Youâd think Bill Gates could afford a better car.
Yeah, cute, but a bit late to the party. People have been putting this license plate on cars since at least the mid-1990s. About the time the finally got tired of putting âIML8â on their previous VW model.
Iâve never seen it, so I got a chuckle. Guess Iâm not as much of a hipster as thou art.
Only works from an Ameri-centric viewpoint.
Theyâre called Beetles in the rest of the world.
There was a terrifying 3 wheeler, like a trike with a body, in the UK called the Bond Bug. There are still a few left, though the production run was probably only a ten thousandth of the VW.
There are other viewpoints? Since when?
I worry about how they are ever going to pay off the technical debt on that âfeature.â
Cousin to the Reliant Robin?
(Yes, we have Top Gear over here)
This guy is in trouble if he drives to LondonâŚ
And did someone say it runs on a retrofitted electric engine built with free-licensed kit components? (Yes, in my imagination.)
That just sounds oddâŚ
âMake sure that you file a detailed Beetle report on that software problemâ
Fureners sure are strange.
It used an engine sourced from Reliant. (The Reliant engine was a quite a nice little unit, better than the rubbish Morris A-type found in Minis, and was largely aluminum.)
There was, I believe, a version with the Coventry Climax pump engine that was adapted to power a number of small sports and racing cars and a production car - the Hillman Imp. The FWA engine was so light that it could be removed from the Imp without jacking. The bug version had enormous acceleration in a straight line but became unstable before reaching top speed. I once saw one of these engines in an original Fiat 500 - it would out-accelerate a straight-6 Jaguar up to 60mph or thereabouts.
Meanwhile, the US was building V8 monsters out of cheap steel and cast iron. But you had the oil, and we had the war debts.
Itâs you lot whoâre the foreigners.
A few thoughts:
- Theyâre actually called VW Beetles here too. âBugâ is a less formal nickname.
- How many viewpoints does a California license plate pun HAVE to work from?
- Behold the third-highest grossing movie of 1968 (I guess international audiences didnât mind the title):
Atleast I spared people the horrorâŚnot the thing you want to see on a Monday morning before youâve had your coffee.
Not meaning to to be the pedantiest pedant in pedantville, but movie titles do get translated to other languages. Unless your idea of âinternationalâ is UK+Australia.
And in the same veinâŚ
As well as frogs, turtles, ladybugs and even some non-fauna nicknames. This has to be the car with most international nicknames ever.
A few replies:
- I did not know that.
- The license plate pun ONLY works from one viewpoint. On a blog with an international audience it hardly works at all.
- Behold the international titles of the1968 movie.
