Archive Q1 2007
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Archive Q1 2008

Discussions are archived here according to the discussion start date.

Contents 1 Renault 12 2 Whispering bells 3 Interesting comparison 4 Top 10 of Europe 5 WikiCookie 6 Thank you very much 7 George Duff 8 Auto image policy discussion 9 E 27 10 European route E62 11 Chrysler Alpine's plastic bumpers 12 not a lamborghini jarama 13 please have a look at : 14 Thank you for edits to Dassow article 15 Some help needed 16 Panther De Ville image enquiry 17 Dropping a line 18 Tatra trucks 19 Journey to Babel 20 Gonna fly now 21 Slow speed chase. Not specially peeved 22 Gonna land now 23 The de-fenders 24 You can quote me 25 Peugeot 26 My God 27 7% solution 28 Tatra trucks 29 Ref: Auto Union 1000 30 Image:IMG_8275.JPG listed for deletion 31 Abbott Estate 32 Thank you 33 Fouday and Ban de la Roche 34 French commune population densities 35 Morris Marshal 36 Breaking links to images in commons 37 Articles for deletion nomination of Beatrice Beckett 38 Re Fiat Tipo 39 cwt 40 Talbot Tagora 41 John Hubert Arthur Coulson 42 Bedford TD Tipper Truck image 43 AC ME3000 44 GA reassessment of Lancia Flaminia 45 Category:Articles needing translation from French Wikipedia 46 Fiat Topolino dimensions 47 My user page 48 Lancia Flavia 49 Toyota Camry image 50 Toyota Starlet image 51 Toyota Celica image

[edit] Renault 12

Hello Charles, according to Automobil Revue, the R12 was introduced in September of 1969. Hope that helps. Regards, --328cia (talk) 19:44, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes: that's what I found on line, but somehow I believe it more if it is in print. So now I'm convinced! Regards Charles01 (talk) 19:56, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Whispering bells

Hello Charles, thank you for changing the formatting on the Goertz talk page. Please drop me a line and let me know how you did it, so that in further conversation with Moses I´ll be able to adjust the font size myself. Cheers, --328cia (talk) 14:38, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

PS: This guy with his heaven-sent knowledge reminds me of Mr Alfone on German wp who claimed to have been told by Peter Monteverdi that the latter designed the Volvo 740 (and the first Range Rover, too...), and similar nonsense, like the Cadillac Seville being a Pininfarina design. Obviously, once a year such arrogant morons are bound to cross my path. --328cia (talk) 14:38, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Somehow when you autosign someone else's contribution, the font size is reduced. The edit window includes the instruction . To undo it at the end of the line you simply enter . If you simply open this page as though to edit it, you'll see what I mean.

I don't really follow the discussions on German wiki. But on the subject of Monteverdis, there's a picture I took in Lenzerheide (where I washed dishes in an hotel for a ski season in 1978) of the Monteverdi Allraeder which I'm SURE shares it's windscreen with the early Range Rover and I assume it is therefore the Monteverdi Safari that was Range Rover based. But someone has 'corrected' my caption. Well, he might be right. But .... I think it unlikely. And I think Peter Monteverdi himself may no longer be alive (ok I'll check on wikip[edia when I've sent this). I used to have a friend in Binningen (where Monteverdi had it's being) when I worked in Basel, but contact lapsed many years ago.. Ho hum. Must take my daughter to karate now. Happy day Charles01 (talk) 15:25, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

On Goertz I feel cross with myself for caring about his title, because in principal I find that sort of thing silly (and seriously corrupting of those who take it seriously - ask that nice Mr Blair how he funded the Labour Party while loyal Helmut was doing nothing more sinister than refusing to discuss allegations of letting the French Steuerzahler fund the CDU....). They again, titles were presumably important to Goertz, so that legitimately makes it important also to us at least in the context of Goertz. Or? I know next to nothing about the subject, but I sort of assumed that the Linksradikalen who were in the ascendancy at the time when the Americans were persuading Wilhelm Hohenzollern to relocate to Doorn would have done away with the silliness of titles. From the anglo perspective, there's a pretty strong link between titles and emperors Charles01 (talk) 15:32, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I don´t care all that much for this topic myself, but I certainly don´t care a bit for self-serving folks uttering claims without anything to back them up; that really makes me angry. See also the BMW 507 talk page and Moses` own talk page. --- Monteverdi died several years ago, but I e-mailed the Volvo archives in Sweden; they strictly denied that PM had anything to do with the 740, and they should know. You´ll find details on that on the Monteverdi page on de:wp, in case you´re interested, although it´s not worth investigating, really. A good day to you! --328cia (talk) 16:04, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Interesting comparison

Between [1] and [2]. I wonder what it signifies. Kittybrewster ☎ 16:01, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Interesting subject for a study, I agree. Quite a long study, I fancy, since I suspect the answer would have quite a lot of points. Oder? Charles01 (talk) 16:26, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Top 10 of Europe

Hello Charles,

regrettably I am not able to help you on this. I haven´t seen such a page on de:wp (let alone it:wp) so far and have no sources of my own available. Pan-Euro figures are rarely publicized here, although you may find a notice on the best-selling cars Eurowide every now and then in AutoBild or ams, but I don´t read them on a regular basis.

As for Germany only, Auto Katalog used to print German (and many other) sales figures on a yearly basis; but all I have at hand are the ´60s editions and a single 1985 plus a 1992 catalogue; my other volumes have gone lost somewhere along the way. Automobile Revue only gives production figures.

Kind regards, Michael (new-born owner of a W126 420 SE, by the way) --328cia (talk) 17:44, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. My guess is it will sip something like 14 L/100 km, which isn´t that much more than my Alfa 164s. Anyway, I´m not racking up that many miles per year. I love Bruno Saccos W126 design (a SEC would be better still, but these command absurd prices), and this car was a) dirt cheap; b) is in excellent condition [three owners in 22 years - one industrialist and two retired gentlemen), no rust to be seen; and c) was right around the corner from my home - some three miles away! --- A friend of mine owns a 1989 300 SE with 650.000 kms on the clock - first engine, first ´box, so I`m confident this car will accompany me until it´s time to meet my maker - crazy German car taxes notwithstanding...

I´ve always liked the Polo; we had a ´98 or so SDI in office, and it was always great fun to zip through city traffic with it, and it was surprisingly agile with its 48 PS. Once I drove a rented Toledo (in ca. 2000); very pleasing looks, but the non-turbo 1.8 5V engine was rough and loud - what I would call a Bauernmotor.

That´s it for today. On my desk is Walton`s Audi quattro book for me to translate - a boring subject (for me) and the text is ever soooo repetitive.

Regards,--328cia (talk) 19:07, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WikiCookie

[edit] Thank you very much

		The Photographer's Barnstar
		...for the excellent pictures you uploaded. The cars are very interesting, and the backgrounds are sometimes still more interesting. Moreover: Your pictures are priceless, because you took them in the 1970s and 1980s, and in several countries. Randroide (talk) 21:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] George Duff

Can you please tell why this article starts with "captain"? Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 09:57, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed that it did, but yes. At the time of his death he held the rank of captain in the British Navy. It is because of this, and activites deriving from it, that he has had enough written about him to feed a small (but I think at LEAST averagely interesting to those who are interested in the surrounding subjects) wikipedia entry. Never having captained anything larger than a river boat for a couple of hours after lunch, I do not expect ever to merit a wiki entry on myself. On the other had, and looking on the brighter side, I don't anticipate that a large French cannon ball will blow my torso apart. I guess that folks who die violently do tend to attract more retrospective comment than they might, during their lives, have anticipated. Then again, given (1) his career choices and (2) the fact that the Brits were at war with most of the adjacent states at this time, I guess he would at least have been aware that his risk of experiencing a violent demise were above average for the population as a whole. Though probably, if you think back to the way folks thought back then, he would have said that the timing and nature of his demise were matters for God and not for him to consider.

Is there any (even) more profound concern that you have with the entry? Please share, if so. Thus the traditional dialectic. Or? (Probably more useful on the talk page itself if so: I'll copy this lot over.)

Regards Charles01 (talk) 10:21, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Auto image policy discussion

Thank you for your articulate, thoughtful, appropriately-witty comments in the ongoing discussion. Your point about IFCAR (talk · contribs) vis-à-vis Mitsubishi making it very difficult to describe their historic range coherently is a very good one. As I told IFCAR, I think probably a significant part of the perception of his behaviour is down to nothing more than the large number of images he contributes, but even though that's not entirely fair (compare the general perception of Microsoft), it is a reality and he will likely experience a good deal less friction and resistance if he will thoughtfully recognise this perception, acknowledge it, and work to ease it. —Scheinwerfermann (talk) 15:31, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Um ... noted. And reassuring that I'm not the only one to have gained this impression of one commendably prolific photographer. Though of course, if your theme is friction, I think you have to recognize that lots of folks simply thrive on the stuff. No further thoughts. Good weekend. Regards Charles01 (talk) 15:38, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] E 27

... from my talk page

I have added the link to the box for you and moved the article to European route E27 for consistancy. As for the maps, i've no idea. Try WikiProject Highways, WikiProject Europe, or the talk page of International E-road network. Jake the Editor Man _(talk) 16:09, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Very many thanks. Regards. Good weekend. Charles01 (talk) 16:16, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] European route E62

Can you please provide some reliable sources for this article? Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 10:30, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes. As you may have noticed it's a translation work currently in progress! Charles01 (talk) 10:36, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Chrysler Alpine's plastic bumpers

We forgot about the Triumph Herald! Jason404 (talk) 09:28, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the bumpers of the Chrysler Alpine (and the Renault 5) were large mouldings, though presumaby they were bolted using steel components to the car's frame. I guess the combination of strength and rigidity in the plastics in question would be a function of developments in the materials technologies that had taken place during the 1960s and made this sort of combination available at an acceptable price for the auto makers.

I never disected the bumper on a Triumph Herald. I'd assumed they were old fashioned metal bumpers - the kind that turned up chrome plated on Ford Anglias and Morris Minors - but painted with some less expensive (and less noxious to apply than chrome) rust inhibitor and then given a rubber facing. So that in this case the structural strength would have come from old fashioned mild steel bent to shape. Pure assumption on my part, but even if I'm wrong at the detailed level, I don't think the rubber coated bumpers of the Herald really count as plastic bumpers - and certainly not in the style of those on the later Renault and Simca/Chrysler products. But I probably should stop burbling: the nice thing about wiki is the way that it has the potential to find an expert on everything, and I'm certainly not the expert on bumper design & manufacture in the European motor industry. Regards Charles01 (talk) 05:45, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] not a lamborghini jarama

Beautifull photograph of the green gt in London. Unfortunately it is not a Lamborghini Jarama. It is an Iso Rivolta Lele. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.94.43.203 (talk) 16:21, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I think you may be right. Who are you, please? Charles01 (talk) 17:06, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] please have a look at :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Quest stephane.jourdan gmail —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.93.76.226 (talk) 05:22, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you for edits to Dassow article

Charles, Thank you for editing the Dassow article. I translated it from the German to English, but still had typos. I stopped editing the article when I found out that I have a conflict of interest according to Wikipedia Guidelines because my last name is the same as the name of the city. --Dan Dassow (talk) 13:40, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing. It's the sort of thing one can worry away at off and on for months. That's what I did with translating Deidesheim into English. Not necessarily efficient use of time, but nonetheless sometimes irresistable. Though I've never been to Dassow: I don't have the background knowledge to worry away at that one in the same way.

Since you did make contact, I see you (at least .. it probably was you) include a red link to Moritz von Paepcke . If ever you have access to information to turn that red link blue, I'd be interested to read the resulting entry. By a series of steps, I recently discovered that I am distantly related to the von Paepcke family. (The maternal grandfather of Moritz came from England and had a younger sister from whom I descend.) Well yes, it's a long shot that you might be able to access sources on the von Paepckes. But the one certainty is that if one never asks the questions one will never know the answers.

Regards Charles01 (talk) 13:57, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Charles, so far I have not been able to find anything useful concerning the von Paepcke family. Unfortunately, a lot of German ancestry information was lost during the time of Otto von Bismarck. --Dan Dassow (talk) 21:36, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

You might wish to check out The Genealogy of the Canning Family Mary Theresa Canning. Born 22nd August 1814. Died Quassel, Mecklenburg 2nd March 1889. Married Hamburg, 27th July 1837 Heinrich Friedrich Ludwig Edler von Paepke from Lütgenhof near Dassow. Moritz von Paepcke is their son. --Dan Dassow (talk) 21:03, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks. Yes, that fits. Regards Charles01 (talk) 05:36, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I hope to eventually write a Wikipedia article about Moritz von Paepcke, but so far there does not seem to be enough information to support a notable article. The history of Schloss Lütgenhof is rather interesting and Moritz von Paepcke and his family are key players. By an odd co-incidence, User: kittybrewster posted to User Talk:Charles01 eight minutes (Charles01 history) after I did. She indicates on User:Kittybrewster/About_me that she is associated with the website http://www.kittybrewster.com/ancestry/canning.htm . --Dan Dassow (talk) 11:28, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

(Replied offlist. C)Charles01 (talk) 11:56, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Some help needed

Hi Charles01, could you take a look article which I translated via online translator Fàbrica Nacional de Motores, it needs some better english and some german words that I cant find the suspension part in table and what means Schneckenlenkung in steering section. any help welcome rgds --— Typ932^{T | C}  17:16, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

With pleasure. Looks as if I'll learn a good bit along the way. If you have taken it from the German, then I'll review the English against the French. Logic suggests that it may have started out in the Brazilian version of Portuguese, but my Portuguese does not extend beyond the ability to ask for fish soup...and actually I cannot now remember the Portuguese for fish soup.

I think there used to be a type of steering called, in English, worm and something. Was there something called 'worm and roller'? Not sure. This technical vocabulary isn't my strength, and Mr Langenscheidt presumably would expect me to get a technical dictionary. Still, we do have a multi volume pocket book sized Meyers Taschen Lexikon that might help. It may be a form of steering that in English got a new name at some stage in the past but I didn't notice the change.

Regards Charles01 (talk) 18:09, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi there is something in http://www.dict.cc/german-english/Schneckenlenkung.html, but I think we need our German friend here to give the right answer...the suspension part is also missing something when translated and yes the article is translated via german article with minor modifications so far. --— Typ932^{T | C}  18:24, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

The article looks quite good now, maybe needs some sectioning (headers)? great work --— Typ932^{T | C}  16:52, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I think we're getting somewhere. And I agree that one of us needs to put in some headings before we're finished with this one. One of the nice things about translating these wiki entries is that one keeps hitting questions. I can't help thinking the Italian (and German and French) source entries on FNM fizzle out a bit towards the end. I can't help wondering what actually happened to the plant near Rio. Maybe it is turning out little Fiat / Iveco trucks even now? There's not too much in English wiki about the commercial vehicle (ie trucks and vans) operations of either Fiat or Alfa Romeo. Nor even - that I have found till now - in the other languages. I wonder if that fellow Luc who produced a lot of the Italian car entries - at least for the 1950s and 60s - could be persuaded to attempt some separate articles on the van and truck operations. He seems to have good sources for European cars. But maybe for Brazilian questions one is better hoping to inspire or persuade a Brazilian enthusiast to come up with something. Maybe we just need a bit of wiki-patience.

Just thinking on paper. I may come back for an hour or so after eating. Otherwise ... a domani or whatever.

Regards Charles01 (talk) 17:20, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi.

Sorry for the delay in a response. Usually I don't login when I access wiki, but I'm still active!

Indeed I know a lot about the brazilian automotive industry (since I was born in this country and I'm car enthusiast). I know that the FNM was a important piece for the instalation of Fiat in Brazil, since in the 60's and 70's it was very hard get a license to build a car in Brazil and impossible to import then, so to enter in brazilian market, Fiat bought not the FNM, but Alfa Romeo in Italy, that owned FNM at that time. With this, Fiat got a passport to enter in the brazilian market. The production of their first passenger car began in 1976 with the Fiat 147 (based upon the italian Fiat 127), in Betim, near Belo Horizonte. Currently Fiat do Brasil is the largest brazilian car manufacturer in terms of cars build and sold per year.

I'm really amazed to write an article about Fiat do Brasil. I speak both portuguese and italian, so I can search for a lot of material about this subject. Anyway, I'm concerned about just translating the portuguese version (because it doesn't talks about the Fiat in Brazil, but about world Fiat), so I'll have to write it from the scratch.

Thanks for the suggestion. Regards

Gabrieldiego (talk) 22:37, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

This is excellent news. Thank you. I look forward to seeing the new entry.

(Then at some stage I guess one of us will need to rebalance the FNM entry. But in my judgement that's a task for afterwards.)

Regards Charles01 (talk) 07:59, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

A Schneckenlenkung is indeed a worm and roller-type steering; a Trapezlenker is, to the best of my knowledge, in US terms an A-arm or else a so-called unequal-length wishbone suspension (or Doppel-Dreieckslenkerachse). Hope the two of you are doing fine, and I admire your apparently endless patience in contributing here. I blew my temper for good. --- All the best, Michael --328cia (talk) 02:34, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. And yes.

If you look at the dates, you'll see that I really am working through the Bandini entry Zug um Zug (molto poco di poco?) One of the problems is that the Italian text is really just a rather breathless list of what happened, as far as I can tell not very correct grammatically and written by someone who doesn't always understand what his sources are telling him. It would be lovely to come across better sources. And for that matter, the area of cars that obsesses me has more to do with cars one sees on the street than with cars that go round and round in circles until they blow up or break down. Or (of course) win. (Though my son has persuaded me to take a slight interest in the British Touring Car Championship in recent years, and we do get wall to wall coverage of F1 on the news bulletins here now the British media-xenophobes have another local hero among the top F1 racing drivers.) But translating the Bandini stuff is still therapeutic in its way, when one hits the right mood. And Bandini himself appears to be a genuinely heroic character - someone who was really good at something, had the luck to find out what he was good at when he was young, and the determination to stick with it through what must, inevitably, have been a bit of a yoyo career. The guy deserves a better write-up than, till now, we have for him in English wiki, and I think we are progressing that. Also, even if I never worked in it, I do find Italian a beautiful language. When I worked in Basel several of my best (and other most talking) colleagues were Italian, and while the 'educated bourgeois' types were determined to use English (or French) to me, one still has a lot of Italian mother tongue (or semi-mother tongue, since like much of Germany, in much of Italy the dialect you speak at home is very different from the language you speak at school or in the office) in Basel.

Hmmmm. Good weekend. Charles01 (talk) 07:08, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Panther De Ville image enquiry

Hi there,

Is there any chance of obtaining a high resolution copy of the Panther de Ville image that you posted on the car's wikipedia entry? I write as Research assistant on a book being written on a London school (St Paul's) amongst whose alumni is Robert Jankel, designer of that car. The book is an in-house project, will have a print run of 5000 and is a non-profit project.

Many thanks for any help,

Yours Sincerely,

Memphis Barker barkerm[at]stpaulsschool.org.uk —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.85.20.99 (talk) 10:03, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm flatterred (of course) by your question, Memphis, but I think the answer is probably that the wiki image is as clear as it's going to get.

The picture was taken outside Wells cathedral here in England. Frankly I cannot remember why I was in Wells in 1983, but the frame of the slide stated 1983. It would (probably) have been taken with a 35 mm Olympus camera using a fairly cheap zoom lens and my not particularly steady hand, and then processed by the Agfa color-slide lab at Wimbledon. By modern standards (and indeed by the standards of those monochrome images one occasionally comes across from the third quarter of the nineteenth century) it never had too much 'resolution'. I scanned it into my computer using a scanner called (I think) OpticFilm 7200. I think if I try and save it using more pixels or whatever it is people do, they will simply be fuzzy pixels.

Pity

I do, of course, wish you every success with your project. That school has a lot of history I suspect.

Regards Charles01 (talk) 10:44, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dropping a line

Hello Charles, you may have noticed that I haven´t contributed anything useful lately; that´s because I´m fed up with arrogant folks like Mr. Proscriptus and your fellow-countryman, Mr. Teutonic Tamer. I´ve drawn the conclusion that fighting against windmills is not desirable. While I admire your constant bee-like Fleiß, it´s all over for me now. Still, I´d like to keep in touch with you, as it´s always interesting and rewarding to communicate with you. --- I now do own an ´86 420 SE (with kaputtened right-hand camshaft), another ´86 260 SE for winter and, as a daily driver, a ´91 300 CE; I must say that I´ve never driven anything remotely as comfortable as a W126, it´s simply incredible. --- Here´s looking at you, kid :-)) - Michael. --328cia (talk) 20:11, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

(Replied offlist. Charles01 (talk) 20:45, 5 July 2008 (UTC) )

[edit] Tatra trucks

Hello, I think you are right, I've spent so much time at Tatra Wiki article that I completely failed to notice that indeed there is a very little information about truck manufacturing @ Tatra. I do have some information in regards to history of truck production at Kopřivnice, however it is in czech so I have to translate which is going to get messy and time consuming, in the meantime thanks for pointing the obvious. CheersStonufka (talk) 13:31, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Journey to Babel

Thanks for the repairs here. That translation was making me cringe. FYI, I suspect "turner" was a spelling error for "tuner". BTW, there's a whole bunch more linked out from Bandini Automobili that could use help... TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 00:39, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

It's a nice job to get into. And whereas with 'real life' one usually has a time dead line for these jobs, with wikipedia you can worry away at it in your own time until it makes sense. Keep an eye on me, though: I'm not an expert especially on suspension components and some of the things that go on under the hood / bonnet! The other thing, with this type of text, is that the Italian one may have been taken from somewhere else and modified (a bit) or not and so on and so on and ... so in the end you may get versions of the same text (or bits of it) turning up on line several times in several different web sites. Ditto English translations thereof. Specially where (as here) there is most likely a shortage, even in Italian, of 'original' research / compilation.

The way it ends up in wikipedia, the 'turner' word is 'tornitore'. My Italian isn't that good, but I'm pretty sure that's the noun (ie 'turner') from the verb 'tournare' which (though I may have mis-spelled it here) means 'to turn'. When you get lost in Italy and ask the way, one of the words you pick out is 'tornare' which in that context tends to mean that you must turn around (and go back the way you came...) So it is a word I've come across!

I do not know if people spoke about 'tuning' (of vehicle engines) in the 1930s, though no doubt that's a part of what our friend would have got up to at his Forli workshop. But machining engine parts on a lathe would, I imagine, have been the sort of basic job that would get delegated to a competent apprentice mechanic fairly early on in his career. In Europe and US they don't often let non-employee members of the human race into the car plants these days, apart from a couple of carefully selected assembly points, and presumably machining is all done inside robot controlled black boxes. But if you've ever visited a place where they assembly / repair cars in one of the other continents where wages are lower - even Turkey which is 'sort of' Europe (though that's a huge political discussion outside of where we need to go here) you get a better idea of 'turning' - ie machining components on a lathe - as pretty fundamental to some of the things folks do when making and fixing vehicles. Well, that's my understanding, anyway, and I think I felt sort of endorsed by the wiki entry on 'turning' to which I entered a link. Though the turning entry does need input from an expert which ain't me. Trouble is, folks who are handy in a workshop aren't generally the same folks as the ones who are happy banging away entering prose to keyboards.

I did notice already there are several other Bandini entries needing attention. It's super there are so many, really, especially for Bandini enthusiasts. But you (if it was you) did a neat thing by highlighting the matter on the auto project page. I think there are several of us who started by thinking someone else will do it better and then came back having decided that ... maybe they wouldn't. And actually, though there are several frequent contributors to wiki entries in English who have mother tongue German, mother tongue Italian is less easy to find among the regular English wiki automobile contributors (The Italian guy who has 'done' in Italian a lot of interesting entries on Italian and German cars from the 1950s , 60s etc has good English but he still has plenty to do on Italian wiki.)

Ho hum. I only meant to do you a one line 'Thanks, amico'. Well, thanks amico. Charles01 (talk) 06:00, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Hey, be glad you got a bit out of hand. You might just be right "turner" as a reference to lathe operator or (what's the word?) a guy who does milling on heads & such. Absent seeing the original, I have no clue. I suggested tuner from his work as a mechanic, which suggests "engine" to me; the translation may be using a broader meaning, anybody involved in mechanical work, which would cover lathe or milling machine operators (among others).

Yeah, I put it on the Project page. I found one of them on new page patrol & it looked promising til I looked at how badly translated it was. (I got about a quarter in & just couldn't cope anymore! Bad grammar makes me nuts. ;D) I applaud it being put up, but couldn't somebody have borrowed an Italian-English dictionary? (It works, y'know. I translated a short page from German Wikipedia with one. {No, not into Italian. =]})

I guess I did the same thing everybody else did: posted it & hoped somebody else would jump in. Thing was, it gave me a little respite from the worst of it, & some sense it wasn't a hopeless solo project. Between you and Kierant, I've managed to take some encouragement & not just walk away from the Bandini pages entire. If thanks are due, they're to you, too. Is it Molto grazzie? (Sp would be muchas gracias, & no, I don't speak much of that, either. I'm illiterate in about five languages. ;D) TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 16:52, 12 July 2008 (UTC) (Now that I think of it, my local library might have an It-Eng dictionary I can borrow... Like I don't have enough things to keep me busy here. =])

Cycle fenders? I'm not sure where that originated. I first saw it applied by magazine writers, but it was in re the Lotus 7, so I presumed it was a Brit term (I don't recall hearing it before that, but I've seen it used also by Brit writers since then, so...). As for where I learned, it's Canada, but I've had quite a bit of exposure to U.S. & Brit & some Oz English, thru TV programs & books, & I've also taken a particular interest in dialect, so my usage is pretty eclectic (or peculiar); I'm comfortable using some "local" idiom of all 3, & I can understand a lot of it where other people might be a bit at sea. Born & raised in Canada, picking up some French is inevitable (if only off the bilingual labels). I've also spent a lot of years reading military history, so I'm comfortable with quite a bit of German, & some (transliterated) Russian & Japanese. And living north of the U.S., it's hard not to pick up some (small amount of) Spanish. Am I boring you, yet? ;D TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 02:14, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

"distribution, and cinematism"? I suspected it was something to do with the distributor, & if you're right about camshaft, it'd be valvetrain. Have a look at the original & fix if needed?

Re lubrication v oil pump, it may be more than the pump was changed; could be new lines (a change to braided from rubber) or opening oil galleries, more capacity, better scavenging, switch to dry sump... Absent a good source, it's hard to know, if the original only mentions the pump.

"mixed distribution chain and gears"? I have a suspicion this is the drive for the cams, but could also be for the distributor, & it sounds like it was changed (from the previous arrangement) to gear-driven distributor & chain-driven cams. I'm not going to touch it, but if you can confirm, do fix it.

Also, can you have a look at "850 Canali Alberto"? I changed some of that, & I think I mangled the meaning.

Otherwise, you're looking good on it. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 03:38, 03:43, 03:57, 04:17, & 04:38, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Just to clear it up, Alberto Canali's name got reversed, & it had me thinking he was from Barsoom (Canali Alberto). =] TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 05:51, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I think there are two things going on here, Trekphiler. I'm not sure I've sufficiently thought through either of them, but in setting out my thoughts I hope I clarify them for both our benefits. The two things are (1) improving the correctness / translation of what went on under the hood / bonnet and (2) bike fenders.

On what went on under the hood / bonnet, my knee jerk reaction is to defer to you, on the grounds that you appear to know more about these cars than I do. One of us still needs to go through item by item and test your thoughts against our understanding of available sources, and if you don't get round to it first, I'll probably get round to it before too long. But if I'm the one to do it, my underlying assumption is likely to be that your guess is better than mine. That said:

We still need a mother tongue speaker - ideally of BOTH languages. Even if one of us gets hold of a superb technical dictionary, the examples of a car specific meaning of some of these terms that are given in that dictionary cannot be relied upon to be precisely analogous to the applications of Mr Bandini who was clearly an original thinker in any language. For many cars, service manuals can provide clarification of how the thing actually worked. Even if they are translated into rather quaint versions of English, there are frequently technical drawings from which one can infer what the writer actually meant. But with Bandinis, I do not know if service manuals exist, nor how one might begin to get hold of them

So I guess my conclusion on Point 1 is the banal one that whatever translations we end up with, further and better information may give access to subsequent improvements and corrections. Thus the wiki way.

The Bike fender thing is an even more familiar issue. You grew up speaking American (Oops, I mean Canadian English). I grew up speaking English (Ooops, I mean British English). And of course there are plenty of words the Australians use which have never penetrated to Oxford or Harvard. But at least we've both lived and worked with different version of English enough to have some sort of a feeling for the nature and extent of the differences.

A good starting point here might be the entry for Fender (vehicle). If ever you get round to doing an entry on bike fenders, look at that entry first. If ever I get round to doing an entry on motor bike style mudguards, I'll try and do the same. Either way, such an entry might well need input from both sides of the Big A(tlantic).

Wikipediae says that if it's American you should write about it in American (English) and if it's English you should write about it in (British) English. Fine for the Chevrolet Impala and the Austin Mini. But if it's German or Japanese or Swedish? I THINK in practice (that's practise) and maybe by prescription, where the car is European, we in England think that it belongs to our half of the Anglosphere and anglecise. But for cars that are well known in the US, that approach never really sticks. Think of the Audi 100 entry. Or Is that Audi 5000? I think American speaking contributors have accepted Audi 100 as the car's name (because that's the label they use in Germany) but there's usually a good deal of text there that simply is not in English (as in British English). I've translated a good many entries on German cars of the 1950s to English, and frankly where only a few people will read or contribute to an entry it's such a small problem that it barely merits a thought. But anything on a Volvo 144 or Honda Accord will attract copious attention from both sides of this particular anglophone language divide. I try and get round it by avoiding words which are specific to one or other side of the barrier. Where I can't do that I use both (as in bonnet / hood). To me, that's simply a courtesy to the reader.

Trekphiler, I still find 'motor-bike style mudguards' any ugly phrase. And if anyone better versed than I can come up with another word that means the same and works in both our languages, I'd go with that. Meantime, for Bandini, we are dealing with Italy, a country in which English is widely spoken as a second language. The English taught in Italy is British English. American English has penetrated Italy less than (for instance) it has penetrated Germany. Corporate America has problems understanding what's going on in corporate Italy. Think how long General Motors stayed with Fiat. And think how much longer they've stayed with Saab or indeed Opel and Vauxhall - yes, I know other issues come into play, but I think it's a simple matter of fact that Italy is not awash with US business execs to the same extent as Germany. So Italy is Europe and Britain is part of Europe (even if many of the English are in denial about having blown away the British empire which permitted them to pretend not to belong to any continent). So we use British English? Yet Sig Bandini seems to be better known in North America than in England. Chicago and New York and large swathes of small town America and Canada have many districts awash with Italian Americans who've never been to London, even if they may have a vague sense that it's in the general direction of Berlin (or Moscow. or Singapore. or maybe even Palermo). So the language for Bandini is American English?

So I'm back with voting for 'both' languages. Which I think gives us bike fenders / motorbike style mudguards.

Any views? Regards Charles01 (talk) 08:34, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I default to American, but I'm comfortable to let Britlish (OK?) stand where I find it (unlike some who'll revert not knowing any better). I also incline to using Britlish for European subjects generally. (HMG's sphere of influence & all that.) Something like the Accord or Civic also built here (Canada, too) probably should use Amlish. And yeah, some dual usage (bonnet/hood & such) is probably appropriate in places.

On the issue of cycle fenders, I disagree with "mudguard" because, as I understand it, "cycle fender" falls in the category of technical terms. Cf the previously mentioned Lotus 7, or the Cunningham Allards, or the Rotus 7, or some of the early Moggies. (Or maybe not.) "Mudgard" isn't quite the same thing. Or is too broad. Or something. A link to Fender (vehicle), if it's got a pic of one of said cycle-fendered types, isn't out of line; I wish I'd thought to do it. :[

As for Sig Bandini's putative fame, I never heard of him before. I do know a bit about racing, & a bit about cars; between them, I can cope with most of what was there. I also think the writer is giving him too much credit, but that could be Italian chauvinism at work in the original source.

The technical language issue, I think you may be right, but not because either of us is incompetent. I have a suspicion the original was transcribed by somebody with less than perfect grasp of the technical issues (but that may be because my Italian doesn't go far beyond Greta Scacchi =] and if you've ever seen "The Coca-Cola Kid", you'll realize it doesn't have to. =] ) If we're dealing with induced error, it's no wonder we can't suss it out. For now, have a glance at what I've done & see if it's terribly off the original Italian. My intention was, rely on you to get the translation to English close, then see if your translation gives me enough clarity to figure out what it should mean. If there is introduced error, tho, that may not be possible, which is what has me worried. For instance, as I think I said, the lubrication may've been completely redone by Bandini, but whoever transcribed from the paper source to Italian WP may not have known enough to say so, & absent the paper source, we can't know. I'm going to do a quick Google & see if I can find something on Bandini cars in English in hope of clearing that up, at least. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 18:14 & 18:20, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

(OT PS) When it comes to why corporations stick, I wouldn't put "language" high on the list of issues. There are cultural factors far more in play, like the amount of information the players demand (Germans insist on knowing everything, down to the size of the fasteners, where Americans are satisfied knowing where the factory is, & Italians maybe with knowing it'll get done this month, sometime, if they feel like it). Not to cast aspersions, it's a matter of the culture you grow up in; mañana is the usual in Mexico for perfectly good local cultural reasons, just the same as obsession with detail is in Germany. (OK, I'll stop now.) 18:14, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Took your hint; have a look at Fender (vehicle), while I go fix the Bandini's cycle fenders. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 18:31, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

<--Looking at your recent changes, I like "trusted team"; I think that's closer to what was really going on, w "Papa Bandini" & his Merry Men. I think there's still confusion over the bodywork (was it still Motto, or did they drop him, or what?). I might quibble over the engine "adopting" a new head; maybe I was unclear it's the company adopting it, & if so, I'll fix it. There's a bit of "control freak" in Bandini that seems to run in guys who form their own car companies (Ferrari was the same, Colin Chapman certainly had some of it, FWI read); if I can get a handle on the grammar, I'll take out the "wordiness" you were worried about. I took out the xt link to Dell'Orto; apparently, they're frowned on, & also, I want to encourage creation of an EngWP article on them, if I can. And to conclude, we may have to agree to disagree (tho I hope we can come to an agreement!) on mudgards v cycle fenders. I think the pic of the Lotus 7 at Fender (vehicle) pretty clearly shows they're not attached, & the description explains the usage (I know, I wrote it); I just wish I could source the origin of the term. I see from your discussion here the term's not terribly common across the pond, so maybe it's unique to the mag writers here; I'm not a big enough fan of the Seven & its siblings to know. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 16:50, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Re Motto. It occurs to me the original bodywork was designed by Motto, & later the design was done in-house, but the actual construction was still by Motto, in the fashion of Ferrari & Pininfarina; IIRC, the early Ferraris were "farmed out", & later the styling was in-house, but the actual work was still done at the Farina plant. I would still like to see a source on it... I'm waiting on interlibrary loan for something... TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 17:49, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Eminently possible. I resist the temptation to speculate further, but I'm delighted that you hope to have a better source in due course.

I think I may leave this for a few days: let it settle and come back to it next week having better digested some of what I have been learning about Bandini. Where the Italian writer is vague - as you suggested, possibly because he doesn't always understand what his own sources are telling him - a sense of the Bandini context can help support useful insights, though that's not a route I'd want to go down very far for wiki work.

Regards Charles01 (talk) 18:23, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I by no means presume to change it based solely on my (sometimes faulty) memory, just note it may not be as nonsensical as it appears.

I also have to revise my opinion of Bandini; one of the xt links was to the Autoweek website, & their writer seemed rather impressed with the company's success.

And something I should have thought of long ago. :C Unless you've a strong objection, I'm going to copy this whole discussion to the Bandini & Bandini Auto talk pages. Maybe somebody watching them (if anybody) can (will) fix what we can't alone. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 19:37, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

1. & 2. Noted / works for me.

3. I have no strong objection (to continuing this exchange on the Bandini talk page) as long as I can find it. I think I'd rather you copyandpaste. (ie Please don't cutandpaste.) For reasons which I think I sort of understand when I think about it hard enough, wiki doesn't like us to delete stuff from our talk pages.

Regards Charles01 (talk) 19:47, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm using "cut & paste" a bit loosely. I wouldn't just chop your talk page, tho I confess I don't understand why WP opposes me doing on it on mine... It'll be up any second now. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 19:59, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Gonna fly now

Thought of it before, but forgot to ask. Have you seen this?

	This user is a member at plane.spottingworld

It can use any help you can offer. You can just cut & paste from WP (just tag it {{From WIkipedia}} before you paste). TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 13:57, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Slow speed chase. Not specially peeved

Re this: did I miss something? 'cause you sound peeved, & I honestly don't know why. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 09:30, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Nope. I'm not remotely peeved. Sorry if that's how it looked.

At least, I am more or less permanently peeved with my ISP (?service provider) and with the way the telephone oligopoly operates in England. But I haven't figured out a way to blame you (nor any other member of the human race) for that.

It was merely a serious point to be taken (please) or ignored (as you wish) at face value.

Your talk page down loads very slowly to my pc, and I assume it's because there's more stuff on it than the telephone wires here in England can handle when the neighbors' kids get home and start going online.

Did you miss something? Not as far as I know.

But thanks - I should have mentioned it before - for the plane spotting link. I think probably I'm more useful concentrating on things I like more. Includes cars. But I did, moved by you, spot what might have been a grammatical error on the Boeing 727 page. (The first time I flew on an aircraft with wings it was as a passenger on a Lufthansa Boeing 727 so that seemed a good place to start looking...)

(Another thing that peeves me - how long do you have? - is all the time I have wasted since then because scheduled airlines fail to follow their own (ever less demanding) schedules.)

Enjoy breakfast. (I'd assumed you were too far west to be out of bed: wrong!)

Regards. Charles01 (talk) 09:45, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

No offence taken. I'm well used to my comments being less than perfectly clear, so I suspected I'd goofed somewhere again. =] And I'm evangelizing for PSW anywhere I find somebody remotely interested in cars or planes.

Airline flight scheduling is a perpetual mystery. I hear at some (all?) airports, the airlines, knowing passengers like early flights, will schedule takeoffs at (say) 06.00, knowing perfectly well they can't get more than (say) 40 takeoffs/hr, & so the 100 or so scheduled will stack at the gates & taxiways...& passengers will sit on board...& FAA won't do bugger all about it. (Sorry for being rude.)

I've been considering archiving my talk, but I've been a bit leery of screwing it up & losing it...

And I am mightily far west, but I keep odd hours, so y'never know when I'll turn up here & reply to you. Cheers. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 16:50, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Gonna land now

Re your comment on Bandini: FYI, races were often run on airports (off-hours) or disused airbases, because they had wide, strong surfaces with lots of runoff area. Silverstone started that way, & NHRA originated with airport events. (No need to reply...) TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 00:32, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The de-fenders

FYI, I came across a ref to "cycle wings" in researching Nardi, & "cycle fenders" here (evidently also translated, a bit indifferently, from Italian). Not that it gives us world peace (or tougher mandatory minimums), but it is, perhaps, marginally interesting. Cheers. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 11:08, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Seems there's more to these fenders than I'd imagined. Were women in the 1950s really shaped like that? I do remember working a few weeks in Australia with a couple of colleagues from the Mid West, and because I was 'used to' driving on the 'wrong' side of the road (or possibly because I'm a lousy passenger) I was permitted to do all the driving. I had them in stitches when I announced happily, after honking at yet another brain-dead bus driver, how I liked to hoot my hooter. Strange how easy it was to make those guys laugh, when they never seemed to understand my jokes... Thus cultural apartheid? I think a few days after that I got a speeding ticket for exceeding 20 km/h some place where the local bureaucrats figured 20 km/h was about right. Is that Aussie for nemesis? Anyhow, I fear this maybe drifting dangerously off scope. Regards Charles01 (talk) 09:53, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Was it Wilde who said "separated by a common language"? Try telling one of your Oz friends you root for your team. After he stops rolling around laughing, get him to explain. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 10:03, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] You can quote me

In an attempt to identify something I think was said by a famous Brit, let me ask you if "Here I stand, here I shall remain" sounds at all familiar. Winston comes to mind. No? A yes here would be appreciated; I will take no answer as a no, or "I've no clue". TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 13:36, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

The only one that I can think of is "Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders." usually attributed to Martin Luther and translated as "Here I stand: I can do no other". Is that what you're thinking of? I see the wikipedia article suggests he maybe didn't actually say it at all. Which would be sad.

Winston Churchill certainly had a good ear for a good phrase, and like many of the greatest wordsmiths often - whether knowingly or not - quoted other great wordsmiths. He may well have said something similar. The other one who really deserves a dictionary of quotations all to himself is Oliver Cromwell. If you are monarchist or think yourself Irish (Catholic tribe) you are more or less predestined to hate Oliver Cromwell, but whether you like him or hate him, his use of English was superb, and he is someone else in public life who easily might have come up with the quote you half remember whether or not he actually did....

Regards Charles01 (talk) 13:50, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

No, I don't think it was Luther (tho I may have conflated it); I recall it more recent than that. You're dead right on Winston, & I've seen a collection of quotations from him that makes a (small) book. Could be he borrowed or adapted it; "iron curtain" traces to Victoria, IIRC, & Winston (as widely read as he was) may've unconsciously used it for its ring (or consciously, drawing parallels we may not see now; I wouldn't put it past him).

Cromwell I'm completely unfamiliar with; not having an Irish nor Catholic bias, he bears examination. My thanks, even tho the question remains open.

On another matter of linguistic dispute, how strongly do you feel about "fighting" here? If it's too Boadiceaous (is that a word?) for you, I'll leave it alone, but it's fairly common among race commentators. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 04:23, 27 July 2008 (UTC) (P.S. "Victoria of the United Kingdom"? Who knew there were so many? P.P.S. From Her talk page, my fave is One of the best known Victorias of the United Kingdom who didn’t get to marry David Beckham (but the poshest spice of the lot) by Ian Spackman. 04:47, 27 July 2008 (UTC))

I don't feel terribly strongly about 'fighting' here. I tend to think it's not the best word, but there's plenty of scope for disagreement over this type of thing without either party being objectively 'right' or 'wrong'. And I never claimed to be well read on the subject of motor racing in the USA in the 1950s. With wikipedia, articles compiled by a committee of ten or fifty tend to end up a stylistic dogs' dinner because ten different people each will do their own thing their own way. Queen Victoria may be an instance of this: the Honda Accord, Mitsubishi Lancer, Ford Falcon certainly are examples. But for now with the Hilary(!) Bandini entry there are only the three of us working it currently and the joins between our differences to me appear relatively seamless.

A more general impression I'm gaining is that the Italian text on which we are basing ourselves is not specially scholarly or encyclopaedic. Am I permitted to think that? It certainly makes the case for a bit more digging into the sources in order to improve and tie down the English version. Purely on the 'style' side, the Italian text, to me, seems very dependent on a relatively small vocabulary and relatively few sentence types - with endless use of gerunds (well, isn't that what they call the '...ing' words) and a pathological reluctance to enter full stops (periods) in the middle of paras. Result is breathless teenager quasi-journalistic and maybe fun for two or three paras, but rather repetitive over twenty or fifty. Or? For the translation, that means I think there's no harm in employing a slightly wider range of structures, sometimes translating this one with 'fighting' and sometimes using a different word or maybe even turning the sentence structure over completely. Always provided one does not gratuitously change the meaning unless, of course, one has good source based reasons for so doing... Regards Charles01 (talk) 08:14, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't have real strong inclination to use "fighting", & I'm a touch concerned it's too "commentatorish" & less encyclopedic, whence the question (which I suppose I should've been clearer about, as usual... ;))

I don't think we're bound to keep the grammar or style, so long as changing it isn't changing the content or meaning, & I don't think we've done that, unless your Italian & my grasp of sports car racing is much worse than either of us realizes, ;D in which case the requests I put in to WP Motorsport & Sports Car Racing will find us out soon enough.

I wouldn't be surprised if the original was less than scholarly; I think there are a lot of young editors here. I also think the enthusiasm for the subject may have overpowered the writing skill, which wasn't necessarily it-5 to begin with. It's the journalistic & unencyclopedic I'm trying to avoid; a race fan or car guy would have no problem with "fighting with Ferrari", but Joe Average (Brit, U.S., Canada, or Oz) might find it a bit odd.

Looking at collaboration, I think I have some idea now how Larry & Jerry do it. (No, I'm not confused. It's an inside joke.) Tweak it carefully, & it doesn't show.

As for gerunds, you're asking the wrong guy. We took page after page of notes on grammar, for a week, in Grade 8, & when we were done, I promptly forgot all of it. I've never needed it (except for "Jeopardy!" ;D) or missed it.

Well, I'm off to fix the Bandini's disc brakes. Cheers. Grammar Challenged ^{fuggedaboudit} 08:53, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

<--Oh, next time you look at the Italian, have a glance at "In 1957, Bandinis dominated the 750 cc 'H Modified' category ('HM')". I changed it to "dominated", but now the results are clearer, I'm less sure 1st, 2d, 6h, 7h, & 10th qualifies. I have the sense there were a lot of Bandinis entered, which was 1 reason I used "dominated", but it could have a secondary meaning of being virtually ubiquitous, which needs clarifying. And can you have a look at "shell cup"? I'm presuming it's Shell, but (beyond a vague recollection) I'm unaware of the company awarding a prize in amateur racing. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 09:12 & 09:18, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

If this is the bit I think it is, the Italian uses 'monopolised' and I nearly went back to that (from 'dominated'). But then I figured that who ever translated it as 'dominated' must have had his reasons. And given my own cautious tendencies, I probably would have been unable to use 'monopolised' without a qualifying adverb such as 'effectively' or 'virtually' since if any race season was fully monopolised by anyone, it could only mean that there was only a single team participating. On Shell Cup, we'd probably get some clues from googling it, tho of course one never entirely knows with googled stuff - anyth9ng on the web or in print for that matter - which bits are reliable. Charles01 (talk) 09:23, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

My hope was the original would either use the Italian for "shell" or the proper name Shell, which would settle it; my suspicion, my hope, is, machine translation couldn't tell the difference. I'm prepared to leave "dominated" (in preference to "monopolized", which is no clearer) until I can get more information on whether it was comp or simple numbers, or unless the original says something to it in the nuances that's lost by bad translation. Thanks anyhow. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 15:09, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Welcome back to Bandini & Cie. FYI, I'm still waiting on my local library to track down a copy. :[ (How hard can this be?) Thanks for staying on it meanwhile. BTW, re the "astonishing comeback", some of that may've been my rewrite; 22 places in 6 laps is astonishing, in the wet even moreso. Glad to know it matched the original. ;D TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 04:14 & 04:17, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Peugeot

Honestly, I don't care either way. ;) Just let 'em source it; Paris sounded like a "too simple" change by somebody who didn't know better. And re Bandini: I know you're still watching & I'm still waiting better sources, so no worries. Have a good one. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 16:55, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] My God

You took priceless pictures of very obscure pieces of metal. This strange Toyota in Tenerife!. Thank you again for your work, Charles01. If you have more pictures, please upload. Enjoy the summer! :-) Randroide (talk) 13:25, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for bothering to share your reaction. We all like to be appreciated: well I do. Back in 1979 my girl friend (who was with me in Tenerife) thought my habit of photographing strange cars very nerdy. Maybe I thought the same. But wikipedia has certainly given the nerdy hobby of my youth a level of 'usefulness' to people other than myself way beyond anything I'd have anticipated. So three (at least) cheers for wikipedia.

As for "If you have more pictures, please upload.", I think I've more or less exhausted the possibilities now. I've uploaded one or two truly awful ones (example attached) where no one else has uploaded anything at all of the car in question: but in general I try only to upload ones that are half way decent and I've run out of those. Thanks again for your encouragement. You enjoy summer too. (Seems we're in the same hemisphere.) Regards Charles01 (talk) 14:09, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 7% solution

Happened to find it on your userpage. Is there something I should know, Mycroft? ;D John H. Watson, M.D. ^{who's the smart one?} 16:57, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Wonder where that came from.... Thanks for spotting it so quickly. I think heroin is what they give you here when you're dying, but they call it morphine for that. Best Charles01 (talk) 17:45, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Not yours? A likely story. ;D No prob for the catch; I'm keeping an eye out here on the Bandini front, in case. (BTW, I sent a "help" to 328cia for his Italian & car guyness (is that a word? ;D). And IIRC, I owed you one for a catch on my page. Either way, glad to do it. (Watch out for those syringes.) Insp. Lestrade ^{just put your lips together & blow} 22:36, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tatra trucks

Hi there, I've added extra info about Tatra trucks history to Tatra article, let me know what you think. Have a fun. Stonufka (talk) 13:50, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ref: Auto Union 1000

Hey Charles01, sorry, my mistake, just trying to get a good image – and i got it from the German Wikipedia Auto Union 1000 Article – i trully dislike the eye lids on the front ends, they make them look sad, i dont think they where a factory option anyway, please switch them back - greetings, Moebiusuibeom-en (talk) 19:35, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Hey, will be adding some data soon, was thinking we could replace image in question with this one, Image:AutoUnion (DKW) 1000 (registered 1965) right.jpg , eye lids et all, its the best one!, ... by the way, where are you from, don't usually find folks into this vehicles ~ Moebiusuibeom-en (talk) 14:00, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Charles01; in regards to your comments, the eye-lids may as a matter of fact, and as you say, may have been used to correct the propensity to dazzle, and improved night visibility particularly in fogy conditions, the old VW bugs also used them amongst maybe others, my theory; most likely the aerodynamic headlights where in an angle with the fender curves and facing something like 22.5º upwards and that may have been the reason, these where after-market accessories to improve performance just like the first Zender spoilers for the bug for better aerodynamics, except this one eventually became part of cars and turned as optional equipment on first generation Sciroccos, thank god eye-lids became history, but if they had a purpose, guess i may have used them too.

As you may have noticed, I've rearranged images on article, placed you favourite one on Infobox, you've created article and i respect that, though I don't particularly like that image, besides, i find the background too busy. May be doing additional adjustments and changes!

And upon further research, as mentioned in article, so many names, and it is really confusing!, here I've got the line up in chronographical order with comments:

• DKW F89 [DKW Meisterklasse 50-54] (fine!)
• DKW F91 [DKW Sonderklasse Cabriolet 53-55 (DKW 3=6)] witch is not mentioned in the DKW 3=6 article, here awesome photo Image:MHV DKW F89 Convertible 02.jpg. (I believe this image is named incorrectly since this is a DKW F91, i may be wrong though)
• DKW 3=6, in the German article= DKW F93 [DKW Sonderklasse 55-59], shouldn't we change nomenclature as they did in the German Wikipedia, [3] This model was really built between 55 and 59, the ones built between 53-55 where really DKW F91 in sedan form, the 55-59 models where same car but wider, Große DKW, im Deutsch), and provably many parts where not interchangeable.
• ...and then comes the Auto Union 1000 with the two different windscreens, and I'm still a little confused with the post and pre facelifts you mention.

I believe the Teutonics are also confused about the model line up, we can straighten this out and make it clearer, let me know your thoughts!

Although I'm almost old enough to remember when the Auto Union 1000 was new, I don't think I'd learned to read by then. Also I was living in England where they never sold more than a handful of these cars. Since they were hardly sold in anglophone markets, it's hard to know what was (or would have been) the correct English language name if they had. If you see what I mean. And as you say, I think even German speakers in Germany or the Alpenlaender - most of them now too young to remember when the cars were new - are unlikely to present a universal consensus concerning the name of the things. The potential for confusion in Germany was and is increased by the way models seem to have overlapped chronologically. You could buy either the old model or the new model as a new car for a considerable period. Whether they were building different generations simultaneously or simply building too many cars and then finding themselves having to use up old stock.... your guess is as good as mine, though I know which I think more likely!

That's part of why I spent so much time spelling out different names with the DKW 3=6. You'll maybe notice, too, that for several of the more likely names for that model I created a redirect page. And that's my point on all this. As long as all the names that a moderately well informed general reader may use redirect to the 'correct' page, I don't think it matters too much which name you prefer. Any 'solution' - preferred name - that you come up with will be the best solution for some people and not for others. And if they sold in significant numbers in non German speaking (but also non-English speaking) markets such as Argentina, you can be sure that people who remember them in Argentina may have 'learned' names for them that are not identical with the name leaned by German speakers in Germany. And which of these people will be consulting anglophone wikipedia in preference to German language wikipedia? Usw. I think you get some of those same issues arising in Mexico for the Borgward sedan (Berline?) models assembled there after the plant was shipped over from Bremen. Which is a long way of saying I don't really know the answer to what you propose. But IF you will change the name for any of those entries, I would urge that you also recreate or set up as appropriate redirect pages for people expecting a different name!

Yes, I had indeed noticed that you put the image I prefer in the info box for the Auto Union 1000. No doubt some day someone will come along with a better idea, which I guess is all part of the tantalising and constantly moving wiki process but meantime I like it. I had thought the 'eye-lids' were an aftermarket accessory, but I've seen several models with them, so maybe they fitted them at the factory as a quick and easy solution to the problem of light escaping into the eyes of oncoming drivers. Were light bulbs getting brighter at this time? On coming drivers were presumably getting on average lower because cars were getting lower during the 1950s and 60s, and as the German economy revived, the proportion of people driving passengers cars (rather than generally taller trucks and vans) would have been increasing steadily. Even if they weren't all driving Mercedes 190 SLs and Porsche 356s.

Charles01 (talk) 17:53, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Dulce de leche, that's what your grandfather ate, fascinating your family tree, maybe our grandfathers crisscrossed each other somewhere, my family immigrated in the 1900's, i was raised up, of all places, you know where, but with a twist though, in a predominally German neighbourhood, next to predominally British neighbourhood, (next station up), in an ocean of Italians, while being a smaller group traditions froze in time, and as youth, we both intermingled in our affairs, great parties we had, those where the days, and great they where. Moebiusuibeom-en (talk) 18:44, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that looks good. No wonder his wife was diagnosed with diabetes many decades before the condition became so endemic (or at least so widely diagnosed).

Argentina is interesting from here in terms of the extent to which the different European cultural identities having been retained. I wonder if that's because of the size of the country and the way the population was dispersed by the richness of the agricultural potential. If you live in so much space maybe you don't need to learn the languages and cultural habits of other groups, and I guess the rural agrarian basis of much of the economy right through much of the twentieth century left large chunks of the population more spread out than in those countries such as Chile or Australia where, despite the beauty of the countryside, almost everyone lived in one of just a few cities. Really as you can doubtless see,it's not something I know a whole lot about, but I remember my surprise when someone told me that Welsh cultural identity is more vigorous in Patagonia than in ... um ... Wales. No idea if that's true or not. No idea how you'd prove it anyhow. But I find it significant that someone even made the suggestion. Charles01 (talk) 17:53, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Ey Charles01, very busy at this time of year, will get back likely before years end, Happy Holidays - Moebiusuibeom-en (talk) 03:41, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image:IMG_8275.JPG listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:IMG_8275.JPG, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Jordan 1972 (talk) 22:55, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.107.195.243 (talk) 16:45, 19 February 2009 (UTC)  

[edit] Abbott Estate

Hi Charles

Have been reading the page relating to the Ford Zodiac on here and you appear to be the main contributor.

I was wondering if you took the pictures of the red Abbott Estate that have been posted. This car belongs to a friend of mine in Sheffield and I was wondering if you had took the shots....do you have the original images...before the blur was added.

The car "Bertha" has been resprayed since those shots were took and is now in a much more sombre burgandy and really looks the part.

If you do have the shots...or know who took them could you let me know... jh@jason-juliette.co.uk as I would love to pass them on the my mate.

Thanks very much.

Jason

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Charles01" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.107.195.243 (talk) 16:47, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Dear Jason

I'm not sure who - if anyone - did most of the work on the Ford Zephyr / Zodiac entry. It looks to me like a real committee job. My own contributions have as far as I remember, been limited to a few elements of grammatical pedantry. Though I see a couple of the pictures are 'mine'. Those Zephyrs / Zodiacs (Mk II) from the early 1960s are to my eye very photogenic and there are several good ones in the 'gallery' but the only seriously respectable (in my opinion) one of mine on currently on the Zephyr page of English language wiki is of a 1965 Zephyr 6 Mk III. I am quite pleased with that one, tho the light could have been better. Light could almost always be better.

See also (if I've remembered how to do these links) Category:Ford Zephyr

Be that as it may, I THINK the person who took the pictures that interest you goes by the name of Red Simon. He has contributed a lot of super wiki pictures of British cars from this period. He has a good eye and (I suspect) a better camera than I do. What we have in common (at least in the summer months) is the habit of wandering reound classic car shows photographing classic cars - serious nerdery or a great service to humanity depending where you're coming from - tho I have never met him and I think our photographic habits are concentrated in different corners of England. Your friend's Sheffield connection is just one of several clues on that. Be all that as it may, I've pasted your message on Simon's talk page and I expect he'll react to you when he notices.

Success Charles01 (talk) 09:08, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

Hi Charles Have been to my friends toady. He was shocked to think that his car was on here. We seem to think the shots were took at a show in Ripon now. Thanks for passing the message on. Jason.

[edit] Fouday and Ban de la Roche

Hello Charles,

I am a French girl (bad in English) and I much contributed to several of the stories of the [category Ban de la Roche] on French Wikipedia, under the name Mary Reed (English WP refused to register me under this name, it was already taken).

I left a message on the talk page of Fouday (which is part of Le Ban de la Roche) on this english wp.

There are many Americans of Bandelarochian origin.

I intended to write something about Le Ban de la Roche on english WP. It will be brief, chiefly links to French WP, and the work will go slowly, because it is difficult to me to write in English.

Probably you will be able to do better than me if you are interested in the subject. So please fell free to complement if you want.

Have a good day

--Nicolas Baeteman (talk) 07:38, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

You have effectively anticipated the reaction I already entered on the talk page of Fouday. I'd not realised the significance of some of this stuff in the US.

I don't have much to add. But I do wish you every success with "I intended to write something about Le Ban de la Roche on english WP". I agree that it needs doing. And there will be plenty of people - myself included - happy to 'improve' your English. The challenge, of course - for everyone involved but especially for you and maybe for me - is not to destroy the substantive meaning while 'correcting' your English. That's the challenge of wikipedia. One of the challenges of wikiedia.... Saluts & good weekend. Charles01 (talk) 07:52, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] French commune population densities

I agree that these need to be updated, too, but it is not one of my priorities. Sorry! Ksnow (talk) 16:30, 30 March 2009 (UTC)Ksnow

I just made an automatic pop. density calculation in the infobox, see Template talk:Infobox French commune#Automatic calculation of population density. Let me know if it gives bad results. Markussep ^Talk 11:53, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Sounds a good idea. I'll see if I can work what it is doing. I'm not up to speed with what wiki-templates do and/or with how they do it.

[Later: yes, it seems to work just fine. Brilliant. Clever chaps, these computers.]

There is an inherent problem that you appear to encounter here with numbers above 999 and with decimal numbers, because of the differing treatments of '.'s and ','s (and mere gaps which sometimes seems a useful cop out). The anglphone eye expects to see 1,175 and the francophone (& German & dutch & & &) eye expects to see 1.275 (as the engine capacity of some BMC Mini cars). I remember an endless discussion on the wiki-motor car project on this but I'm not sure it ever went anywhere. With motor cars (well, some motor cars) you have lots of people from both continents reading and editing the entries. With French communes there is a smaller audience which might (or might not) provide scope for a more consistently intelligent solution.

I don't know if this is relevant, but there seem to be two info box templates, both of which work in the French commune entries, and both of which do more or less the same thing. One is easier to copy and paste and adapt from fracophone to anglophone while the other you need simply to enter the data line by line to the info box by commune. I don't know (1) if one info box formet is to be prefered to the other nor (2) whether what you have done will apply to one or other or both.

Hmmmm Regards Charles01 (talk) 15:31, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Morris Marshal

Sorry, this is not really my cup o' tea. I have references on my pet Studebaker and Humber but nowt on BMC. There is a list of Morris contacts with emails and phone numbers here if you care to pursue them. Cheers Bjenks (talk) 09:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, thanks for thining about it. And thanks for the link. Charles01 (talk) 09:59, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Breaking links to images in commons

[edit] Articles for deletion nomination of Beatrice Beckett

I have nominated Beatrice Beckett, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Beatrice Beckett. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.
Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Tyrenon (talk) 19:40, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Re Fiat Tipo

Dear Charles,

I note that you submitted a picture of a Fiat Tipo for wikidedia last year, outside Ely catherdral. You say that this was from your own collection.

I am a Tipo fan and wondered whether the picture, or the car itself was from your own collection. Do you own the Tipo? Also was it a recent picture?.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards Seancosens1882 (talk) 21:38, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Dear Sean

Yes, no no.

(1)

My own collection: yes, while other kids were discussing football and / or drinking extra beer I was wandering round photographing cars. I still do it. Sad or what? Well, it worked for me, and these days it helps fill a niche in wikipedia, so I can even claim an element of public interest in support of my anorak habit. Back then the "game" was to photograph new cars, so this picture will have been taken shortly after Tipos turned up in England, some time in 1989. (At that time I lived nearby in Cambridge, an easy bike ride to the south of Ely: by that time I had a Mitsubishi so I might even have driven there.) An expert on Ely cathedral restoration might be able to pin down the date further: they seem to have been restoring some part of that cathedral for as long as I can remember. The film was actually processed in late summer, but probably contained pictures taken over the space of several months so I can't pin it down too precisely.

(2)

I have never owned a Tipo. I nearly rented one once in Italy but then they supplied a Golf instead, so that as far as I remember I never even drove one. It looked like a lot of car for the money with slightly less mainstream styling than major competitors, though to my mind the Ritmo/Strada or indeed the 128 had been easier on the eye. But that's only an opinion - possibly rather a conservative opinion - and clearly not one you should wish or need to share.

(3)

So, per (1) not a recent picture but a picture from 1989 The recent bit was scanning a whole lot of my better old colour slide car pictures onto a computer and, where it felt appropriate, uploading same to Wikipedia.

I rather like the picture you noticed because I like this angle for this car. Also, more by luck than by judgement, the lighting is just about ok. Despite looking well polished there's not so much reflection that you can soo the photographer reflected in the paintwork. And the backdrop is interesting without being TOO distracting. All the same, I suspect a professional might have substituted a less interesting background and maybe found a way to reduce the reflection further. I guess I was using my Olympus OM2 which was a good camera at the time, with a mild sky-light filter over the lens, without which the reflection would have been "worse".

So much thinking before the kids have even had breakfast. Must stop. But thanks for being interested.

Regards Charles01 (talk) 06:00, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] cwt

Hi, okay now I maybe understand little bit better... .:), thats very confusing unit short, long,imperial and us units and all that... maybe better to leave it alone.. rgds --Typ932 ^T·C 16:50, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Talbot Tagora

Charles, the article on the Talbot Tagora is currently under a featured article review (Wikipedia:Featured article review/Talbot Tagora/archive1). I know this is a big ask, but there are concerns over some of the references ([4] and [5]). It seems that you have a sizable archive of material that could be used to reference the article. I was hoping, you would be able to do that for me, as I do not have such resources at hand and it would be a shame if the article was demoted. OSX (talk • contributions) 12:15, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm. it's not a big ask in its own terms. However, what I think you've noticed me doing is going through the old motor magazines that I have in the loft covering roughly 1965 - 1974. The earlier ones were gifts from grown-ups grateful to free up space in their own houses and the later ones in many cases were paid for by me. I don't think I stopped buying motor magazines later when I got a relatively grown-up job of my own, but I no longer lived with my parents and the terrible truth is that I appear to have trashed most of the motor magazines I got hold of between 1975 and about 2000. I seem to have quite a lot covering the last few years >2001 but that's a bit late for the Tagora. So ... I'll happily keep an eye open and plug in more source notes for the Tagora if I come across suitable sources. And maybe I might pick up an old workshop manual at a clasic car show later during the summer (I'm in the northern hemisphere.). The Tagora's a bit 'modern' for classic car shows but there's one round here that sometimes turns up to them (generally accompanied by large angry rain clouds, for some reason). But as regards my existing "bank" of source materials, I'm not too hopeful regarding the Tagora. Then again I can't be the only one with a loft full of crated motor magazines....

Regards Charles01 (talk) 13:25, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

No worries then, but thank you anyway. OSX (talk • contributions) 02:39, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] John Hubert Arthur Coulson

I notice you found a death date for JHAC. Are you able to enter (or failing that, to tell me) your source, please? This is not so much a wiki-question as a genealogy question concerning a distant kinsman. I gather my mother knew JHAC and his sister in the 1920s/30s, but they lost contact in subsequent decades. (I gather, too, his intellect was somewhat dauntingly "to the fore" even as a youth, which I guess may be one of the qualifications you need for writing well crafted detective fiction.) Anyway, thank you, if you will, for anything you can add to my knowledge of the date and place of the fellow's death. Regards Charles01 (talk) 10:31, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

I found a death date at a favorite peerage site [6] scroll down to Constance Jane Dorothy Tayler. --Tommieboi (talk) 11:26, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Bedford TD Tipper Truck image

The Bedford truck shown is an A-type and pre-dates the Bedford D-Type (also known as the Bedford TD).

The truck '533DHK' has a Date of First Registration according to the DVLA of 16 06 1955.

The D-type/TD truck was first produced at the Bedford truck plant in Dunstable, Bedfordshire in 1957.

The previous model was the similar Bedford A-type first made in 1953 and renamed the D-type when the engines used were changed to the new Bedford 'in-house' diesel.

Post war Bedfords were originally designated A-type, D-type (normal-control) plus the "Big-Bedfords", S-type and C-type (forward control with the cab over the engine).

Later with the introduction of the popular 'TK' truck the 'D' type was renamed the 'TD' and itself in time was superseded by the 'TJ'. The 'T' indicated truck, differentiating the codes from Vauxhall's passenger cars (E, F, FB, FC, HA, HB etc.) and the Bedford Vans (CA, HA, CF).

I hope this information is useful. Sunbar (talk) 11:27, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I finds this interesting and useful. However, I just got back from Snetterton (touring car racing) with the kids and need to sleep. I'll come back to it latdr in the week and see if it means I need to correct any captions I entered. Unless you already did?

Best wishes Charles01 (talk) 22:55, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

(Later) Thank you. I've now uploaded the image in question with a corrected name and nominated the wrongly labelled version for delation. (As far as I know one cannot oneself delete images one had previously uploaded: this is some sort of obscure wiki-safeguard which I may have misunderstood, but if I have correctly understood it then, I guess, it makes some sort of wiki-sense.)

Out if interest, are you aware of any reliable source one can use for identifying these older (say 1940s-60s) trucks? Those Bedford Tippers were so popular in UK when I was a kid we barely gave them a second glance, and these days they still turn up occasionally at class car shows. But whereas I have various "sources" from which I can identify old cars (old contemporary motor magazines, The Complete Catalogie of British Cars by Culshaw and Horrobin, even old copies of The Observer's Book of Cars) I am aware of no equivalent oracle covering commericial vehicles. Often googling provides a reasonable answer. That's how I (think I) identified one or two lighter commercial vehciles from other UK manufacturers like the Morris J2. But with the Bedford trucks, a cross section of googled sources left me almost as confused as I had been at the start....and uploading a (n otherwise) reasonably useful image with the wrong name into the bargain Thank you if you will have any thoughts to share on this.

Someone might even be inspired to kick off a few more wiki-entries on some of these vehicles.

Thanks again & best wishes. Charles01 (talk) 08:15, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] AC ME3000

...or better AC 3000ME? Hi, from a member of the german wp. Thank you for launching this article about this nice, little mid-engined sports car from this famous company in Thames Ditton. And espacially "Thank you" for the many pictures about cars from the 70´s and 80´s. I´ve just launched a longer article in the german wp about this car. My annotations: To my mind the article shoud be moved to AC 3000ME because this was the offical name when production and sellings have started, AC ME 3000 was the name officially be used in the prototype era, although some journalists continued the use of this older name also in production times; my sources: [7]; (I´ve posted a parallel posting on the article-discussion-page). Many Greetings --Roland Rattfink (talk) 10:27, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for this reaction, Roland R.

I will try and take time with your German entry and steal from it for the English wiki article! Unless you will do it first? I know little about the car. Except that when I was driving along at the enge of Brentwood here in England I saw one, and it was so rare I turned my car, stopped it, got out, and took that picture. The real miracle is that ca. 30-40 years later I still have many of the pictures I took back then when I had no grown up job and much more time for photographing cars: student life was fun back then. Now the students are worried about the future, but back in the early 1970s we still had some of that sense from our parents that we were lucky to be alive at all. Though after the 1973 oil shortages, I guess we all learned the hard way that economic growth was not a one way street after all.

The name I used for this car is one I got from a source, probably (from memory) a journalists' headline. If you think it should be reversed to AC 3000ME, please reverse it. I never changed any page name yet, so I'm not sure I would know what to do. Though no doubt I can learn how to do it if I have to! But now is the time to do it if we will. As far as I know, till now, the only page that links to this entry is the AC (auto-manufacturer page) itself. Otherwise one can simply create a redirect page. The anglophone wiki project automobile page gets very exercised sometimes about how to name car entries where a car has different names in different times in different countries. There are so many names you can use for a single little Mitsubishi depending where or when. But as long as there are redirect pages for all the people who will not agree about the "correct" name, I think that is the more important thing. I think I have four different names for an entry I translated last year on the DKW 3=6.

And thank you for liking some of the other pictures I've uploaded. Many friends - especially but not exclusively female - thought photographing cars a sign of rampant insanity, but then I find some other folks' leisure time activities eccentric. Or worse. So each to his (or her) own pleasures. And wikipedia gives a welcome but till recently unexpected "public interest" justification for some of my old car pictures.

Gruesse Charles01 (talk) 14:41, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

+ Was bedeutet Rattfink, bitte? In Nederland at the Slagerei/Metzgerei a "Fink" is a sort of single portion of meat loaf (Art von Fleishckaese) wrapped around in a thin sheet of beef. It is called Fink, I suppose, because it is the same size and shape as a rather plump Fink/Finch. Maybe also in Koelsch? Aber Rattfink? Is this something people eat in China?

To your “rambling” reaction, as you call it (a nice edit summary):

Why shoudn´t we sometimes endulge in reminiscences, especially when watching old pictures (or actual pictures of antiquated things)? Comprehensible - at least to me, even if I might be some years younger. My german version of the AC 3000ME is admittedly very long, so it would take some time to translate it in english completely. But if you want, you can “steal” as much as you want. Though I think it would be easier to grap the desired information from here [8], which was my basis too. There are so many subpages about history, standard specification etc. (just look at the overview under “information” and “site map”). Additional information can be taken from my articel-footnotes which refer mostly to english documents.

I think longer articles should be written by people with a professional or near-native level of english, mine may be good enough for reading, discussing, translating from english to german but maybe not the other way round with all these technical terms, sometimes different in american english and british english (there is a nice quotation about this last aspect in the foreword of Trevor Legate´s book “Cobra”, written by William Hurlock (former AC-director, died 1992 at the age of ca. 72), when he describes the first contacts between Shelby´s engineers and those in Thames Ditton). So I won´t plague myself with retranslating it, even because I have some ideas for the next articles in WP.de surrounding the AC 3000ME and older models. E.g. I´ve seen two nice pics with AC 2-Litre-Saloons or the green AC 428 at the 1973 London Motor Show ... - I wonder who was the photographer ;-)

The AC 3000ME you have photographed might be chassis-Nr. ME...108, the car that was featured in the first sales brochure, intrinsically the last prototype/pre-production car (so the prototype-name AC ME 3000 would be correct in this case), the car which is now under restoration at AC Heritage in Brooklands [9]. That car did a lot of road testing in 1979/80 with AC-engineers and Robin Rew from Silverstone who has created the rare turbo version and did a lot of other improvements to the chassis, the gearbox and the engine. But other early production cars where canary yellow too.

Concerning the english article: To my mind he ideal way would be to trasfer it to "AC 3000ME" including the whole history and maybe the small discussion-page with history too. In WP.de we have a practical button in the header of each page but there isn´t an equivalent in the header of WP.en, but the tool must be the same; it´s just unclear to me where it is hidden in WP.en. The AC (auto-manufacturer) page has the right subheading right now ("3000ME") and the facts are in there too (“For AC, such delays meant that the first production cars (now renamed 3000ME) were not delivered until 1979...”). Additionally there is one other article, "Ford Essex V6 engine (UK)", referring to the AC 3000ME (I have just standardized it from AC 3000_ME).

Concerning the DKW you´re right: You have to be an insider to find the differences between the Meisterklasse/F 89, the Sonderklasse/F 91, the 3=6/F93/F94 and the 1000/1000S (but look at the grills, the engines, the tire-size...). A Porsche 911 might be a 964-, 993-, 996- or 997-series..., for non-insiders a Bristol 406 looks very similar to the 409. Or look at the pre-war cars. And you Englishmen had the badge-engineering... ;-)

A last “rambling”: My name is just a nick without real meaning. I was just looking for a name with an alliteration on R and so I found [10]: I didn´t knew the cartoon before, but in my youth I´ve loved the Pink Panther and the series started in the year of my birth and it´s the everlasting struggle of good and evel, yin and yang .... The idea with “fink” as a meat loaf from the Netherlands was totally new to me, although I like cooking. But now back to the articles... Viele Grüße, --Roland Rattfink (talk) 18:22, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi you can move the page using the move button, it should preserve the page history also --Typ932 ^T·C 21:55, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] GA reassessment of Lancia Flaminia

I have conducted a reassessment of the above article as part of the GA Sweeps process. I have found some concerns with the article which you can see at Talk:Lancia Flaminia/GA1. I have placed the article on hold whilst these are fixed. I am letting you know as you are a major contributor to this article. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 22:21, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Articles needing translation from French Wikipedia

Please help translate commune articles from French wikipedia!! Your contributions are greatly needed!! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 17:56, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Fiat Topolino dimensions

In this edit, you introduced dimensions for the Fiat Topolino, and credited them to an old 1960 Practical Motorist. If you own that magazine, can you double check it? I've updated the dimensions based on another source, because the ones you provided seem far too large. They would make the Topolino larger than a Morris Minor. I've parked a Minor next to a Topolino, and I know that is far from true.—Kww(talk) 02:40, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I've crated up that old magazine so I'm not sure how quickly I can extract it. But I agree completely the logic of what you write. Whether the error came from my source or from me, the values I entered appear to have been wrong. Thanks for correcting them. Regards Charles01 (talk) 12:00, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] My user page

Thanks for correcting the typo. The page anyway needs a bit of a revamp, there are many others lurking. I don't mind when it is obviously constructive like this and is not changing my meaning.

Best wishes, keep up the good work. SimonTrew (talk) 16:23, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Lancia Flavia

Hello, can you check again the fuel capacity for Lancia Flavia?, I think there is error now with 5 litres. --Typ932 ^T·C 18:44, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that had to be wrong. I've put in the figure from the French wiki article for now. Digging through the old motor magazines can take a little longer! Regards Charles01 (talk) 19:39, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks --Typ932 ^T·C 19:41, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Toyota Camry image

Hi Charles01, Can I use your Camry Estate picture for a book? Thanks.

celica21gtfour@yahoo.ie

Which picture? What book? It's good that you ask. Several of the pictures I've uploaded to wikipedia simply turn up in unexpected corners of Planet Earth without source information or evidence of attribution: I guess that's the nature of the beast. But since you are polite enough to ask, I cannot help wondering (1) subject of book (2) anticipated print run (3) language(s) / countries of availability.... (4) approx size (number of words / number of picture (5) all the stuff I forgot

(In terms of 'permission' I imagine any authorization I can give you will be subject to Wikipedia's licensing and copyrighting terms which, if yours is a commercial project, you have probably studied and understood in greater depth than I did.)

If this exchange appears to disappear after a few days it's because I'll probably move it to the bottom of the page eventually in order to respect the chronology of the (other) discussions on the page. Regards Charles01 (talk) 07:06, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Toyota Starlet image

Charles01, I just edited the Starlet KP60 5 door, it's the facelift 1981 not 1978. Also try to put the model code and exact year of other Toyotas. BTW, did you take the old car pictures recently or years ago when they were new?

Regards, celica21gtfour. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.136.67.47 (talk) 11:21, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. These days I do indeed tend to enter model codes for myself when upoading pictures of Toyotas. However, when I uploaded the one that you mention, I would not have entered the model codes. I would have left that for an expert. Back then, there wasn't so much clarity / unanimity on wikipedia about Toyota model codes as there is now, and I would have taken the view that entering a wrong model code was worse than not entering any model code.

To your question, the picture that you just edited of a Toyota Starlet was taken in 1978. That is why I entered '1978' in the date line.... Sorry if that sounds gratuitously sarcastic: I was born in England. More seriously, it is possible that I am wrong about the year when I took the picture, but that is how I filed it way back whenever I did. And it's worth bearing in mind that Toyota launch facelifted models in different years in different countries, so you cannot assume that something introduced in your country in 1981 was introduced everywhere ewlse in the same year. BUT if you are confident of your information, please enter the facelift date in the text surrounding the picture and change the photo date to something like "1981 (estimate)".

More seriously still, where the photograph date and the car date vary significantly, I tend to enter both as in "2009 (photo) 1934 (car)". However, when I started uploading pictures of cars, I thought I'd just do a few, and I didn't have such a structured approach to the process. And as you'll maybe have noticed for yourself, the wiki instruction actually requests the photo date and not (for example) the facelift date.

Regards Charles01 (talk) 12:15, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Toyota Celica image

Hi Charles01, Regarding the black 5th generation Celica, did you take this pic in Utrecht, NL? From the front light and mirror, it's an American version of 1990-1991 Celica 1.6 ST Coupe. For this matter, I'm pretty sure it's 1990, not 1988. Toyota launched the 5th gen Celica in Japan in Sept 1989, arrived in America a month later, and in most countries in early 1990. I have the German press release dated Dec 1989.

Regards,

Arvin (celica21gtfour).

Yes, I took the picture in Utrecht, Nederland in the little 'drop-off' point / short stay car park above and on the southside of the rail tracks/platforms at the central rail station.

They've extended the Hoog Katherijne (which I almost certainly spell wrongly) shopping centre over the station since then, and I don't think the car park exists in that form any more.

Date? Yes, as far as I can make out from the Japanese entry, production of this version got under way in the Autumn of 1989, so most likely after the summer vacations provided the opportunity to switch dies of the presses and make all the other changes on the production line to accommodate the new shape. So I must have taken the picture in 1989 at the earliest. 1990 would be a reasonable inference. I do remember it was a cold bright winter day (big light: big reflections...) , so March 1990 seems reasonable.

I didn't know this notchback version of this Celica was ever sold in Germany. At that time European markets were viewed more individually than today, and both Belgium and Nederland got a wider range of Toyotas than Germany or UK. I guess the idea was that in countries without a significant 'domestic' auto-industry, the newly expanding Japanese should go for the mass market. But in Germany or UK competing against Volkswagen or Ford UK for the volume sales on their home patches in Germany / UK could be less profitable than concentrating on certain niches. Of course it's also cheaper and quicker to set up relatively dense dealer networks in smaller contries like Nederland & Belgium, which were particularly attractive in that respect because of relatively high earning power coupled with a largely urbanized population, so you need fewer larger dealers to cover the territory than you would in Wales or the corn belt states. Incidentally, I don't think this notchback Celica was ever a big seller anywhere in western Europe: its rarity was one of the reasons I would have been motivated to photograph it. I do, however, also have somewhere a picture of one with a Belgian license plate (which I guess is why I'm going on about NL and B in this para.

Regards Charles01 (talk) 07:19, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi Charles01, Perhaps someone brought this black Celica 1.6 ST-i notchback from USA. I know someone brought a US spec GT-Four (All-Trac) to Belgium, then he moved to Finland. Another All-Trac was found for sale in Hungary. When I had vacation in Europe, I found US spec Lexus SC400 in France, Tercel in Italy, and Camry LE in Belgium. It's quite common to see US spec cars in Europe. For the 5th gen Celica, UK only got 2.0 GT-i Liftback, GT-Four & GT-Four Carlos Sainz, while in the Continent there were 1.6 ST-i Liftback & 2.0 GT-i Cabriolet. The wide body Liftback 2.0 GTS-i was sold exclusively in NL & B. BTW, where did you take pic of 4th gen Celica notchback?

Regards,

Arvin (celica21gtfour).

Not entirely sure which Toyota Celica counts as fourth generation, but if you mean this one I photographed it in Cambridge, England (at the north end of the Trumpington Road, along a little parallel road called, as far as I remember, Brookside) I don't think it's a UK spec model tho, and from what I can see of the wipers it might not even have the steering wheel on the "English" (and indeed Japanese) side of the car. It's true there are a lot of US spec cars that fetch up in Europe, especially where there are US military bases nearby. There are a lot of US military bases near to Cambridge left over from World War II because it was close to Germany which the Brits and their allies were at the time keen to bomb. The bases stayed, primarily because of the threatening stance of the Soviets, and of course the US military personnel almost all had cars which they were often able to purchase (at least by European standards) for fantastically low prices. For Japanese originating cars you also get a lot of 'grey imports' in the UK, because (1) the Japanese used car market generally fixes lower used car prices than the European used car market and (2) the Brits and the Japanese agree that in North America, and in most of Europe, folks all drive on the 'wrong' side of the road. Still, I guess it's the differences that make life interesting as long as we don't all see it as a reason to drop bombs on each other again. Regards Charles01 (talk) 09:35, 19 December 2009 (UTC)