I bet you didnt know that

MadYaker · 24-11-2017 4:38pm

Lamborghini makes tractors as well as cars.

Quazzie · 24-11-2017 4:40pm

MadYaker wrote: »

Lamborghini makes tractors as well as cars.

Porsche make lawnmowers

uch · 24-11-2017 4:46pm

MadYaker wrote: »

Lamborghini makes tractors as well as cars.

Actually it's the other way round, they make cars as well as Tractors, Tractors were their original business, owner just fancied making himself a supercar and voila

Are Am Eye · 24-11-2017 5:02pm

MadYaker wrote: »

Lamborghini makes tractors as well as cars.

They also make gas boilers.

RiderOnTheStorm · 24-11-2017 5:10pm

uch wrote:

Actually it's the other way round, they make cars as well as Tractors, Tractors were their original business, owner just fancied making himself a supercar and voila

Haven't got time to look up exact story/detail, so pls forgive any minor errors. According to urban story, Mr Lamborghini wanted to buy a Ferrari, but they would not sell him one. Ferrari are (still) very picky who they sell to. Just having enough money isn't enough. They regarded Mr Lamborghini as "just a farmer", albeit a very rich one. So he hired a Ferrari designer (or engineer?) and he dedicated some of his tractor factory to making cars. Thus started a great rivalry between the 2 super car makers....and their fans.

bonzodog2 · 24-11-2017 5:11pm

I once had some forestry safety wellies made by Nokia

Duffy the Vampire Slayer · 24-11-2017 5:13pm

MadYaker wrote: »

Lamborghini makes tractors as well as cars.

When I was a kid, I was only aware of the tractors because I saw them regularly in Mayo. It's not the kind of place you see many Lamborghini cars.

I remember hearing a dead baby joke- 'What's the difference between a Lamorghini and a pile of dead babies? You won't find a Lamborghini in my garage.' A lot of the impact of the joke was lost on me because I was wondering why a tractor was involved.

Fourier · 24-11-2017 5:23pm

Garden Warblers and European sparrows are capable of placing molecules in their eyes into superposition, i.e. spinning up and down at the same time/exist in two parallel histories. Molecules in these two different states react differently to magnetic fields and the birds' eyes perform a "computation" comparing the parallel histories, which is conveyed to the birds' brain as sensory information allowing them to see the Earth's magnetic field.

They can maintain molecules in parallel histories longer than any man-made quantum computer.

This ability is thought to have evolved in the Dinosaur clade Paraves (a type of raptor) from which birds evolved.

New Home · 24-11-2017 5:24pm

^^^
Wow.

Wibbs · 24-11-2017 5:52pm

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

Haven't got time to look up exact story/detail, so pls forgive any minor errors. According to urban story, Mr Lamborghini wanted to buy a Ferrari, but they would not sell him one. Ferrari are (still) very picky who they sell to. Just having enough money isn't enough. They regarded Mr Lamborghini as "just a farmer", albeit a very rich one. So he hired a Ferrari designer (or engineer?) and he dedicated some of his tractor factory to making cars. Thus started a great rivalry between the 2 super car makers....and their fans.

What happened was Lamborghini was a customer of Ferrari and had a few of his cars. Enzo wasn't so snobby to turn down good money and Lamborghini was very wealthy. The problem came when Lamborghini had a problem with some aspect of his latest model and complained. Enzo replied the driver was the problem, not the car. Lamborghini though feck this I'll make my own. He set out to make a better, more reliable high speed Italian grand tourer.

That happened quite a bit with Ferrari. There were a few car companies started on the back of buyers and dealers having issues with Ferrari's cars or the man himself. Monteverdi was another. A few buyers got tired of his cars because of reliability issues. Steve McQueen was one. His Lusso's engine kept wearing out its piston rings after a few months and produced enough smoke to rival the Batmobile.

Ferrari's Prancing Horse symbol was based on the same shield worn by a well known WW1 Italian pilot ace that Enzo respected. The pilot's parents had met Enzo at a race and told him that the shield was their son's good luck symbol so he added it to the (Alfa Romeo)cars he raced and then later became the trademark of the company. In the early days most of Ferrari's(and many other European race cars) race cars were right hand drive, the touring cars were left hand drive.

goose2005 · 24-11-2017 5:55pm

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

I'm not sure how one would decide which thing is the MAIN theme, different readings identify different dimensions of the text. When I was teaching it we also discussed the tension in the novel between modernity (and science, technology, rationalism) and the archaic (the magical, the animalistic), van helsing being a clear representative of the former and Dracula in some ways the latter. That tension was an important part of Victorian society as it came to terms with Darwinism, industrialisation, etc and so on, and there was a kind of anxiety or fear of the premodern.

A student of mine noted that when Harker (or whatever name is!) goes to Transylvania first, the journey is punctuated by a gradual deterioration of the specificity of time. So leaving London you have exact departure times of trains and so on, to the minute, while as he approaches his destination the times of his transports become less exact, eventually being measured in days. The idea of needing to know the exact time is itself a product of the industrial agree, in particular the train, which connected massively disparate places and required the standardisation of time to an extent never before known (and the formalisation if time zones). The novel uses descent into an informal sense of time as a way of measuring his movement away from the rational and the civilised, and into the unknown, the archaic, which is linked in various ways with fear, and anxieties of the age about things outside of "civilisation", a kind of definition that was increasingly coming to help justify the empire (see the image of van helsing drawing a circle in the snow into which no evil can come).

So, there really are a lot of things going on in the novel, none of this even scratches the surface of the issues of sexual repression you're talking about (though it's probably related to that idea if keeping libidinous uncontrollable forces outside of rational society).

There's plenty to be said about the conflict between an emergent middle class, as represented by Harker and his wife, and a declining aristocracy that is threatened by the Ascension of such people. It's really a novel that you could spend years teasing out the interpretive possibilities. It resonates in so many contexts.

For example the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes wrote a short novel, Vlad, depicting Dracula reemerging in present day Mexico City, where he is a surrogate for the drug cartels and the vampiric relationship they have with the country.

I could go on but this isn't really quite on the topic of the thread (that and nobody asked me!).

I think you'd really like "Who Is Dracula's Father?" by John Sutherland, which really goes into all the details. For example, he totally rejects any connection to Vlad the Impaler - Dracula clearly goes back earlier, and is possible the son of Attila the Hun!

DEFTLEFTHAND · 24-11-2017 6:01pm

bonzodog2 wrote: »

I once had some forestry safety wellies made by Nokia

Yes. The company was founded in the 1800s and has been involved in a vast array of different ventures in its history.

Paper mills, rubber products, hospital equipment.

castletownman · 24-11-2017 6:09pm

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

Yes. The company was founded in the 1800s and has been involved in a vast array of different ventures in its history.

Paper mills, rubber products, hospital equipment.

Same goes with Mitsubishi.

First founded in 1870 as a shipping company, later diversified into paper, steel, glass, aircraft, oil and real estate. Even dabbled in banking and insurance.

In fact, it's official name is Mitsubishi Group of Companies (translated from Japanese), so essentially car manufacturing is just one branch of the organisation. In fact, to native Japanese The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ may well be it's most well-known asset as it is the largest bank in the country, and the eight largest in the world.

Ipso · 24-11-2017 6:26pm

goose2005 wrote: »

I think you'd really like "Who Is Dracula's Father?" by John Sutherland, which really goes into all the details. For example, he totally rejects any connection to Vlad the Impaler - Dracula clearly goes back earlier, and is possible the son of Attila the Hun!

In the book Dracula is said to be a Szekely, who as far as I understand are a Hungarian ethnic group.

bonzodog2 · 24-11-2017 6:29pm

Kawasaki don't just make fast motorcycles. They have also made ships, trains and aircraft

Skylinehead · 24-11-2017 6:33pm

Wibbs wrote: »

He set out to make a better, more reliable high speed Italian grand tourer.

Don't think he quite succeeded there!

This is possibly the only picture taken of a Concorde at cruising speed (from the air). The RAF Tornado that took it struggled to keep up without running out of fuel over the Irish Sea - the Concorde would maintain its Mach 2 speed effortlessly until New York.

24-11-2017 6:53pm

Every time I see it I'm struck by just how beautiful a bird the Concorde was. It's just such a gorgeous triumph of aviation engineering, so impossibly elegant.

storker · 24-11-2017 7:00pm

Candie wrote: »

Every time I see it I'm struck by just how beautiful a bird the Concorde was. It's just such a gorgeous triumph of aviation engineering, so impossibly elegant.

As the saying goes, if it looks right, it is right. And Concorde looked very right.

New Home · 24-11-2017 7:03pm

They also say that appearances can be deceiving, but I agree, the Concorde looked sleek.

bonzodog2 · 24-11-2017 7:19pm

Candie wrote: »

Every time I see it I'm struck by just how beautiful a bird the Concorde was. It's just such a gorgeous triumph of aviation engineering, so impossibly elegant.

I remember seeing it take off on probably a test flight in maybe 1972-3 from about 10-15 miles away from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire

Capt'n Midnight · 24-11-2017 7:26pm

MadYaker wrote: »

Lamborghini makes tractors as well as cars.

David Brown did too.

The DB5 wasn't a tractor. It's been in loads of 007 Films.

Brown bought a High Class Motor Business for twenty grand, and then another the following year for fifty grand. They were Aston Martin and Lagonda.

24-11-2017 7:27pm

bonzodog2 wrote: »

I remember seeing it take off on probably a test flight in maybe 1972-3 from about 10-15 miles away from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire

I'd say that was as elegant to see as watching a ballerina dance.

I envy you, I'll never see the Concorde in flight outside of old videos.

pol12 · 24-11-2017 7:42pm

Candie wrote: »

bonzodog2 wrote: »

I remember seeing it take off on probably a test flight in maybe 1972-3 from about 10-15 miles away from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire

I'd say that was as elegant to see as watching a ballerina dance.

I envy you, I'll never see the Concorde in flight outside of old videos.

I remember watching Concorde during training flights in Shannon in the 90's . They used to nearly land and then power up and take off again about every 20 minutes for hours.

New Home · 24-11-2017 7:56pm

I saw it once, yeeeears ago, but "parked" - I think it was at Heathrow. I also remember seeing steam locomotives being used to move stock when I was 4 or 5. I thought they were the best thing ever!

Duffy the Vampire Slayer · 24-11-2017 8:11pm

It's odd to think the Concorde used to fly to Caracas, when now airlines can't pull out of Venezuela fast enough.

snorrie · 24-11-2017 9:51pm

I was in a Concorde once. There is one in a technical museum in Germany, an Air France model. I remember feeling very claustrophobic. The cabin was very narrow and the ceiling very low. I couldn't wait to get out but you had to wait for people to come up the aisle so you could get out. I nearly passed out.

24-11-2017 9:57pm

snorrie wrote: »

I was in a Concorde once. There is one in a technical museum in Germany, an Air France model. I remember feeling very claustrophobic. The cabin was very narrow and the ceiling very low. I couldn't wait to get out but you had to wait for people to come up the aisle so you could get out. I nearly passed out.

I was at the one on the aircraft carrier docked at manhattan. I was shocked at how small it was....overall much smaller than I would have imagined

snorrie · 24-11-2017 10:00pm

At the beginning of the 20th century a fellow called August Horch was working for Carl Benz designing automobiles. He thought he could do better on his own so he set up August Horch and Co. The name Horch doesn't exactly trip off the tongue so he was looking for a new name for his company and for his cars.

One evening, his son was doing his Latin homework and said to his Da: "Vater, did you know that our family name, Horch is "audi" in Latin?" And August had his company name.

Horch is the Germany for hark, like in "Hark the Herald Angels Sing." It's audi in Latin, like audio, auditory, etc.

24-11-2017 10:24pm

snorrie wrote: »

At the beginning of the 20th century a fellow called August Horch was working for Carl Benz designing automobiles. He thought he could do better on his own so he set up August Horch and Co. The name Horch doesn't exactly trip off the tongue so he was looking for a new name for his company and for his cars.

One evening, his son was doing his Latin homework and said to his Da: "Vater, did you know that our family name, Horch is "audi" in Latin?" And August had his company name.

Horch is the Germany for hark, like in "Hark the Herald Angels Sing." It's audi in Latin, like audio, auditory, etc.

100 years later they still haven't done better ;-)

FrancieBrady · 24-11-2017 10:42pm

snorrie wrote: »

At the beginning of the 20th century a fellow called August Horch was working for Carl Benz designing automobiles. He thought he could do better on his own so he set up August Horch and Co. The name Horch doesn't exactly trip off the tongue so he was looking for a new name for his company and for his cars.

One evening, his son was doing his Latin homework and said to his Da: "Vater, did you know that our family name, Horch is "audi" in Latin?" And August had his company name.

Horch is the Germany for hark, like in "Hark the Herald Angels Sing." It's audi in Latin, like audio, auditory, etc.

What's the latin for 'use your *ecking indicators'

I bet you didnt know that

Comments