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& Another ‘New Game’: Can you name this car?


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11 minutes ago, RobH said:

Ah - Overland model 79,  1913 ?

Correct :D

Because I don’t know and you wise ones will …..

When did the usa go left hand drive ??

Edited by Hamish
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Apparently the USA has always driven on the right of the road but in the early days there was no standard driving position and RHD cars were fairly common.  Ford made the model T as LHD and other manufacturers gradually followed suit, so by WW1 that driving position had become normal.

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9 hours ago, RobH said:

Apparently the USA has always driven on the right of the road but in the early days there was no standard driving position and RHD cars were fairly common.  Ford made the model T as LHD and other manufacturers gradually followed suit, so by WW1 that driving position had become normal.

But why do the USA drive on the right?  My understanding is that it’s because of the French. 

Rgds Ian

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Or the Germans.     Today, a million Americans speak German at home, and in the early days there were even more whose native language was German.   The First Speaker of the House of Representatives, Frederick Muhlenberg, was the son of a German immigrant, and in 1785 the House considered (and rejected) a proposal that for the 10% of Americans who spoke it, Federal Laws should be printed in German as well as English.    

Can you imagine?   Eine Trump-Präsidentschaftskandidatur?

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Nerds corner:

There is evidence that driving on the left dates back to Roman times. One reason given is that a right-handed person would then have his sword arm in a convenient position to deal with someone coming in the other direction.  We can blame the French for the change, with good reason.

"Things changed in the late 1700s when large wagons pulled by several pairs of horses were used to transport farm products in France and the United States. In the absence of a driver’s seat inside the wagon, the driver sat on the rear left horse, with his right arm free to use his whip to keep the horses moving. Since he was sitting on the left, he wanted other wagons to pass on his left, so he kept to the right side of the road..............post-revolution France, under their left-handed ruler Napoleon, embraced a permanent move to the right side of the road. "

https://www.rd.com/article/why-drive-on-different-sides-of-the-road/

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1 hour ago, john.r.davies said:

...a million Americans speak German at home...

Was that like in one of Michael Palin’s “Ripping yarn” stories (“The Testing of Eric Olthwaite”) where Eric said when he was a child his parents and the rest of his family used to find him so boring that they decided to speak in French so as not to have to talk to him.

 

Years ago I too heard that it had something to do with the French.

Apparently everyone used to drive/ride on the left hand side of the road, including the French. When British troops were sent over to fight the French the commanders had a cunning plan. They would get their troops to ride on the right hand side of the road. This meant that from a distance the French soldiers would see the British column of troops and think that they were marching away from them, rather than marching towards them. Before the French knew it they were over run by the British. When the British went home they continued to drive on the left hand side.

(I think I might have got that a bit muddled, but you get the idea.)

Charlie

 

Edited by Charlie D
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I was told some years ago, by an American historian, that everyone used to ride on the left side of the road. As Napoleon's empire expanded, he decreed that all his conquered subjects were henceforth to ride on the right, thereby marking his (Napoleon's) territory as well as letting the locals know that they had to do everything in accordance with the wishes of their new ruler. During the American War of Independence the French were helpful to the colonial rebels, so at the end of that war the Americans decided they would abandon the British practice of riding on the left, and adopt the French method, thereby showing their gratitude to the French while demonstrating their rejection of the British rules.

I don't know if this is true, but it's a good story!

I spent a few days at a meeting in Malta once, and I couldn't decide which side of the road they drove - it seemed to depend on the road. When I came back I asked a colleague who I knew had a holiday flat in Malta - she replied "In the shade"!

Pete

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Yep Pete, the roads in Malta used to be ‘interesting’ and fun prior the EU money coming in and the hire cars used to be cheap and very cheerful; we definitely got what we paid for!

 

First time in the US Virgin Islands (the ones we ‘swapped’ for a few obsolete battleships before the Americans finally joined WW2) I was with a genuine VIP and Knight of the realm to boot. therefore, he got to sit in the front whilst I wallowed around in the back of the old Caddy tank. - It was immediately evident that every vehicle was American but being driven on the UK side of the road- When ‘his Lordship’ queried this our driver explained that they had so many accidents when they initially changed over with the locals  taking the horse and cart to the bars, having a few rums and when they fell asleep on the ride home the horse or donkey would default back to the other side…. And get mangled by a truck coming round the corner……. So much so that the law was changed back to drive on ‘the proper side’…

 

Thiis led his Lordship to comment that it must be difficult for the driver on the wrong side, particularly on all the blind spots…….. "Not at all" was the cheerful answer "the big advantage is that it is the front seat passenger who gets taken out each time"!

 

Guess who got to sit in the front for the rest of the visit?

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Ah! Rural roads!   When I drove to Poland in the early '90s, just after Solidarnosc and all that, the motorways had very wide 'hard shoulders' - for the farmers' carts, I was told!

Poland did not have an industrialised agriculture under Communism!

John

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When I worked in Belize in the 80s, the locals theoretically drove on the right but in practice they drove on the left as it enabled the left sided driver to hug the kerb while avoiding potholes. The problem was that when they saw a vehicle coming in the other direction they moved to the other side of the road. One of our guys driving back from a bar after a few (ok a lot of) beers was also in automatic on his LHS of the road and had a head on with a local driver who had just moved to his right. He was lucky to avoid gaol and we had to ship him out pretty swiftly. 

Rgds Ian

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  • 4 weeks later...

I haven't seen it but...Alfa Romeo giulia spider ? that's what they've used in it's previous incantations 2015/2013 etc I think they may have an agreement.

Mick Richards

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Obviously too easy for a man like you Mick.  Correct.  Mine was a 1964 A-R Guilia Spider 1600 Veloce.  Beautiful engineering but the thing virtually dissolved in front of my eyes.  It had a wet liner engine with rubber o rings sealing between the cast iron bores and the aluminium block.  Oh and the twin DCOEs drank fuel if you used the performance, 20mpg was not uncommon.

Rgds Ian

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