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Car
Volkswagen Golf Gti
The Volkswagen Golf is a small car that’s meant for everyday driving. A “GTI” version is a sportier version of the Golf. The podcast mention sounds like they saw or thought about an early, classic GTI.
Car
Citroen 2CV
The Citroën 2CV is an older French car with a very simple, unusual design. It was made to be practical and comfortable for everyday use, even on rough roads. The podcast is praising it as a fun, distinctive car idea.
Car
Chevrolet Corvette
The Chevrolet Corvette is a sports car made in the U.S. It’s designed to be fast and fun to drive, and it’s pretty easy to recognize. People talk about it a lot because it’s a well-known enthusiast car.
Car
Audi
Audi is a car brand from Germany. In this moment they’re talking about an Audi driver’s speed and how to get drivers to slow down.
Term
clutch
The clutch is what helps you change gears smoothly. If it’s not working right, the car can feel like the shifting is “off,” and you might worry something is wrong with the transmission.
Term
gearbox
The gearbox is the part that lets the car use different gears. If shifting feels wrong, you might suspect the gearbox instead of just how you’re changing gears.
Term
oil light
The oil light is a warning that something isn’t right with the engine oil. If it flickers, it can mean the oil pressure is low, so you should check the oil right away and not keep driving.
Term
killed the engine
They shut the engine off right away. If the oil warning light comes on, turning the engine off quickly can help prevent damage.
Car
TR6
The TR6 is an older sports car made in Britain. It’s from the classic era of sports cars and is known for being fun to drive. The podcast is bringing it up because it’s a well-loved model from that time.
Car
Dodge Super
The Dodge Super B is an older Dodge car model. It’s the kind of classic vehicle people might not see often, so sitting in one can be a special experience. The podcast is likely highlighting that rarity and the feel of the car.
Car
Ford Mustang
The Ford Mustang is a famous classic American muscle car. A convertible is the open-top version, and it’s a popular choice if you want the classic look and feel with V8 power.
Car
Mercury Cougar convertible
A Mercury Cougar is a classic American car, and the convertible version is the open-top style. People like it because it can come with a V8 and feels like a real “muscle car” without costing as much as some other classics.
Car
Plymouth Barracuda
The Plymouth Barracuda is a classic muscle car from the U.S. People like it for its bold look and the fact that many versions can be had with a V8. It’s being suggested as another fun classic option.
Car
Ford Falcon
The Ford Falcon is a classic Ford model that’s generally smaller than the big muscle cars. It’s mentioned as another affordable way to get into classic driving fun.
Term
two-stroke
A two-stroke engine makes power using a different internal cycle than the more common four-stroke design. Because of that, it can feel more eager to rev and gives the car a different driving character. Saab’s early cars are known for this kind of engine.
Term
circuit race replica
A “circuit race replica” is basically a car that’s styled to look like a track-racing version. It’s more about the look and vibe than being a full-on race car. The speaker is saying you can get a Saab with that kind of track-inspired appearance.
Term
rally replica
A “rally replica” means the car is made to look like a rally car. That usually involves visual details like decals and styling cues, and sometimes setup changes. The speaker is saying you can choose a Saab with that rally-inspired look.
Term
revvy
“Revvy” just means the engine feels like it wants to rev higher. When you drive it, it tends to feel lively as the RPMs climb, rather than feeling lazy at higher speeds.
Car
Volvo Amazon
The Volvo Amazon is an older Volvo model from the mid-20th century. Here it’s being used as an example of a classic two-door car that might work better for taller drivers because of how the cabin fits people.
Concept
roof down
“Roof down” means driving a convertible with the top open. They’re using it to describe the kind of car vibe they’re imagining for summer evenings.
Car
Ford Capri
The Ford Capri is a classic Ford coupe that was popular in Europe. Here they’re talking about one with a sunroof, which can change how much headroom and space you have—important if you’re tall.
Term
Pillarless Coupe
A pillarless coupe is a car where the side windows don’t have the usual vertical post in the middle. It can make the cabin feel more open, but it’s also a specific design that can affect how the doors and structure are built.
Car
W126
W126 is a Mercedes-Benz S-Class generation. People like it because it feels like a comfortable cruiser and tends to offer more space inside, which can help if you’re tall.
LIVE
I'm Richard Porter, I'm Johnny Smith, and this is On the Other Side of Things, the Smith
and Sniff spinoff in which we answer your questions.
Hello, hello.
Hello.
Here we are again with another Q&A show, On the Other Side of Things, as we call it.
Shall I just dive in there?
Go on, you're good at this, so I'm going to let you, Rich, your dirty wind hound.
So, I'll start with a question from a listener called Alex, who says, Hello, you pair of
leathery vignales.
A lovely Ford reference there.
I was driving north after attending your excellent live show at the London Concourse last Tuesday
and found myself getting increasingly annoyed by the amount of inane guff written on the
variable message signs on the motorway, especially here in Scotland.
Brackets, no, I didn't do the journey in one go.
Good.
I was going to say, goodness gracious me.
If you were put in charge of these signs, what would you have them display?
I know what Alex means, it's almost, they're guilty of stating the obvious.
The worst one, of course, is fog, and you go, Oh, that's what that cloud-like substance
is all around me.
I wouldn't have known if you hadn't told me.
Thank you, Si, let me just go faxate.
But it's when they're sort of bored, like they haven't got anything to say, that they'll
just say something like, don't drive with your eyes closed or something really fatuously
obvious like that.
Remember to not use reverse on the motorway.
Drug driving is bad.
Full stop.
Is it?
Oh, no.
Because I took a load of acid because I knew that I'd got 500 miles to do today.
So Alex is like, what would you have had them display?
I mean, the thing is, don't drive like a twat, I think would be a really good one.
Just a huge scroll slowly scrolling one.
So the scrolling action captures your, your eyes.
And it just says, do not drive like a twat.
And also another one which says, if you drop litter, we will find you.
We will strip you and we will make you litter pick nude for days.
I wonder if this would need some level of manual control, I think, and perhaps in fact
need you and me in a control room somewhere.
And this all gets quite complicated.
But the very bespoke messages, so you could just flash up, you know, sort of, hey, nice
Mark 1 Golf GTI or something like that if you saw one go by.
Yeah, that'd be quite cool, wouldn't it?
Your 4D plate looks shit and flash up the red number if necessary, just to fully humiliate
them.
So I think, yeah, a sort of bespoke nature of it, but that's obviously quite hard to
do on a national scale.
Yeah, it'd be nice if it was quite conversational, if it was just like, hey, if it was, hey,
has everybody seen that lovely yellow 2CV?
Yeah, I quite like that idea.
Or have you, have you seen that stolen Land Rover on the transporter?
Might want to tell someone about that.
See it, say it, sort it.
You know, I think that Holly Willoughby famously did at the start of this morning after Philips
Gofield left, which she went, hi, how are you?
Do you want the signs to do that, though?
It starts with hi and it just scrolls over to how are you?
Is that what she said?
Because she just didn't know what else to say.
I think so.
I never quite understood it.
It was very weird.
How's the family?
On that side of things.
Did you lock your back door?
When was the last time you?
Have you considered getting some tropical fish?
Just thought starters would be quite good.
For people in awkward silences on car journeys, like their business colleague going somewhere
and they're like, oh my God, we've got another 120 miles of this and we've run out of things
to say.
What about try not to poo in the hedge?
There's a services in five miles.
No, I was thinking more just like conversational things.
Yeah.
Did you ever know anybody as a child who had a lizard or something like that?
Just, just, just, I did actually.
No, his name was James Henderson.
Yeah.
I don't know why he had a lizard.
I think his dad worked at a zoo.
Was the guy around the corner with the Corvette a nice guy or a bit of a wrong one in hindsight?
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
So car based, again, just conversation topics.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Corvettes in Britain, Ronan's question mark.
Yeah.
That Audi doing 140 is driven by a pedophile.
Just spread the bad word and then it will make the Audi driver slow down.
It could work.
Yeah.
In fact, you know those things that flash up when you come into a village with a smiley
face or a straight mouth or an unhappy mouth.
Yeah.
It could just be slow down.
Pido just throw up really random insults like, like, oh, incredibly insulting.
Oh, shit mouth.
Stop doing 40 to 30.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, I did know as you parked on the pavement.
Yeah.
Oh, you were the 845.
You see that guy in the yellow 845?
Yeah.
He wants had a wank in a phone box and just unproven falsehoods to shame people into driving
better.
It's okay.
It's a good thought.
Um, we've got a good message here from James McDougal off of Scotland.
He's put, hi, you too.
He's just put, hi, you too.
Wow.
That's the, because these, that's just admissible.
Yeah.
These, because these messages are getting, but the euphemisms are getting better and
better.
We might have to even have our own sub account with them.
Um, it says with Jerry McGovern officially leaving and setting up his consultancy firm.
Um, my question to you is, what would you use Jerry McGovern's new consultancy firm
for that was uncarrelated?
He's put maybe hairdressing.
Cheers and all that.
James off of Scotland.
This was back at the end of March.
He said this.
So in our world, quite recent, I'm going to say, yeah, I, I don't know.
Is Jerry McGovern officially setting up a consultancy?
I, I've not heard anything official, but I'm, you know, I suppose it is a, an option
for a departed car design company boss.
Yeah.
So he has a little previous in this area though, cause didn't, he worked with a men's clothing
manufacturer to do various things, including famously a swimming suit as it was like an
actual suit that you could go swimming in.
Yes, it was.
Cause a few of us thought it was like an April fool, but I don't think it was, was it?
So it's something from the naked gun.
Yeah.
Yes.
He was Frank Drebbing just coming out of the seat, but he's still got a suit on.
Um, no, and it, I just, Jerry McGovern has never struck me as a man to do tongue in cheek.
He, he's sort of pretty much all on the table, I would say.
So I, I don't understand how, you know, that would work.
I, it did, it just seemed like he was being serious, but in a bit of an odd way.
So mad clothing might be another thing that he could use his skills for.
I think of, I think a fountain pen that also has some discrete buttons on it, um, and you
can use some of those buttons to do things like opening your automatic garage door and
also maybe answering your phone and talking into the end of it.
So it's like a sort of piece of spyware from yes to year, but it's, it's artisanal, artisanal,
artisanal and it's, uh, so it looks great because he's, I think he's probably the sort
of person that would really cherish a well-designed artifact like a pen.
Yeah.
So he's trying to make the pen sexy again.
I, yes, that's a good point, I suppose it's like, that's my theory anyway.
I could see that, but what, in terms of what I would personally use the Jerry McGovern
consultancy of such a thing existed to do, um, I don't, I don't know.
Well, champagne flutes, champagne flutes, a new, yeah, a new design of flute, champagne flute.
I actually, so I think I've not that long ago as I brought up this car, but screw it,
I'm going to bring up again.
Jerry McGovern was part of the team that did the MGEXE concept.
Yes.
So I would get him to do that again, go go on, do that again.
But now with benefit of hindsight, make a, make a 21st century MGEXE for me, just design it.
I don't, I haven't got the means to, um, to build it necessarily, but I want to see what
you would do and, um, hopefully that would keep him out of trouble.
I'm done with that.
I don't know.
Um, so, well, let's move on.
Uh, I, uh, uh, uh, a question here from a listener called Simon who says,
Hi Sleeves, I'm struck by the regular use of the well-known motorsport phrase psychological rain,
i.e. rain that lands on a windscreen or visor that gives a racing driver rain anxiety
while having no adverse impact on driving conditions.
Psychological rain?
I am not familiar with this, but okay.
Um, so Simon says, what automotive term would you put after the word psychological
that refers to something we all worry about that in truth has minimal or no impact on our everyday lives?
Hmm.
Oh, I mean, I think psychological rattles are quite an important thing.
Um, in fact, or just psychological noises.
I, uh, so one of our neighbors came around the other day because he is interested in
getting a thatcher spring.
Yeah.
And he wondered how I was getting it with mine.
I said, come on around.
You can have a look at it and we'll go out for a little spin and I'll, you know,
show you because I'm very happy with it.
I think as an urban car, it's great.
If you're lucky, I'll take you for a, I'll take you for a hearty spin in it.
Well, it was a bit, we were sitting in it and he was having a poke round and then I was like,
I've actually, we've run out of butter and my wife and daughter were doing some baking
and they'd actually said, could you go and get some butter if you happen to be going out?
And I was like, fine, I will.
So I said, would you like to, we'll just nip up to the nearest supermarket so I can buy some
butter and he did look at me a little bit like, okay, a bit weird, but fine.
And so we went for a little run of the car.
We were going over some speed bumps and there was a sort of, and because we had to have the
stereo off, there was thudding from the boot.
I think it's the charging cable.
It's just the charging cable in the boot.
Yeah.
Just briefly becoming, you know, airborne.
Yeah.
But I was like, oh no, that sounds bad.
It sounds like there's something wrong with the suspension of the car, but it's not.
And it's like, so psychological noises generally that you just,
you, if you don't know what it is.
Thankfully in this case, I sort of very quickly realized what it would be.
It's like, it's, it seeds doubt, doesn't it, that all is not well.
It does.
It does exactly that.
It makes you think that things aren't what they should be.
I think the psychological, for me, it's the psychological software update in the modern
world where it starts to make you think like, oh, hang on, I'm just about to go in for a meeting.
It happens to us when we're just about to record podcasts.
One of our computers often says, oh, you might want to update the software on the,
on the record that you're doing, because you never know.
It might just not work, let's say.
And it always boils our piss, doesn't it?
One of us we go, no, I'm not going to do it now.
It can wait.
Not now.
So yeah, I think there's a lot of that going on.
Definitely.
Yeah.
And I think also, I remember the last time I drove my Honda,
just, it was probably me just rushing a gear shift.
Which is sort of doing that car.
It's got a lovely change on it, and obviously it's quite heavy.
And, but I just, it just, it didn't go in as smoothly as normal.
And it was just a kind of, that psychological, what would you call it?
I don't know.
It was a psychological gear change where I just said, immediately my first thought,
just when you know a car really well and you know how everything should be,
and when it's just not quite like that.
So I went, oh no, is there a clutch on the way out?
Or is there something wrong with the gearbox?
So, and it was fine as far as I know, touch word.
And that was it.
It was just, I think I just rushed it.
But it's just that sort of, just slight inconsistency,
which when you know a car well, you're sort of hyper tuned into.
And then it plays on your mind.
I hope that's not the first indication of a problem.
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
I've had that this week in several cars.
I had a flicker of the oil light in the Beetle a while back.
Oh no.
And I saw, and I killed the engine so fast.
And because I know it hasn't got a steering lock,
I just coasted into a lay-by.
The car, I'd only left the house about a minute previous.
And went, then turn the ignition and it started again.
And the oil light immediately went out.
And I sat there with the idling staring at the light going,
phone my brother.
And he went, I said, it'll be fine.
He said, it'll be fine.
It's probably just the sweat, the oil pressure switch or something like that.
He said, have you actually checked the oil?
I said, yeah, I have checked the oil.
I checked the oil religiously.
She said, ah, yeah, it'll be fine.
But it did make me panic like mad.
The flicker of the oil light is just like, no.
Yes, yeah.
No, that's not good.
Well, can I ask a question on behalf of Adam off of Sussex?
His words.
Okay.
Hi, you pair of faux quad pipe tips.
Having owned a Golf R, Mark 7, for eight years now,
nothing new piques my interest.
Therefore, I'm looking to burn a modest amount of cash
on something older for some light country road work
in the summer evenings in brackets.
I live in the Goodwood region, Sussex.
Now for the problem, I am off Johnny's build,
but just over six foot seven.
Well, you're, you're, are you taller than me?
You're pretty much taller than me.
You're a bit of a, I can't remember.
We're very similar.
I feel, I think we're the same height.
Yeah.
We're both about 63
We're similar build and similar height.
So he is six foot seven, which is definitely taller than us.
Of, of your experience, what marks would be feasible options
to look at in the region of 15 to 20,000 pounds
from the sixties or the seventies?
I'm thinking MGB, TR6, et cetera, et cetera.
Love your work.
Thanks in advance, Adam.
Well, I think you need to tread carefully
with your six foot seven frame, Adam.
A lot of British cars of that era,
especially roadsters, will not house you.
No.
I'm thinking out of that jungle brothers track,
we, I will house you.
What a great track.
I, yes.
I mean, it's hard to say because,
firstly, like Adam is, I would say,
a clear four inches taller than either of us.
Plus, it's hard to know, Adam,
if you could write back with your inside leg measurement,
that would give us more because-
Is it leg or torso?
I assume, yeah.
Adam could be very leggy,
or he could have a lovejoy style long torso.
And either way, it sort of might affect things.
But I would say, yeah, generally,
British roadsters from the sixties would be,
your head is going to be the highest point on that car.
Yeah.
Easily.
So he, he's put, because he's got a golf bar,
which is an exceptionally agile,
quick point to point vehicle.
Does he want this, this car for summer evenings,
light country road work?
Does he want it to handle really well?
He hasn't said whether that's a prerequisite or not.
Yes, because my mind immediately went to
old Mercedes SLs, R107s.
I know.
Budget-wise, I don't know,
because they rot, you want to get a good one.
Yes.
But in terms of interior space,
I think you're on to more of a sure thing there.
Albeit they're not the sportiest,
but they are a wonderful cruiser.
Absolutely.
I was, he didn't specify whether it had to be
a convertible or anything.
I was just looking at TR6 and assuming it would be a
convertible.
I was thinking, what about if you're seeking escapism,
but you want a car which fits on the road summer evenings?
You know when we were at the London Concourse the other week
and you got to sit in a Mercury Cougar?
Yes, I did.
And Stardis and Lightly Revver,
and I got to sit in a Dodge Super B and do the same.
Well, the Cougar is quite a small American car
because it's Mustang size, isn't it?
Yeah.
You know, 15 to 20 grand you could get a Mercury Cougar
convertible or even a Mustang convertible.
And you could get something like a Plymouth Barracuda
or a Ford Falcon.
These are all small American cars.
Yeah.
I would consider looking at those because they're great fun.
And obviously you can get a V8 one if you wanted.
Most of them are.
And that would be really good fun.
But thinking of other cars from the 60s and 70s,
you've got a lot of Italian cars from the 60s and 70s
which are great driver's cars.
Don't know about the packaging of the legs.
Yeah, they always have slightly odd driving position.
Don't they?
It's like there's not enough leg room,
but then the steering wheel's sort of in the wrong place somehow.
It's like they're just, I think they are the actually the enemy
of the taller person often.
Yeah.
So that might be a tricky one.
An Alpha Spider or something might just be all, I don't know.
No good.
So do we go Swedish?
What do you think?
Because I don't know if he's a sort of engine snob,
a drivetrain snob or anything like that,
because having driven one, I think it was last year
when I did a bar finder one, a little Saab 96,
or even the early two-stroke Saabs,
or even a Volvo from the 60s and 70s.
The good thing about those cars, they're all really well made.
They're quite robust and 15 grand or so would get you
a really nice condition one.
I think the Saabs are a little delight.
And everyone's happy to see a Saab.
It's got that character full, blamongi bodice.
Yes, that's true.
And you can choose whether you go a four-stroke or two-stroke,
but you could even get a little sort of like circuit race replica
or rally replica looking one.
Oh yes, go full.
And then they zip a lot.
Eric Carlson and then, yeah, they're revvy, aren't they?
Yeah, I'm really down with them.
I'm really down with them.
And they're actually lots of legroom,
good packaging for guests, if you want to carry more than two people.
Guests.
Guests.
I don't know why I just said that.
I mean, two-door Volvo Amazon would fit in that.
Yeah, it feels like this is not where this is heading though
in as much as it's summer evenings.
I'm definitely seeing roof down is the sort of...
But maybe not.
Maybe that's the thing.
Maybe because those little Saabs are charming, aren't they?
Yeah.
Right.
Everybody seems to like them.
They're kind of...
I like them.
I don't know why.
Unthreatening and nice.
Yeah.
And Saabi.
And yeah.
Are we missing something really obvious though?
Well, it's also, it's sort of the defining kind of 60s, 70s sort of thing.
It's hard to think what else that would fit the bill whilst accommodating and tall person,
because the fact is that just people have got taller over the years,
just over the last few decades, it seems that...
What about Ford Capri?
I suppose.
With a sunroof?
Yes.
With a sunroof.
Well...
Or even...
I'm thinking Pillarless Coupe could be considered it.
You can have a Coupe Pillarless, BMW Pillarless Coupe perhaps.
Would 20 grand get UA and eat, what is it, an E9 BMW Coupe?
Yes, maybe.
I don't know, would it?
And again, you've got to tread carefully and as much as you want it to be a decent one,
because there's all sorts of...
This could happen.
Same with six series as well, I suppose.
Or only the Benz Coupes that are pillarless.
Yeah.
Because, you know, get a nice W126, again, very much a cruiser,
but plenty of room, that would be the upside to that.
Adam, you need to download the Car and Classic app,
and you need to just start sifting through.
And also make a short...
I'd get some books, some textbooks, and just have a rummage through and make a little hit list.
And perhaps from there, either contact Simone's Clubs or go on Simone's Forums,
and just get an idea of the car's packaging.
So you might go, I really want a TR6, and I know they're quick,
and I know they're nimble, and I know they look great,
but will I actually be able to shut the door on one?
Or with my knees?
Yeah, yeah.
Because you can eliminate this stuff quite quickly.
I know.
Okay.
I know.
Well, there we go.
I know.
I hope for some food for Adam.
I know.
I do, one more quick question.
I'm going to tread carefully with this,
because the other week, was it last week or the week before,
we were talking about giving cars names.
Yes.
And we take a fairly hard line stance.
We're not alone on this.
Our friends at Top Dead Centre are in agreement on this one that...
You don't give cars names to the general rule.
It's just something that we personally don't enjoy.
Other people do, but we shared our opinion.
Got a bit of pushback on that from a few people going,
how dare you stop being such miseries and so on.
So, again, this is a sort of opinion-based one that may or may not cause some feedback.
It's from a listener called Simon who entitles his email simply, Private Plates.
Right.
Are they for morons?
Looking at spending £500 on something that broadly says my name,
can't decide if it would make me look like a bell or not.
Okay, look.
Okay.
I could only give you my opinion, which is yes.
And I think the clue here as to the problem with it, for me, is the word broadly.
It won't say your name, Simon.
It'll say, Sir 14-man or something like that.
And that's not your name.
No.
So it's just a waste of time.
If we lived in the U.S. or a country where you are allowed a lot more leeway with what you can
write on stage and someone had offered you the license plate that just said Simon,
spelt correctly and all letters, no numbers shenanigans, you'd go,
well, I mean, if you really want, I personally don't want strangers to know my name necessarily.
So that's the other objection I have to things like that.
Why?
What's the necessity?
I suppose it just sort of personalizes the car a little more.
But I like, I have a couple of personal plates, but they're always,
they're always concerning the car.
They're always tailored to the car and not me and my name or anything like that.
And that's the way I personally prefer it.
It might be because I've just got a really dull name that it might just be that.
But I much prefer like having a thing which adds a little Easter egg to the car that it is.
But I don't, I don't spend lots of money on them.
I wouldn't spend lots of money on them personally.
I just buy another car.
These people that spend 50 grand on a number plate, it's just like, nah.
I know, nah.
It's, I mean, I've never done this, but I do,
I would subscribe to the Tower of Quentin Wilson, may he rest in peace,
because he always said, put a sort of blandly non-age specific plate on a car.
And then if it's something, particularly it's like a, you know, a Bentley Turbo R or something like that.
People have no idea how old or new it is if they're not super into cars.
And so it's sort of, it's just adding that kind of flash for the cash kind of thing to it.
And I quite often think about what you want a plate that's got sort of maybe an X or a Z
or something in it that people would go, well, that can't just be as initials,
because that would be a really unusual name.
If it was, it is probably just totally random.
Like you want a car advert plate, you know, a lot of car adverts,
they just have three less of three numbers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sometimes so they can mirror the, mirror the footage or the picture.
Sometimes just because it then they can reuse the ad in the UK
across plate changes is usually the other reason.
And I like those and they, they obviously carefully chosen to be sort of
blandly non-specific and they don't say a word.
They don't remind you of a word.
They're just a code almost.
Yeah.
Those I can see the appeal of and I did, I looked very briefly when I got my Honda,
because it's got a square plates on it, because it's a Japanese market car.
I thought it looks a bit messy and uneven on a UK plate.
So it'd be lovely just to have three letters, three numbers.
And I started looking at plates that had got 656 in them,
because the car is 656 CC.
And I thought, well, that's a little, you know, people who'd know that.
That's nice.
Oh, I see what you've done there.
That's what I did.
Yeah, this could be asked in the end.
So just gave up.
Yeah.
Now I can help you.
I can probably help you though.
I've got a few contacts in the plate game, Rich.
The plate game, it is a game.
Yeah, but it's a very personal thing.
It's a very, it's like, it's like choosing wheels for a car, very, very personal.
I just love it when you see a really expensive car, you know,
sort of a Ferrari, Dodechi, Cylinder or something.
And it's just got the plate, generic UK plate on it.
Because it just sort of, because it makes it the odd one out.
Yes, I suppose that's it.
I mean, yeah.
But for me, it's one of the things it's trying to spell words with plates,
with UK plates, when that is very hard because of the requirements to have numbers in there as well.
Just, it rarely lands and often it looks contrived and desperate.
It's my, it's my objection there.
But you know, Simon, it's really, it's none of our business.
If it makes you happy and you can afford 500 quid to do that, then who are we to say?
Just do it.
But since you asked, yes, I think it would make you like a bell.
But don't worry about it.
No, I mean, look, we're both bells.
Exactly.
We look like bells in so many other ways.
It's like everybody's got something.
So yeah, go for it.
I know, I know.
I know, I know.
Right, well, that's probably enough question answering for this week.
And indeed, insulting our listeners.
But we will be back doing more questions next week.
Hello, askmithasniff.com is the email address.
If you want to send us a question or to tell us that we're wrong about something,
we'll be back with a normal show on Monday.
Until then, goodbye.
Thanks, everybody.
Cheers, mate.
Thanks, mate.
Bye then.
About this episode
Motorway variable message signs get a playful roasting, with the hosts and a listener debating how obvious safety prompts can feel. The Q&A then turns to “classics for the taller man,” weighing which 1960s/70s roadsters won’t fit (especially for very tall frames) and which alternatives—like MGB/TR6, R107 SLs, and roomier cruisers such as the W126—might work. Along the way, they also field questions on “psychological rain” and personalized number plates.
Original notes
In this week’s On The Other Side Of Things question answering show, Jonny and Richard tackle message signs on motorways, things you might commission Gerry McGovern to design, car-related versions of ‘psychological rain’, a fun car for a lofty listener, and are private plates for morons?
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Smith and Sniff
Jonny Smith and Richard Porter
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28:55