The drive home from work tonight was wet and wild but the start, as always, was a slow grind from the M4/M5 junction past the M4/M32 junction. It's a busy junction and the mere presence of inclement weather tends to make people drive like complete muppets. But nothing unusual there. Unfortunately there was a stack on the motorway (fortunately for me, on the other carriageway) which occurred in the outside lane. For those not familiar with the British way of describing motorway lanes, that's the on in the middle. It was a low-ish speed affair, so no injuries that I could see, people out of their cars and on the phone to the police and no one needing to be cut out of their cars luckily. But the cause was all too apparent.
Basically, one car had been rear-ended by another, hard enough to turn the front car through at least 45 degrees and push the nose into the armco on the central reservation, mashing the front of the car pretty badly. the front car was a nondescript euro/jap box of some sort but, for the benefit of my British readers, can you guess what make the car which did the shunting was? Have a think. What brand of car almost always seems to be the one which is three inches from your rear bumper? Yes, that's right. If you said BMW then award yourself 10 points and a mildly patronising pat on the back.
My guess is that Beemer boy was driving like a cock which is bad enough in dry, clear daylight conditions but in the dark and wet it is even more stupid. Of course, I didn't see it, but a penny to a pound the moronic middle manager/salesman behind the wheel had his mobile clamped to his ear (which is illegal in the UK, punishable by fines and points on your license in the unlikely event you are spotted by a policeman. I say unlikely because the UK police forces seem to think that speed cameras are a suitable and effective replacement for plods on patrol. Because speed cameras are just so good at catching bad drivers, unsafe cars, people gabbing on the phone etc etc etc). Not only that, but I will bet that he had swung into someone's safety gap - you know, the gap you leave between you and the car in front to enable you to safely react to what's happening in front without having to stamp on the brakes and so you don't hit the car in front. Unfortunately far too many people think that it is their divine right to heave into this gap at will just because their overpriced penis substitute will just about fit the gap.
This led me onto a musing about how the BMW badge still seems to have such cachet with a certain type of person even though, whisper it, BMW is rumoured to sell more of it's 3 series than Ford does of it's once ubiquitous Mondeo. There is something about the blue and white propeller roundel that attracts social climbers, snobs and the sort of person that always likes to keep up with, if not better, the Joneses. Sure, they're well made. Sure, they have some brilliant engines and their efficient dynamics systems have improved their fuel economy and lowered their emissions hugely. But there is something about BMWs that says "I'm a pushy twat". There just is.
These days, Top Gear say that all the cocks have switched from
BMW M3s to
Audi RS4s (a car which I have to say I would love as it's a real Q car - very unassuming and fast as stink, although I assure you I am not a cock. Well, not normally), but I don't think this is true. Sure, there are some total turds driving Audis, just like any other brand, but by far the biggest proportion of tossers still seems to be driving BMWs, closely followed by Mercedes.
Anyway, whatever the reason behind the crash, the guy in the Beemer will be held to be at fault since he was behind and in all honesty it probably was his fault. Maybe, I am being harsh and he's a perfectly decent guy who had a lapse of concentration and that's ruined his and the other guys day and he's truly sorry and whatnot. But I have my suspicions.
So, I continued my painfully slow journey home and once I got off the congested A46 I thought "Ah ha. Now we can cruise nicely" but sadly, when I turned off onto a smaller backroad through the countryside to head up over Lansdown (a hill that overlooks Bath) I was immediately stuck behind one of those godawful Wendy houses on wheels from Korea (in this case a
Chevrolet Matiz, formerly Daewoo who are definitely Korean). These hateful little pieces of crap are small, tinny and furnished with asthmatic engines that would barely power a medium sized blender. They are bought by people with absolutely no idea about cars and they are just the sort of people who have fuck all idea of how to drive as well.
This nasty little abomination tootled along at barely 20mph on a road where overtaking is not possible, braking for every slight bend or oncoming car (to give you some idea, on a clear dry day I can drive the same road at an
average of better than 50mph, so that's averaged over slowing for bends and so on. Granted, that's hooning but maintaining 40 on that road is not hard for anyone). I just do not understand why anyone buys one of these things, and there are plenty of them from the likes of Suzuki, Hyundai and others. Sure, they're cheap, but they're built to a price so they are tinny, noisy, shoddily designed and offer all the crash protection of an MDF cupboard (they scraped three out of five stars but one was struck through which is alike a half, because of an "unacceptably high risk of life-threatening injury to the chest in side impact". Your average new Euro box will be considered a failure without at least 4 stars and many are 5 star rated). I will concede that newer models are improving their protection, an obvious result of the EU rating systems which thankfully people pay more attention to these days, but the older models, even slightly older, are just frighteningly poor. The Matiz is made in India, as is the
Tata Nano, touted as the worlds cheapest car, and that has all the strucutral rigidty of damp cardboard. I'm sure they're fine for crowded Asian cities where space is at a premium and you never get above 20mph anyway, but on the open road? Bloody stupid.
And its not as if they can really claim green credentials with their weeny engines either. Diesels have better fuel economy and lower emissions. Again, the newest models are improving and they now use either a 1 litre engine or a turbo charged 1.2 litre, but the older models used 800cc, 900cc and 1 litre engines and they were shockingly bad. I used to know someone who bought an 800cc one thinking the car tax would be cheap (see bottom of post for an explanation of how car tax in the UK is charged. It's a bloody stupid system really). Afraid not. My 150bhp 1.9 litre turbo diesel produces less CO2 per kilometre and returns better economy despite having to haul almost 1 1/2 tonnes of German engineering around (it's a VW, not a Beemer in case you were wondering). As a result I pay some 60 quid a year less in tax and the same, if not less, in fuel costs on a like-for-like mileage basis. Granted, mine cost more to buy and I'm sure the servicing is pricier and if something goes wrong then it sure as hell is more expensive, but it actually doesn't go wrong because it's well built (touch wood). So why buy one new or second hand? Get a better car second hand for the same money as a new Matiz and you will find it a much nicer place to be.
Anyway, I now have a theory: Anyone who goes to a garage and is willing to hand over real, proper, hard-earned/hard-borrowed money for one of these stupid cars should immediately have their driving license revoked because they clearly can't drive.
As a final thought, I wondered why, when Chevvy were looking for a route into the Euro car market, they chose to do it by buying a crap brand from a gigantic Korean industrial conglomerate. Daewoo make (or made - I think the Daewoo group went bankrupt at the end of the last decade) stuff. Lots of stuff, from toasters and microwave ovens, through TVs and heavy plant machinery to ships, great big fuck off ships. they started making cars because someone in a meeting somewhere thought it would be a good idea to diversify even further. Except they didn't really. What they actually did was buy the production lines and rights to make the old GM cars and first appeared in the UK market with the Daewoo Nexia, I think, which was basically the old mark three Vauxhall Astra, which was a shit looking car even then. And frankly it didn't get any better.
Gm already has or had a number of brands punting its dubious and not-so-dubious wares in Europe so why on earth did they decide to take on the Daewoo brand and sell even more shite cars under the Chevvy brand? I must confess I don't know what the stock of the Chevvy name is like in the US, but over here it was basically non existent as they had never really sold cars here, so why try and break into a new market with such irredeemably turgid cars? Needless to say, they don't exactly have a large slice of the UK market and I very much doubt that it will get any bigger. Unless they start flogging Corvettes in right hand drive for sensible money, and that won't happen any time soon, sadly.
Anyway, thats a long enough rant for today I think (and there's still the exciting explanation of UK car tax, or Vehicle Excise Duty as I think it's officially called). I haven't done a decent rant about inconsequential crap for ages now and I thought it was about time I stopped posting the self-pitying shit that has been prevalent of late and re-started doing what I created this blog for - writing comedy rants to amuse my mates.
To paraphrase the little Chinese dude in The Hangover (great film by the way, very funny) - Toodle pip motherfuckaaaaaaaahhhhhs!
Listening to: Bear Golightly - Alchemy Sessions 016A brief outline of UK car tax:
Right. Like I'm going to type all that shit out. If you really give a monkeys bum about how it's done, look on
Wikipedia. But I wouldn't if I weere you unless you suffer insomnia in which case go right ahead. It's like
Mogadon in print form.