Duh! It's for recording the crowd reactions.

FTFY

"Look Shin, they're doing the Brazilian Wave!"

No no no. You simply ask if the part that failed was manufactured by Bosch. If it was, then it's almost certainly the truth. First the aircon compressor went, then the starter, then the fuel pump and now the coil. Guess who made all of them and if you look on the VW forums it seems to be a common complaint that in the late 90's/early 2000's QC went out of the window at Bosch.

Driving home yesterday I dared to press the aircon button. The compressor gave up 4 years ago. It fired into life and blasted cool cool air into the cabin. However when at a standstill at low revs the compressor was making an awful knocking noise and the rev drain on the engine was significant (we're talking losing 1000 revs at idle when engaged). I therefore assume that the compressor is still fucked, but at least righted itself from not being able to pump air (when it first failed it made terrible knocking noises the entire time and refused to pump air).

Still when I come to sell it if I make sure they only test it at motorway speed they'll never hear the noise or feel the drain.

I'm going to do something to highlight all the bad driving I see around here

Aren't there some laws about filming from your car? It might be just commercial filming but I'm sure I read something about it.

Break the law whilst driving?

POTW.

Well I've shot in a car lots of times as have people I know. Perfectly legal if someone else is doing it. However the driver driving without due care and attention is a different matter.

Likewise if the person with the camera was acting dangerously. As opposed to merely feeling like he wants to throw up like last time I tried it. The interview starts off with a great angle, and as I start to feel worse the quality of the camera work deterioates until the point where I could barely operate the thing.

Which law's that, then?

You'll need someone else to work the camera, like Chinny said. There was a thing in Top Gear magazine about how they got around that with "magic" cameras, but I think they're out of your price range.

I'm sure there wouldn't be a problem if you were just going to stick the camera on the dash and leave it rolling. That's the idea right?
Although quite what it will achieve...

Nobody works the camera. Before I start the engine, I set it recording. Then I just leave it on the mount, recording happily away. When I turn the engine off, I turn the camera off.

As far as I'm aware there is no law prohibiting it, you could get done for driving without due care and attention but that would be hard to prove, especially if the LCD screen is folded away and therefore not visible during driving.

You've never done something ultimately pointless, just for the crack?

I thought that was to pick up chicks outside nightclubs and make them climb through the windows in short skirts?

ZOMG GENIARSE!
Also, you'll need to make sure the straps of the five-point harness are all tightened nicely.

In case your guts do esploshun

Bullet cams/mini cams, which we've covered here and on the other place before loads of times. You can do it cheaply:

http://www.rfconcepts.co.uk/cameras.htm

But obviously quality suffers. But compared to some cheap shit handycam, you'd barely notice.

IIRC all the Top Gear cameras are provided by just a couple of guys who are presumably bricking it at the thought of having to move to HD and upgrade all their kit.

It's like American Chopper*, except with cars, and bigger blokes.....


* I used to get paid to watch this along with countless documentries presented by Chris Barrie.

To ensure that one fanny lip goes around each side of the groin strap?

Yes. I will make sure they are placed evenly using my tongue.

Renewable sources used to make Ferraris. Number 1: Wood.

I hate car salesmen with a passion. We went for a test drive on Sat, so was with the salesmen for 2 hours.. he would not budge off teh list price... I was fuming

He was more intrested in selling me finance than the damn car..

Why is Terry Pratchett driving a wooden Ferrari?

That's because they make more money from the finance than they do from selling cars. If Ford could just sell the cars without having to make them, they would.

I guessed that.. I don't think he actually wanted to sell the car.

I won't be darkening the doors of that dealership again.

The thing is, they won't move much on the price of the car if you are buying it outright because it's worth so little - the margins are already tiny.

Except when you fuck them over, like I did. Bought a car from Empress (now CarCraft) in Newport on credit. Told him up front I wanted the credit (his eyes lit up) and haggled hard on sticker price (the APR was awful). Read the small print carefully. Signed on the dotted line. Walked back in the next week with a cheque for the full amount and cleared it off.

On a deal like that, they sell you the car at close to cost and make their commission from a fat kickback from the finance firm, who are often a wholly-owned subsidiary of the same parent company as the car dealership. Only, if the whole debt is cleared that fast, the commission is clawed back, not only from the firm but straight out of the salesman's pockets. He was frantic, I could see him through the window as I calmly did the business with the front office staff.

Particularly on cheap little superminis.

I've heard tales of people doing this and having the car dealer ring them the next day to "renegotiate" the sticker price!



This has all happened before... and it will happen again.

See, I always assumed they'd give you a discount for cash, as they then get the cashflow immediately, and don't have to fuck about with the finance (and cost thereof). Or does that only work with second hand dealers?

I might try that credit thingy next time...

Read the small print very carefully, there are sometimes early-payoff penalty clauses, or they frontload the interest payments.

He can't remember.

Or we might get a used car instead...

You'd better tell Robert Llewellyn to stop filming 'Car Pool', then.

Awww, man.

Man, you're a cunt of the greatest brilliance!

No no no. They prefer to make profit on the finance because idiots don't understand how interest works. Idiots see a sticker price of £6000 and know that's a great deal because it's £1k less than the other places they looked. What they don't see is the Total Repayable Amount of £9500 at APR $(SHITLOADS)%. So, you drive the APRs up and the sticker prices down.

Darn tootin'.

But, given the margins they run on, and especially so in the current Unpredcedented Economic Crisis*, wouldn't they be concerned about cashflow, and just want teh munnies asap to pay the rent? And a lot of the car retailers don't do the finance themselves - there are seperate car finance companies making the profits on the loan. Aren't there?


*I actually heard a reporter call it that. As if the Great Depression hadn't happened at all.

Sadly true. I used to sell computer for Time and their APR was 29.9% even on the long term payment deals. Christ I left there in 2003. Some of those poof fuckers I fleeced will only just be finishing their finance now.

But yeah, cash sales didn't count towards commission.

Homophobe.

You used to work for Time too?

Dr G. if car salesmen were human, I'd almost say what you did there was cruel!

When I bought my Type S in the middle of the summer of 2007, the dealership were falling over themselves to sell me it. Although I did buy it on finance (had to, don't have the monies myself), I managed to get quite a nice deal on it.

Armed with a recent payrise, I went back there earlier this year to see about upgrading to the Type R, figuring with the Global Econmic Crisis(tm) would have them practically biting my arm off to see me one. On the contrary, I don't think they could possibly have been less interested in selling me a car.

Hell, I used to sell suits to people on finance at 27% that they'll only just have paid off. That was 12 years ago.

The fact they don't do the finance themselves is what makes this work. They get a kickback from the finance firm within days, so it's as good as a cash sale to them. The finance firm then recoups that kickback, plus extra, from the interest over the loan period.

You're right about them being hungry. I've been told that the big car supermarkets buy their stock on short-term loans -- so if they have a million quids worth of stock on the forecourt, they are having to finance a pretty fat loan. Like sharks, this only works if the business is swimming forwards to keep turning the short-term loans over. The way I was told it, this is why the big places go out of business so quickly -- they are essentially on the edge of a precipice even when business is booming. I thought this sounded silly, until I thought about the personality of an average used car salesman, then mentally promoted him to a management role of an operation with a few thousand cars in stock.

Oops. Poor typing there.

Poof, you mean.

Myp? Really? Best tell Ange

I assume you mean the second-hand dealers, as Ford (and I'm sure most of the other big car companies) do their own finance.
I used to work for a small company that dealt with the automotive industry on behalf of the government, and before a conference (around 1999) we took one of the reps from Ford (who was a good friend of the Boss) out for dinner, and we all got drunk, and she was great, and I fell in love with her and wanted to do "things" with her but she said no but ANYWAY: She told us that Ford make three times as much money from finance as they do from selling cars, after they have taken the profit from the sticker price away.
That's a shit-load of cash.