deep transmission tunnel, the scuttle, and the box shaped boot. At the front, the crossmember for the suspension and steering was carried on a pair of chassis legs which projected forwards from the scuttle bulkhead.

Wiki says:

The last Mark IIA [1963/4] had some engine improvements and 1098cc, larger crankshaft journals to counter big end failures at high RPM and these are sometimes referred to as square-bodied Sprites. Front disc brakes were also introduced and wire wheels became an option. The HAN7 Series is popular.

However, the end was in sight:

This model was also rebadged the Mark I MG Midget, without Donald Healey's consent or approval.

I wasn't actually … er … around for the introduction of the IIA and only got into it years later when even the MGB was on its last legs but I knew enough about it to know that a Sprite is not a Midget. Grrrr!

I hope Sprite owners will forgive me including a pic of my last "baby" but it is the closest anyone's going to get today to the great British tradition of small sports roadsters, now the Sprites and Midgets are collector items.

By the way, I drove this through Scotland in November and was as snug as a bug in a rug.

Sigh. I shouldn't have done this post - I miss it all something awful.

Bye bye!

[exquisite coffee] it needs a little pazienza

Returning to the topic of coffee, I didn't explain myself well last time due to still being a bit green about all this but after another master class, I've finally learnt.

Each of you has his/her own method and I appreciate that but just try this the once and see how close it is to the best coffee you've tasted in a long while.

Requirements

1. Pazienza. Actually - not a little, lots of it. You rush any step, the enjoyment is curtailed;

2. Coffee beans - the fresher and better quality the better but the good news is that it is not vital - any coffee is enhanced using this method;

3. Sachets of cinnamon;

4. Basic grinder which can do fine ground;

5. Wooden or ceramic canister with a good seal in the lid;

6. Keep metal, like spoons, out of the way - use ceramic;

7. Fresh cream [or small long life container] - never milk and never nothing;

8. Some delicacy to have with it.

Each morning or previous evening

1. We are busy people and this takes fifteen minutes to do properly. Fine grind enough beans for one day only [don't buy it already ground because it defeats the purpose] and tip the coffee into your wooden canister;

2. Add two heaped teaspoons of cinnamon to 200g coffee, stir well and then put the lid on and shake. You're ready.

Whenever you need a cup

1. Boil the kettle and let it wait for 30 seconds after boiling [no more];

2. During the waiting period, put enough coffee to taste into the cup/mug [fine edged mugs are better] and almost immediately now pour the water via the edge of the cup, until half an inch from the top;

3. If you need sugar, now is the time to add it and stir, not later or you'll ruin the effect;

4. Immediately put a little 5 centimetre ceramic bowl or saucer over the top and let the mixture sit. No metal spoon anywhere because it drains off the heat too quickly;

5. Despite the modern lifestyle, despite your being in a hurry, 2 minutes is not going to hurt you now to wait. You must have pazienza because this is when the bitter taste and sludge move down to the bottom of the cup and the cup can not be jostled from then on;

6. Now the coup de grace - take off the ceramic bowl, get your ceramic teaspoon [or wood] and gently slide some cream over the spoon onto the top of the coffee - don't stir. The cream is not just for taste but it seals in the heat and flavour;

7. Now let the spoon go just under the surface horizontally and very, very gently stir - you'll see a swirling effect as if it comes from a coffee machine.

That's it and the only thing I stress is not to leave out any step e.g. the horizontal spoon. Any step left out and you might as well be drinking instant.

Hope you enjoy it. It will reward your patience.

[the car] if china can, why can't we?

I also forgot to mention that I love the Chinese Government website, which always tells the truth. So when I caught a headline: China Exports Inflation?, I clicked in and was astounded by the answer: No it doesn't.

But here's a good one:

After four days' traffic ban in Beijing to test the effect on air quality for the Olympic Games, the question whether such a traffic ban should become regular has triggered a debate between private car owners and those without cars.

Among 2,968 respondents, 78.2 percent of those without a private car call for a permanent traffic ban, while 61.9 percent of private car owners object to it, according to an online survey jointly launched by China Youth Daily and Internet portal sina.com.

Rather than dwelling on these rather pointless stats, the mind idly wandered to London and the M25, to the Boston spaghetti road complex and to other icons of the motorcar. Steppenwolf springs to mind.

Hey, why don't we completely and utterly ban any cars within and including the M25? Forever. I wonder what would happen?