Month: October 2021

Seventies Beauty

Beauty, Drive Time

When looking at something beautiful, you always have to take note of the time in which the thing appeared.  This is particularly true of women, of course, because what was considered beautiful in, say, the 1970s would cause snorts of derision when applied to today’s standards.  Here’s a sample of those 70s fashions:

None of which are particularly bad (the lass on the right is sensational), but the style is very dated.

I didn’t come here to talk about women’s fashion.

Nope;  I want to talk about the successor to the wonderful Renault Alpine A110, the A310 which made its first appearance in 1971.

Of course, in typical French tradition, they put a severely underpowered engine in the A310 (a 1600cc four-banger which developed a muscular 105hp) which, considering that Renault intended the A310 to be a competitor to the Porsche 911 (which at the time was developing about 270hp in its 2.4L flat six), must have been a joke played by Engineering on Marketing.

In 1976, Renault got the message (prodded by piss-poor sales, duh) and put in a 2.7L  V6 engine which developed 148hp:  still nowhere close to the 911, but with its ultralight body and excellent handling (which was a little better than the 911’s), the new model doubled sales of the A310 — but sadly, doubling nearly nothing meant that Renault was selling about 500 units a year compared to the 911’s 1,600.

Pretty much only the French bought the A310 in any numbers, and in 1986 Renault pulled it off the market.

All that said, I quite like the looks of the later A310 PRV (denoting the larger engine).  Once again, by today’s standards that angular shape might be considered ugly, but frankly, it’s not horrible compared to other cars of the time.

Even in the PRV specs, though, the petite A310 never stood a chance against the Porsche 911, and still less against the massive American muscle cars, never mind the Ferraris and Maseratis.

But for a nimble sporty little runabout which according to its customers was very reliable, you could have done a whole lot worse than the A310.

News Roundup

Bad News

News that can be trusted, because it comes from TV, the newspapers and the Internet.


…and to think that we men used to get into trouble for referring to women as “life support systems for pussy”.


…key word:  France.  And ladies, if you and the Mister are in financial difficulties, watch out what he gives you to drink, or at least hide the videocam.


…there go the Republicans, under-achieving as always. I can think of at least seven, without even working at it.


…

…from both sides of the blockage.


…but the national origins of said criminal clans?  A complete mystery.


…they owed him one after turning down the gun-hater to head up the ATF.


,,,being too busy forming their own.


…fixed it for them, the woke journo bastards.


…vive la France.


…why am I not surprised by this?  Best part is all those diet-conscious people who believed in the Diet Coke/Pepsi bullshit and felt virtuous about their choice are probably feeling like proper idiots right now.


…and in Comments, your suggestions for our new country’s name.

Time for INSIGNIFICA:


…I think we all know at least one woman like this.


…in Georgia, this news item would appear in the “Upcoming Weddings” section of the paper.


…tough broads, those Scottish totties.


…and when you see the pic, you’ll see why she had no difficulty at all.

Finally, here’s someone in the news:

     

Okay, Charlotte Hawkins is actually a newsreader on Brit TV, so technically I’m correct…

Wait A Minute

The Gun Thing

I know, I know… Smith & Wesson has decided to leave Massachusetts because the MassGov hates them, wants to tax them out of business, and wants to make it illegal for them to manufacture products (AR-15s) which account for 60% of S&W’s sales.

So unsurprisingly, S&W said, “Fuck you” and are planning to move to…

…Tennessee?

I mean, I have nothing but love for the Davy Crockett state, but what are we Texans?  Chopped liver?  S&W didn’t even consider Texas for relocation, and surely we could compete with Tennessee in the “nice places to do business” competition.

All that said, the Maryville area is a pretty area.  I’ve been there several times to call on a former client (hi, Pat!) and it’s only a stone’s throw from the Smoky Mountains.

Of course, the announcement could have been wrong, in that S&W are planning to move to Marysville TX, which is a little unincorporated area just south of the Oklahoma/Texas border;  but then again:


…probably not.

I still think we should have been given a chance, though.

Out Of Touch

Deep Thoughts, Entertainment

One of the besetting problems of getting older is that much of what passes for the modern-day zeitgeist  simply passes one by, either unnoticed or else rejected without even attempting to follow.

I must have been getting old when I was still young, because:

  • I have never watched a single minute of Dr. Who
  • …or the Kardashian women’s show
  • …or any of the “competition” shows like Dancing With The Stars
  • I never watched any of the Rocky shows after Rocky II
  • I’ve only ever watched the first three Star Wars movies, and even The Return Of The Jedi  sucked
  • I pretty much stopped listening to “new” popular music when grunge appeared (at age 40-ish)
  • I have never played an online computer game, of any description
  • and so on.

At some point, therefore, I must have started looking at new trends, and decided, “Best not” (in the words of Lord Salisbury, circa  1894).

Don’t even ask me about politics, cars or clothing.  (Longtime Readers will know all about my antipathy towards those modernistic monstrosities anyway.)

I know that everyone gets this way in their later years, but it seems mine started long before I actually reached my seniority, way sooner than when this happened to my friends of like age.

If I’d owned a house at that time, I’d probably have been yelling at the kids to get off my lawn when I was in my late twenties.

None of this means that I reject all things new, of course, just that I am extraordinarily picky about adopting any of them.  This is being typed on a laptop that is hundreds or times more powerful than the corporate IBM 360/40 I worked on as an operator in the mid-1970s, and I love the cord-free existence of Bluetooth and wi-fi.  But if I had to, I could easily revert to an earlier generation of comm technology.

I’m even getting bored of writing about this topic right now, so I think I’ll quit.  There are a couple of books that need reading — paper books, not that Kindle nonsense.