Rolls-Royce Ghost v Phantom

Dan McNeil v2 wrote:

Your above post is a classic of the genre, stuffed as it is with a mixture of ignorance, fiction and inaccuracy

Ignorance, quite possibly. When you have my youth, you are still very naive, as I am well aware.

Dan McNeil v2 wrote:

a classic was your reference to David Bache in the Citroen DS thread, in which you referred to the Chief Stylist of the SD1 and Metro (amongst others) as an engineer (he was a designer – surely you, as an apparent Rover expert, should have known that). Calling Bache an engineer is like claiming that Giugiaro was an ice-cream salesman – it demonstrates an astonishing lack of knowledge, wrapped in your increasingly transparent disguise of gravitas.

I'm sorry, but I've been familiar enough with his work on the P5 and the P6 to know that he was an engineer long before BL existed.

Dan McNeil v2 wrote:

And, when someone pulls you up on your howlers, your response is always a variation on an increasingly familiar theme: you were being “rhetorical”; you were “just guessing”; you were “putting it extremely simply”; you “weren’t actually saying that”. What you never say is: “yeah, you’re right – you called me straight on that one.”

I think you'll find, on the Jaguar engine thread, I have freely admitted to being wrong on some issues. Sometimes you have taken what I've said more literally than I've meant it. If that is through some fault in my expression, I apologise.

Dan McNeil v2 wrote:

Such lack of insight and self-awareness demonstrates that you’ve yet to drive a car of any significance. Certainly, none of your posts suggest you have any experience of anything more interesting to relate than your fascinating account of not being terribly uncomfortable when you were spread-eagled over the transmission tunnel of your parent’s terminally dull 2001 BMW 5 series estate on a moderately long motorway journey.

Well, I've actually driven a number of cars of significance, though mostly on disused airfields. Mk1 Jaguar XJ (I think it was a Series III), Rover P6 (auto and manual, V8 and 4-pot), Range Rovers of all three generations (off-road only), a Land Rover Defender, a Rover SD1 Vitesse, many variants of BMW 3- and 5-series (I really want to get my hands on an E38 7-series, but haven't as yet), Peugeot 205 Roland Garros (a lot of fun, but a bit scary, because of its total lack of crash protection - no, I didn't stuff it). I've also had the odd go in a Porsche 944 and a Mercedes W124 estate.

As for my "fascinating account of not being terribly uncomfortable when you were spread-eagled over the transmission tunnel of your parent’s terminally dull 2001 BMW 5 series estate on a moderately long motorway journey", if you'd ever driven the car in question, you'd realise it isn't dull. Sure, it's a little lacking in character, but, when pressing it hard on a B-road (or a windy airfield perimeter track), it's a lot of fun. Being on the edge, engine up around 4500rpm, in third gear, feeling the tail begin to break traction, then go into a proper slide, holding the slide... it's a wonderful sensation, and a wonderfully benign car to learn these things on, knowing it's big and heavy enough that you have to anticipate your steering, accelerating and braking inputs: it's not a go-kart, but it's not going to flip round and kill you either.

As for "not being terribly uncomfortable when you were spread-eagled over the transmission tunnel", I can assure you that, despite being 5'10", I was perfectly, 100% comfortable. Not 'not terribly uncomfortable'. I think you 'misunderestimate' the E39, to misquote President Bush: I personally think it will come to be considered as much a classic, an icon even, as the Mk1 XJ.

Dan McNeil v2 wrote:

And, to compound your mock-gravitas, you always have that old standby, the “friend” who owns or has driven a car you’ve no experience of, thus enabling you to inject some bogus authority into a discussion.

Instead, you initiate threads that require people to post their counter-experiences (e.g. your Bargain of the Century thread), and, when they post their guileless and honest response, you attempt to trash them and their experiences (in a clumsy, asinine, Clarkson-aping and teenager-pretending-to-be-worldly manner).

I’d put you at 22, and living with the parents. Nothing wrong with that, but get over it.

I have never employed the 'friend' as a device to compound any mock-gravitas. It is purely used to illustrate my own indirect experience (IE as a passenger). I do not claim to have any gravitas. In fact, here goes. I have absolutely no gravitas whatsoever. That comes with a greater amount of age, experience and maturity than I have on my side. If I have offended you with it, that was not my intention.

Furthermore, not all my threads require people to post their counter-experiences: see the Jaguar Engines thread. If my responses to some others' postings have seemed like 'trashings', again, I apologise, as I did not mean them in that way. I merely expressed some mild surprise at some of their experiences, contrasting them on occasion with my own (when it came to that C5, it was from having ridden in one as a front-seat passenger for a shortish journey involving B, A and M roads). Clumsiness has always been a weakness of mine: asinine I may well be. I admit to finding Clarkson entertaining (if sometimes irksome and repetitive), but I have never attempted, other than in jest in conversation with friends and family, to ape him. Even then, it's just sending up his manner of speech, as in "The fastest car... pregnant pause... in the world!".

Please do not take anything I write as pretending to be worldly. I know I am very, very far from worldly. I am far too young. You even flatter me with your guess as to my age: I will be 19 this summer and I am currently living with my parents and am in full-time education (sixth-form college, trying to get my life back on track after my secondary education went to pot... and no, don't leap to conclusions. I have won two lawsuits against former schools for neglect of duty).

Anyway, enough. I know when I'm not welcome. I'll see if I can close my account here. You probably won't hear from me again. Goodbye and thanks for the friendly welcome.

Have you thought about where the next generation of car enthusiasts and connoisseurs are going to come from?