Antony Ingram

I made a start on The Hobbit as a kid but was too young to make it very far through.

I've never actually read, nor watched, any LOTR.

Haha, I'd not seen that one before.

Weekend, weekday. Never driven an E30 M3 but it's very much my kind of car. Driven lots of i8s and those are also my kind of car.

New boots for the Peugeot. Our wonderful roads graced me with a screw in the right rear, and they were getting on a bit anyway. Good suspension travel at the front on the 106 (excuse the max digital zoom blurriness).

Yeah, so many dealerships do that fake backdrop stuff now, always looks terrible...

I expect so yeah. It never went down well in the UK, I think it was primarily a Southeast Asian product hastily rejigged for other markets so not up to the level of the K12 (and to me the K12 still looks more modern). Always been intrigued by the 1.2 DIG-S "Miller cycle" engine they offered though.

Wondered when someone would import a March Nismo S into the UK. Not the absolute sportiest of things but a 114bhp 1.5 is enough to have fun with.

Those seats are *super* comfortable too, they put the same ones in the Juke Nismo www.ebay.co.uk/itm/14706842...

Some of the best proportions of those larger 4x4s I think.

YouTube video by Flidbook Blackadder : Baldrick's world war 1 poem The German Guns

Can't think of war poetry without that Blackadder sketch about Baldrick's war poem popping to mind. "BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM... BOOM BOOM BOOM..." www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTmi...

This is one of those cars that makes me wonder if the Mini has ever been actually made better by making a slightly wanky posh version.

Glad to hear it's not just one of those things that's got worse with time...

See that's interesting, as The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row are two of my favourite ever books, and Steinbeck's got such an evocative writing style that even the quieter moments are a pleasure. That said, those books can be slow at times, so they're not for everyone.

It fails on both subject matter and writing style, which is almost impressive.

It was this kind of weather in late 2023/early 2024 that made be book an impromptu trip to Singapore for some warmth and sunlight 😆 Around then I think it'd been raining solidly from about September 23. So it's started later this winter but similarly depressing.

Oh yeah, completely off his face while writing, but also seemingly for much of the story. Not sure quite how much is autobiographical and what's fabricated but if you could separate it out, neither aspect would be particularly interesting even so.

I thought it was pretty bold putting a near-identical shot on two covers in a row, and then you see it in the 2025 category...

It would however explain a lot about the state that boomers have left the country in that On The Road was inspirational to them. There's a lot of "running away from the consequences of your actions" in the book.

You get brief glimmers of people whose lives are far more interesting than his own, but are rarely explored in detail before he fucks off to embark upon something pointless or goes home for a few weeks or whatever and then the cycle repeats.

Kerouac's Original On The Road Scroll Is Headed to Auction - Hagerty Media Jack Kerouac's first manuscript for his seminal Beat Generation novel On The Road is heading to auction soon.

Hope someone doesn't overpay. Tried reading On The Road a few years back and it was rambling and inane dogshit. Can't believe the US was that starved of decent literature in the 50s that this became one of the Great American Novels www.hagerty.com/media/news/k...

Uncanny feeling of déjà vu this morning reading the latest Autocar online, before I realised they've accidentally republished the last issue of 2025 in today's slot. Hopefully the same hasn't happened at the printers...

Couldn't say for sure. My intuition is that all UK 2-litre NCs regardless of trim level have an LSD and all 1.8s do not, but I don't have a brochure handy to check.

Sadly I can't claim its first use (one of the journos on CAR got there before me), though I did think of it independently of them.

Impressive lack of branding on that!

Oh that's interesting. Yeah, I'd have assumed the kei-terham used a more Japanese bolt pattern, but wasn't aware the regular ones were different.

Hill gets a bit of stick for not being the natural talent of some of his peers, but you don't luck your way in to being Schumacher's main title rival.

Would be fascinating to put him in the car on a proper track. I don't think history's ever really settled whether the B194 or the FW16 was a better car - the latter had good bones but it was basically an FW14 with a lot of the tech removed.

That shot with the 106 and Seven's wheels together shows how good the Pug's wheels look though, check out that offset compared to the Caterham. Gives the wheels quite a serious look despite still being relatively narrow.

Wheel specs for the Michelin steelies are 5.5Jx14 ET16, 4x108, and 65.1mm centre bore. No idea how that tallies with a Caterham!

Can't beat a Seven on steelies though.

I grew to quite like him during the Ferrari era, but yeah, that was still way out of line. I honestly think Hill's been an absolute saint to (publicly at least) brush it off for the last 30+ years!

Yeah, I think that's a fair shout too.