Author Topic: Cars  (Read 271586 times)

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Offline SteveH

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Re: Cars
« Reply #720 on: August 01, 2018, 02:19:26 pm »
Rally car drivers may be used to seeing their vehicles fly into the air as they race through hilly terrain.

But even the most experienced of racers would have been gobsmacked at seeing one of their vehicles hurtling down a zip wire at the Llechwedd Slate Caverns in Blaenau Ffestiniog .
The stunt, carried out to promote the upcoming Wales Rally GB , comes ahead of speed testing being carried out at the adventure attraction by racers taking part in the annual international event.
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/incredible-moment-rally-car-sent-14977341

Offline Ian

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Re: Cars
« Reply #721 on: August 01, 2018, 05:41:41 pm »
Those cables must have incredible safety margins on their weight bearing.
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.  ― Michel de Montaigne

Si hoc legere scis, nimis eruditionis habes.


Offline SteveH

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Re: Cars
« Reply #722 on: August 01, 2018, 06:32:59 pm »
They did say it was a stunt to advertise the GB Rally, I did think it may have been a stripped out car.   ?   ?

Offline DVT

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Re: Cars
« Reply #723 on: August 02, 2018, 10:18:18 pm »
It definitely was a shell with the wheels tied on, no engine or mechanicals and no-one in it.  The car being driven afterwards was genuine but with a bit of trickery to make it appear it drove straight off the end of the zip wire.  A complete car would have been too heavy!

Offline Hugo

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Re: Cars
« Reply #724 on: August 30, 2018, 10:35:09 pm »
I saw these two vehicles in Beaumaris yesterday

Offline DVT

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Re: Cars
« Reply #725 on: September 27, 2018, 08:47:18 am »
This appeared in Bodnant Garden car park yesterday - it's a 1934 Packard 8 ... 5.7-litre straight-8 cylinder.  Restored in USA and imported with no additional work carried out here.  I didn ;t meet the owner but general opinion amongst us was that it was certainly different, but would not be very economical!!!
 

Offline Hugo

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Re: Cars
« Reply #726 on: October 08, 2018, 04:13:35 pm »
Nice camper van parked on the West Shore today.   If it was mine I'd move it quickly before it gets sand blasted

Offline SteveH

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Re: Cars
« Reply #727 on: October 10, 2018, 11:21:32 am »
Why you have (probably) already bought your last car.

I'm guessing you are scoffing in disbelief at the very suggestion of this article, but bear with me.

A growing number of tech analysts are predicting that in less than 20 years we'll all have stopped owning cars, and, what's more, the internal combustion engine will have been consigned to the dustbin of history.

Yes, it's a big claim and you are right to be sceptical, but the argument that a unique convergence of new technology is poised to revolutionise personal transportation is more persuasive than you might think.

The central idea is pretty simple: Self-driving electric vehicles organised into an Uber-style network will be able to offer such cheap transport that you'll very quickly - we're talking perhaps a decade - decide you don't need a car any more.

Continue.......  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45786690

Offline DVT

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Re: Cars
« Reply #728 on: October 10, 2018, 12:35:18 pm »
May well be OK in cities but will it work in North Wales?  How many could afford (or want) to scrap their cars ... and has anyone worked out the amount of pollution that scrapping everything will cause?  I suspect NO is the answer to both those questions!

Offline squigglev2

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Re: Cars
« Reply #729 on: October 11, 2018, 11:34:53 pm »
Following on from DVT’s 

Quote
“When I started work (1965) and not old enough to drive I cycled from my home (Conway Cottage, next to the Bodnant Welsh Food Centre entrance) UP Bodnant Hill to Ffrith-y-Foel, where I got a lift to Colwyn Bay with the daughter of the family who lived there ... I cannot remember her name now, but the car was an Austin A35!”
but figuring if it has a place, it’s probably better in cars than in an ancestry thread...

OT but I’d not have thought the A35 that unusual then? Mum (who passed her test in a Triumph Herald in N Wales in the 60s) had an A30 followed by an A35 in that era. The first one had the indicators that popped out of the sides. Kept her going until the Comma van (campervan conversion) came along.  Dad was “posher” with Abbey National Company cars which would take me to the Austin 1100/1300 series in our say mid 60s/early 70s Pydew period.

A30 pretty much met it’s end around Bodnant, coming back from Llanwrst (dad used to play cricket there and the rest would sometimes make their own way there/back). It limped all the way back to Pydew but had started making a racket and a chap in that off the main road garage said the big end had gone.

There again, memory associations can be like that. The only thing I could tell you about the kindly villager (Condover, Shropshire then – pre N Wales) that took me to hospital for stitches after a bicycle accident was that he had a Ford Consul Corsair and he can only have lived 3 or 4 doors away from us.

Coming back to the A30/35. I think mum used to do a shopping run in one or both of these. I think it was her, Alice and Menna (neither of whom drove or had cars) to Deganwy Kwiks.

Offline squigglev2

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Re: Cars
« Reply #730 on: October 11, 2018, 11:37:51 pm »
(just checked. It was the Comma van period when the shopping run happened)

Offline Nemesis

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Re: Cars
« Reply #731 on: October 12, 2018, 08:30:23 am »
I Daren't actually say how many cars we have had, but after over 50 years of marriage, it is well over that number. I too learned to drive in the '60s, in various cars. We had a Triumph Herald, Dad had a Corsair and a friend had a Moggie Minor ! The instructor I had had an NSU Prince, now that was a weird beast ! Out of all these I had great fun in a Citroen 2 CV and also a Smart Car. !
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to know.

Offline DVT

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Re: Cars
« Reply #732 on: October 12, 2018, 08:32:08 am »
I think you mean Commer !!!

Thinking back about Dad''s vehicles when I was a child ... Dad worked for Bodnant (electrician/plumber, not a gardener!) all his working life so had use of the maintenance crew's van.  But first it was an ex-army motor bike with a box sidecar attached ... reg'n FCA 596 I think ... Mum was on the pillion and my sister and myself in the box that normally carried the tools, ladders and suchlike!

In the late 1950's the bike was replaced by a Ford Transit Van (NCA 982) ... Dad had to pass his driving test (took two goes) before he could drive it, but the van was then used for family days out to places like Black Rock Sands.  Being a van there was no back seat, so the Bodnant joiners made a wooden bench for my sister and I to sit in the back, no seat belts or anything like that, of course!  When it rained and we went up hills the wipers would stop!!!

The Transit was replaced by a Bedford (9815 UN), then later a newer Transit (cannot remember the reg'n, think it was M reg!).  When Dad retired in 1985 on his 65th birthday he bought his first-ever car ... a brand new red Talbot Samba from Red Garages (C614 PJC) - you don't see many of those nowadays!



Offline Merddin Emrys

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Re: Cars
« Reply #733 on: October 12, 2018, 01:49:59 pm »
DVT, Transit in the Fifties? Do you mean Thames van? Great story nonetheless!  :)
A pigeon is for life not just Christmas

Offline DVT

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Re: Cars
« Reply #734 on: October 12, 2018, 08:10:56 pm »
Sorry, yes it would have been a Thames - having picked on squigglev2 over Comma / Commer I shouldn't have made that error!  Apologies to both of you.

Unfortunately, when my parents moved form Bodnant to live in one of oldies flats at Conwy Station (1997) Dad threw away loads of photos before my sister an I had realised, so very little was rescued.  I know there were some photos of the Thames at Black Rock Sands - in fact, that was the first vehicle I ever drove, I'd have been about 12 and got to drive it along the sands, despite Mum's protests!