...here's the physics explanation:

Other Jeremy Clarkson quotes:

1. “I’d like to consider Ferrari as a scaled down version of God.”

2. [On the Porsche Boxster] “It couldn’t pull a greased stick out of a pig’s bottom.”

3. [When driving the Mercedes SLR McLaren through a tunnel] “When they debate as to what the sound of the SLR engine was akin to, the British engineers from McLaren said it sounded like a Spitfire. But the German engineers from Mercedes said ‘Nein! Nein! Sounds like a Messerschmitt!’ They were both wrong. It sounds like the God of Thunder, gargling with nails.”

4. “I’m sorry, but having an Aston Martin DB9 on the drive and not driving it is a bit like having Keira Knightley in your bed and sleeping on the couch. If you’ve got even half a scrotum it’s not going to happen.”

5. “Speed has never killed anyone, suddenly becoming stationary… that’s what gets you.”

6. “Koenigsegg are saying that the CCX is more comfortable. More comfortable than what… being stabbed?”

7. [On Detroit] “God may have created the world in six days, but while he was resting on the seventh, Beelzebub popped up and did this place.”

8. “Owning a TVR in the past was like owning a bear. I mean it was great, until it pulled your head off, which it would.”

9. [On the Renault Clio V6] “I think the problem is that it’s French. It’s a surrendermonkey.”

10. [On the Enzo Ferrari] “I rang up Jay Kay, who’s got one, and said: “Can we borrow yours?” and he said, “Yeah, if I can borrow your daughter, because it amounts to the same thing.”

11. [On the Porsche Cayenne] “I’ve seen gangrenous wounds better looking than this!”

12. “The air conditioning in Lamborghinis used to be an asthmatic sitting in the dashboard blowing at you through a straw.”

13. “Whenever I’m suffering from insomnia, I just look at a picture of a Toyota Camry and I’m straight off.”

14. “If you were to buy a [BMW] 6-series, I recommend you select reverse when leaving friends’ houses so they don’t see its backside.”

15. “That [Pagani] Zonda, really! It’s like a lion in orange dungarees. Kind of fierce, but ridiculous all at the same time.”

16. [On a Chevrolet Corvette] “The Americans lecture the world on democracy and then won’t let me turn the traction control off!”

17. [On the Alfa Romeo Brera] “Think of it as Angelina Jolie. You’ve heard she’s mad and eats nothing but wallpaper paste. But you would, wouldn’t you?”

18. “A turbo: exhaust gasses go into the turbocharger and spin it, witchcraft happens and you go faster.”

19. “This is a Renault Espace, probably the best of the people carriers. Not that that’s much to shout about. That’s like saying ‘Oh good, I’ve got syphilis, the best of the sexually transmitted diseases!’”

20. “In the olden days I always got the impression that TVR built a car, put it on sale, and then found out how it handled – usually when one of their customers wrote to the factory complaining about how dead he was.”

21. [On the Mercedes CLS55 AMG] “It sounds like Barry White eating wasps.”

22. “I’d rather go to work on my hands and knees than drive there in a Ford Galaxy. Whoever designed the Ford Galaxy upholstery had a cauliflower fixation. I would rather have a vasectomy than buy a Ford Galaxy.”

23. “Usually, a Range Rover would be beaten away from the lights by a diesel powered wheelbarrow.”

24. “Racing cars which have been converted for road use never really work. It’s like making a hardcore adult film, and then editing it so that it can be shown in British hotels. You’d just end up with a sort of half hour close up of some bloke’s sweaty face.”

25. “I don’t understand bus lanes. Why do poor people have to get to places quicker than I do?”

-----------------------------------------------

Driving my California White Amazon makes me sing too!

Here's what I want for Christmas:  A do it yourself Amazon kit.

 
¯"I wanna be Bobby's girl!"¯
...and BTW, I love my new lift-and-separate-rocket-bra!"

...when the puller finally releases a stuck a rear drum....or
hey, I take it back about wanting to borrow your SVO 12 83...

François:  Do you know what kind of a bomb it was?
Clouseau:  The exploding kind!

A similar look is what most people get from the (summer help maybe) guy behind the counter at their automotive parts store when he asks them "...what car is this alternator for", and they reply for instance "...a '66 122S". 

...but sometimes, he's just not in the mood to hear "his masters voice"!

What we drink at SwEm!

...from the 122S Owners Manual.

With apologies to comedian Jeff Foxworthy...You may be a Volvo-nut if:

1.  Your kitchen sink has doubled as a fuse-block final cleaning station.

2.  You decide you like movies like "All the Presidents Men" and "Mouse Hunt" just because of the starring vehicles.

3.  You know what a dash-pot is.

4.  You have as many pictures of your Volvo(s) in various poses and locations as your family.

5.  You were convinced your spine was shrinking until you replaced the seat cushion suspension bands.

6.  You talk back, in expletives, to new car commercials featuring "dual A arm front suspension".

7.  When someone says "I used to have one of those", you matter-of-factly observe that you still do!

Suggestions Welcome.

SUV (Swedish Utility Volvo) with overstuffed seats to rival the finest Barkalounger.

Choices?

source:  Car & Driver Mar. 2001

Peter Egan [Road & Track] Tool Dictionary:   

• AIR COMPRESSOR: A machine that takes energy produced in a coal-burning power plant 200 miles away and transforms it into compressed air that travels by hose to a Chicago Pneumatic impact wrench that grips rusty suspension bolts last tightened 40 years ago by someone in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, and rounds them off.
• AVIATION METAL SNIPS: See hacksaw.
• BATTERY ELECTROLYTE TESTER: A handy tool for transferring sulfuric acid from a car battery to the inside of your toolbox after determining that your battery is dead as a doornail, just as you thought.HAMMER: Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a kind of divining rod to locate expensive car parts not far from the object we are trying to hit.
• CRAFTSMAN 1/2 x 16-INCH SCREWDRIVER: A large motor mount prying tool that inexplicably has an accurately machined screwdriver tip on the end without the handle.
• DRILL PRESS: A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest and flings your beer across the room, splattering it against the Snap-On Tool Calender over the bench grinder.
• EIGHT-FOOT LONG DOUGLAS FIR 2X4: Used for levering a car upward off a hydraulic jack.
• ELECTRIC HAND DRILL: Normally used for spinning steel Pop rivets in their holes until you die of old age, but it also works great for drilling rollbar mounting holes in the floor of a sports car just above the brake line that goes to the rear axle.
• E-Z OUT BOLT AND STUD EXTRACTOR: A tool that snaps off in bolt holes and is ten times harder than any known drill bit.
• HACKSAW: One of a family of cutting tools built on the Ouija board principle. It transforms human energy into a crooked, unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.
• HYDRAULIC FLOOR JACK: Used for lowering a Mustang to the ground after you have installed a set of Ford Motorsports lowered road springs, trapping the jack handle firmly under the front air dam.
• MECHANIC'S KNIFE: Used to open and slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your front door; works particularly well on boxes containing convertible tops or tonneau covers.
• OXYACETYLENE TORCH: Used almost entirely for lighting those stale garage cigarettes you keep hidden in the back of the Whitworth socket drawer (What wife would think to look in there?) because you can never remember to buy lighter fluid for the Zippo lighter you got from the PX at Fort Campbell.
• PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER: Normally used to stab the lids of old-style paper-and-tin oil cans and splash oil on your shirt; can also be used, as the name implies, to round-out Phillips screw heads.
• PHONE: Tool for calling your neighbor Chris to see if he has another hydraulic floor jack.
• PLIERS: Used to round off bolt heads.
• SNAP-ON GASKET SCRAPER: Theoretically useful as a sandwich tool for spreading mayonnaise; used mainly for getting dog-doo off your boot.
• TIMING LIGHT: A stroboscopic instrument for illuminating grease buildup on crankshaft pulleys.
• TWEEZERS: A tool for removing wood splinters.
• TWO-TON HYDRAULIC ENGINE HOIST: A handy tool for testing the tensile strength of ground straps and hydraulic clutch lines you may have forgotten to disconnect.
• TROUBLE LIGHT: The mechanic's own tanning booth. Sometimes called a drop light, it is a good source of vitamin D, "the sunshine vitamin," which is not otherwise found under cars at night. Health benefits aside, its main purpose is to consume 40-watt light bulbs at about the same rate that 105-mm howitzer shells might be used during, say, the first few hours of the Battle of the Bulge. More often dark than light, its name is somewhat misleading.
• VISE-GRIPS: Used to round off bolt heads. If nothing else is available, they can also be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.
• WHITWORTH SOCKETS: Once used for working on older British cars an motorcycles, they are now used mainly for hiding six-month old Salems from the sort of person who would throw them away for no good reason.
• WIRE WHEEL: Cleans rust off old bolts and then throws them somewhere under the workbench with the speed of light. Also removes fingerprint whorls and hard-earned guitar callouses in about the time it takes you to say, "Django Reinhardt."
• ZIPPO LIGHTER: See oxyacetelene torch.

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