Who Watches the Watchmen (Our Chit Chat Thread)

That was part of it alright. The MR2 suffered from a similar label, the MX5 too, as did the Audi TT(looking back a very pretty car IMHO). Plus the Audi had a nasty habit of becoming a sudden unwanted offroader if you went too quickly into a bend, or even not so quickly. The "not real Porsche" was another label, which I always thought was just basic snobbery myself. I remember them having a rep of being tail happy for the unwary, but then again until electronical trickery came along all 911's were like a frenzied wagging dog just as likely to go in reverse as forward if you weren't very careful, or couldn't drive. Old 911 Turbos were an exquisitely designed and shaped road safety hazard at speed. Never hurt them. If anything it added to their allure.

It only just occurred to me, possibly because of one of my few neurons firing after fiddling with mine, that the new Zenith Defy looks very like the Girard Perregaux Laureato, with the blue patterned dial, the [insert number here]xagonal bezel, even the handset and angled rehaut for feck's sake.

Itself yet another one of the expensive steel sports/dress watches of the early 1970's. The above example if from 8 or 9 years ago, but you know what I mean.

I know this sounds and is a hack, but what about glue? Dab of superglue to hold them at one end.

Girard Perregaux are an oddball brand. They appear to be a tiny outfit, but somehow keep going and seem to sell expensive watches with it. Their Laureato was a big seller in Italy and a lot of old GP's seem to show up on Italian(and French) ebay. In the anglophone world they're pretty much a no show. Then again there are watch nerds and the general public, which can be very different markets. Cartier who rarely show up in watch nerd circles have a bigger market share than Longines, Patek, AP, TAG. In Asia Longines biggest sellers are women's watches.

You can also get loctite slower setting superglue. Takes a couple of minutes. I've found it handy stuff over the years. Not for watches mind you. 😁

The Brera couldn't be any more Italian. 😁 It's got back seats, but not really, unless you find someone in need of a lift that lost their legs to farming machinery. And their head fell off. A big booty, but a tiny boot. Well the boot is big enough, but the way into it isn't. Like if the front door of your house was the size of the letterbox. The six headlights that look cool, but are a pig to clean, the brushed alloy dashboard bits that scratch if you look at them funny. Designed by Giugiaro and followed the concept car pretty closely, only shrunk it(which would explain the back seats).

It seems to be well enough bolted together actually(the spyder was in dire need of viagra). Momo seats and wheel, leather all over the gaff. Goes well enough too. Grips well in 4x4 form, though I suspect like a fair number of cars out there it would be grip, grip, grip... Hedge. Heavy though. When my friend was stripping a parts donor for well, parts, when he got the dash out there's a huge aluminium cross member that has enough heft in it to keep Cocacola in cans for a month's production. Seems to be pretty reliable too. IIRC at that stage Alfa got in some outside help with their electrics.

Honda's designs are very Japanese for the most part. To be fair their Civic doesn't look like every other car of its size on the road. The R looks like an origami nightmare, which is fine, but it's also very niche and most of what we see are styling exercises rather than functional. Goes like stink mind you and up a twisty road it could embarrass quite a few more powerful cars on paper.

Car design has gotten much better over the years. Sure there are old cars that are 'classics', but that's like looking at music of the [insert decade here] and saying it was so much better, but we're only looking at the highlights and ignoring the utter bilge, which was most of it.

Oh for sure that's a very pretty car, but look at most 70's cars with similar three box shapes. The Italians could do it very well, but others.... Actually BMW could always do it well. They rarely enough put a foot wrong. Plus regulations have slowly but surely reduced the framework of design to narrower parameters. When Ford did a Longines and brought out their Ford GT(40) reissue they had to stop selling it in whatever year they did because new regs meant they headlights had to be two inches higher or something. Popular types of cars ditto. So SUV's being more in leads us down that road. Two door coupes which were once a staple are very much a minority these days and it's easier to make a two door coupe look good than a four door school run 4x4 wannabee that's ten feet tall so women of a certain blonde can see other women of a certain blonde as they bring their progeny to horseriding lessons. Cars being global rather than local and having to be all things to all men and women has had some impact too. As have and quite naturally profit margin concerns. There were a lot of very pretty cars back in the day that didn't sell, or sell well enough to keep companies from going under.

I may know a guy. 😁 IIRC they do have problems with front crossmembers going rusty and bad allignment on front setups, in the FWD examples anyway. Window regulators another weak spot. Though I suppose pretty much any car when it gets to a certain age issues come along. Unless it's a 90's Toyota or 70's Merc(and you keep the tinworm at bay).