Does your car have “character”? - skip to #28 if needed. ; )

Does your car have “character”? - skip to #28 if needed. ; )

See How Many Points you can accumulate:

So. Got your pencil? Points can be totaled at the end of the quiz. A car achieving 100 points or more has character. Those with fewer than 100 should be sold as soon as possible, unless you actually enjoy a car without character. Some do. Here goes:

1. If your car's overall design represents the vision of just one man who is now dead, but who once struck terror, dread and/or awe into the hearts of his employees, give yourself 50 points.

2. If you feel compelled, at the time of purchase, to buy a 300-page Official Factory Shop Manual to go with your car, give yourself 25 points.

3. Fifteen points if the car comes with a useful tool kit.

4. Twenty points more if the tools are ever actually needed to fix the car; 10 more if it's raining or snowing when this happens.

5. If your car can be loaned out to another person with less than 15 minutes of careful instruction on its peculiarities, deduct 20 points.

6. If you died suddenly and no one else on earth would be able to start the car or keep it running, give yourself 75 points.

7. Fifty points for any chassis and/or body with more than 25-percent wood content. Another 10 if it already has termites, carpenter ants or dry rot, and 20 bonus points if the door actually comes off in your hand.

8. Forty points for wire wheels. Ten more for "unsafe" knockoff spinners with ears.

9. Deduct 200 points for wire-wheel hubcaps; 50 off for "bolt-on" wire wheels.

10. If your car, or one very much like it, ever won its class at Le Mans or in the Targa Florio or Mille Miglia, give yourself 100 points.

11. Fifty points for SU or Weber carburetors. If it has three or more, add another 20. If your carburetors are located above the distributor and you never carry a fire extinguisher, give yourself 50 points for hubris.

12. Fifty points more for carburetors with velocity stacks and no air cleaners; 25 points more if the velocity stacks protrude from the bodywork.

13. Seventy-five points extra if any of the words "Halibrand," "Judson," "Shorrock" or "Offenhauser" appear anywhere on or in your car.

14. Award yourself 200 points if the car is French. You deserve it.

15. If replacing the clutch requires that the entire engine and
transmission be pulled, give yourself 50 points.

16. If you would rather commit suicide than do another clutch job, give yourself an added 50 points and call E-Type Owners' Hotline.

17. If the valve adjustment procedure is so arcane that you are
contemplating selling the car rather than either adjusting the valves yourself or paying to have it done, award yourself 40 points. If you have to go out of state or cross a time zone for this or any other form of basic maintenance, add 40 more.

18. Fifty points for any car with a Laycock de Normanville overdrive unit. Ten more if you just love to say "Laycock de Normanville" aloud, apropos of nothing, in the checkout line at the supermarket.

19. Seventy-five points for any car whose engine heat causes passengers to request you let them off early, near "a friend's house" or a phone booth.

20. Automatic 100 points for any air-cooled car. Twenty-five more if the leaking heater boxes give you a carbon-monoxide headache, and a bonus 10 if the fan belt makes a right-angle turn from the crankshaft pulley. Air-cooled cars with swing axles located ahead of the engine get another 50, and 20 more if
they have roof damage.

21. Give yourself 30 points if you have to spell the name of your car more than three times to your insurance agent over the phone, and then it still shows up spelled wrong on your insurance contract.

22. Collect 50 points if your car has Brooklands windscreens, but subtract 100 points if you put them on an inappropriate car, such as a Datsun B210 Honey Bee.

23. One point for every "Lift-the-Dot" snap that doesn't line up with any visible grommet on your weather equipment.

24. If, on the roadside, you are brought to your knees, exhausted, by a convertible top that will not stretch far enough to reach the "Lift-the-Dot" snaps, give yourself 40 points. Forty more if it's raining. Ten-point bonus if you are on the Dan Ryan Expressway at night.

25. One hundred points for side curtains, and 50 more if they billow out and scoop in whatever weather they were intended to help you avoid.

26. Thirty points for either a crank-handle starter, a vestigial
crank-starter hole through the radiator, or a starter button under the clutch pedal.

27. Deduct 500 points for any car whose door window glass does not go all the way down on the rear passenger doors. Then write a letter to the company and ask what they were thinking.

28. One hundred points for having a large American station wagon instead of a minivan or a sport-utility vehicle. Fifty more for "Vista-Cruiser" roof windows or a rear-facing jump seat.

29. Fifty points for any car that has more than 40 bhp for each inch of tire width.

30. If your car's engine designer grew up within 300 miles of the
birthplace of Giuseppe Verdi, give yourself 100 points.

31. If your car is, or ever was, the fastest production car on earth, add another 100 points.

32. If a fighter pilot of any nationality might have driven your car, or one like it, to an airfield during the Battle of Britain, give yourself 100 points. If he wasn't able to get to the airfield because of "gudgeon-pin" failure or the malfunction of any Lucas electrical component, add another 100.

33. Fifty points if your car was driven in a movie-or in real life-by Steve McQueen, James Dean, Clark Gable or Jacques Tati.

34. Twenty points if your Official Factory Shop Manual recommends
"decoking" the cylinder head at intervals of less than 1,500 miles.

35. If you come out of a movie at night and accidentally try your keys in another car that looks just like yours, subtract 500 points. This has never happened to a car with character.

There, that should do it. Add 'em up if you'd like, but you probably
already know the answer. Personally, I've had-and still have-a few cars that would do well on this little quiz, as you might expect, given that the point of any test is to make the author feel smart and look good. But I've owned a few that would hardly score at all. Offhand, I can't remember what they were, and I
don't have any pictures of them to remind me. Didn't take any.
Maybe that's the only test that counts.

If you've purposely taken pictures of your car, give yourself 500 points. A hundred more if they're taped to the wall above your word processor or carried in your wallet. Equal points if you have no pictures because your hands are always too dirty to handle a camera.

You know, us wagon owners get screwed on question 27.

Yep, that one hurts

Question 27 is offset by the last paragraph. So I squeak by.

I don't even understand half those questions. Brooklands, Laycock de Normanville, gudgeon-pin, and decoking are all completely mysterious to me.

Think english cars.

All I know about English cars is that they have Lucas electrics and Whitworth bolts, and that I don't want one.

81X11 wrote:

Think english cars.

I'm not sure which is worse, an English car or a French one...

French, hands down. I'll take an MG over a Renault any day of the week.

81X11 wrote:

French, hands down. I'll take an MG over a Renault any day of the week.

Speaking of French cars, on Ebay right now there is a 1980 something Peugeot sedan with like 17k miles on it and it needs a ton of work. Dammed French cars....

Yuck and NO

81X11 wrote:

Yuck and NO

I said that, but at the same time I couldnt help but like that frog eating, wine sniffing turdbox.

Nick Danger wrote:

All I know about English cars is that they have Lucas electrics and Whitworth bolts, and that I don't want one.

My little Austin Healey comes out over 200 points so it's cool and I like it.
with Lucas electrics, SU carbs, and whitworth bolts thank you very much.

Lucas, the Prince of Darkness


The fallibility of Lucas electrical components is a perennial source of both consternation and humour for the nutty, sometimes erudite enthusiasts of British sports cars and motorcycles.

Lucas, the Prince of Darkness.


Lucas is an acronym for Loose Unsoldered Connections and Splices.


The Prince's last words to his son: "don't go riding after dark"
The Lucas motto: "Get home before dark."


Lucas denies having invented darkness. But they still claim "sudden, unexpected darkness"


Lucas--inventor of the first intermittent wiper.


Lucas--inventor of the self-dimming headlamp.


The three-position Lucas switch--DIM, FLICKER and OFF.


The other three switch settings--SMOKE, SMOLDER and IGNITE.


Lucas dip-switch positions: HIGH and BLOW


The original anti-theft devices--Lucas Electric products.


"I've had a Lucas pacemaker for years and have never experienced any prob...


If Lucas made guns, wars would not start either.


Did you hear about the Lucas powered torpedo? It sank.


It's not true that Lucas, in 1947, tried to get Parliament to repeal Ohms Law. They withdrew their efforts when they met too much resistance.


To owner of a Land Rover: "How can you tell one switch from another at night, since they all look the same?" Owner: "It doesn't matter which one you use, nothing happens!"


During the 1970's, Lucas diversified its product line and began manufacturing vacuum cleaners. It was the only product Lucas ever offered which didn't suck.


Lucas Quality Control often advised the engineering department that their designs had problems with shorting out. Engineering always made the wires a little longer.


Why do the English drink warm beer? Lucas made their refrigerators, too.


Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, and Joseph Lucas invented the short circuit.


Lucas systems actually use AC current; it just has a random frequency.


How to make AIDS disappear? Give it a Lucas parts number.


Lucas won over Bosch to supply electrics for the new Volkswagens so cars from the Black Forest have electric systems made by the Prince of Darkness.

Mike do you have energy drinks hooked to an IV 24/7 or are you actually that fast of a typer?


I quit after the first dozen,but to answer the question,once I get in my car,the Character cannot be ignored.

It took me 2 hours to change the generator on my dad's XKE. I can change the alternator on my OCC in 10 minutes (I have lots of practice) in a white shirt without getting the shirt dirty.

You had three possible choices for removing the starter...(1) remove the engine, (2) use 3 long extensions and 2 U-joints, (3) cut a hole in the floor.

Full moon hubcaps should get points.

A friend of mine worked in a car parts store in the 1970s. One customer of his had two Jaguars, so he could always have one to drive while the other was in the shop. Then one day he showed up on a bicycle . . .

I explained to Mrs Danger that the XKE were the outrageously sexy cars driven by the supervillain/hero in the movie Danger Diabolik. She said, "I guess that's why he had so many of them.

I think the E-type roadster is one of the most gorgeous cars ever made.....

The coupe was just odd. Whenever I think of one of those I think of Richard Pryor stealing a red one in Silver Streak.

Weird cars. Inboard rear brakes and the hatch door on the coupes opened to the side.

-Mike

Inboard rear brakes kept the unsprung weight down, and gave a better ride. The entire rear suspension was held on with 4 bolts (and the trailing arms). The rear track was only 4 feet (centerline of the tire to centerline of the opposite tire). 60-64s had a 3.8 liter six that made 265 horsepower, and the car weighed 2200 pounds dry which is about half of a B-body wagon. Redline was 5500 rpm, but they would rev to about 7000 without breaking anything. In '64 they took a showroom stock roadster to Bonneville and it went 169 mph.

Austin Powers drove one painted with a British flag pattern, in one of the movies.

It won Lemans 2 years in a row. 59 and 60 if I remember correctly. The race cars were all aluminum, but the road cars were all steel. The had manual chokes, and an AM radio, and no AC. 64 and earlier cars had a non-syncro first gear, and dogleg syncronizers for the rest, so you had to pause for a split second before the gears would engage.

and i had only a total of 5 points for the wagon......