Lady Elanore

It's not an Aston Martin, I would love a V8 model of almost any description, or a V12, or pretty much anything with an AM badge

That's what I thought. I'd be screaming to stop stealing my 'leccy.

100% staged

I may be joining your club....

Thats not a Spider!!!!!!!!! It's an aerodynamic, max attack, dragster, death arachnid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why in the name of baby Cheeses did anything so evil come into existence??

Ta, you have to click on the image to see the soft blur of the background properly, it also makes the foreground a little less 'busy' if you see what I mean. Not figured out how to make it more apparent without softening off the Kingfisher itself.

That's a great capture. I often see a kingfisher on one of my favourite walks, but either never have a camera or it's in flight and I can't quite catch it. I've recently had an update of Lightroom Classic and it's give a new filter which simulates a fast lens, so I ran your picture through it to see what would happen (it's a new toy, so you have to play with it of course ) and although it doesn't improve on your capture it gives it a slightly different look ie a narrow depth of field. Might be a bit too much in the settings I used, but it's a fun thing to play with. Hope you don't mind

If everyone read and understood the manual (assuming it was comprehensive), there wouldn't be a Brisky

I get that cars in general get heavier and something like the M5 is very heavy, but it has a massive engine and astonishing performance, whereas a cooking EV is often the same weight and is a one trick pony with rapid acceleration up to a moderate speed. My M3 is lardy, even though it hides it weight astonishing well, but it is roughly the same weight as my PHEV!! I will like EVs and their ilk slightly more, once they become lighter. As for ICE cars, I'm grateful I can still get them, even if there is a weight penalty these days.

PHEVS allegedly mpg figures are nonsense. Miles Per Gallon, not Miles Per Gallon and Electricity, is not a figure they ever seem to quote. (MPGE?) If you cruise on a motorway at a steady speed, then the electric motor is not in use much and the mpg figure is closer to what the petrol engine alone, can achieve. When driving in a city, the electric motor is in use a lot more and also creates a bit of regen, so the mpg goes up. But once depleted, the car continually does a little top-up of the battery to achieve a constant minimum charge status, so the mpg can go down on the motorway compared to when the vehicle has a bit of charge (that is mostly unused) in the battery, as the car might be driving and charging a little, all done from the petrol engine. Although in town the economy is still better than on the motorway thanks to regen I suspect. As a petrol car I reckon the true average mpg is around 36-40mpg which isn't too bad for a rather heavy car (as all EVs and PHEVs are 😞 ) I'm pretty sure my next car will be ICE and not EV. Hopefully, if it has to be hybrid, it will be the non plug in type.

Funny thing is I have beaten quoted ICE figures regularly with high performance cars. Admittedly, it's usually on long motorway trips, but anything over 30mpg on a car with over 500bhp is a pleasant surprise. My old M4 could reach mid 30s mpg on a long run ( WLTP 28.5 mpg ). I sold a Corvette C4 (5.7 V8) to a chap who was driving it from Manchester to his home on the South coast. I told him he could get 30mpg out of it if he kept to 70mph. He rang me once he got home to say he had managed 30mpg and was more than happily surprised.

As someone who drives a Peugeot with a couple of electric motors in it, I can safely say Peugeot massively overstate the range of their 3008 PHEV! I'd take their figures with a large pinch of salt. It's a very pleasant car to spend time in, properly French comfy but not quite the PHEV range that I hoped for.

I think you use the past tense a little prematurely I have to say I dislike Teslas though. I like that they moved on the EV game substantially (even though I am not a fan of EVs) and their motors and batteries were a game changer in the early days. But the shonky build quality and imho, ridiculous interiors, just plain wind me up (give me some buttons for goodness’ sake, I hate these big screens that 'do-it-all'). I'm not a fan of the styling either, although the S model has grown on me a little over the years.

Funnily enough, there are a few slightly differing weights for Petrol on the internet? I'm not including the ridiculous US gallon of course

i think a gallon petrol (imperial) wieghs 7.3 pounds, or 3.3kg

I run staggered tyres, although not run-flat, but even the 275s on the front cost a small fortune to replace. 😞 It was always thus

Those wheels are hidious

I tried putting milk on Toffee Popcorn...it was not a success

I loved Sugar Puffs as a kid, used to eat them out of the box like sweets (well they were sort of a super sweet pop corn and kids are 99% fuelled by sugar )

On refection, it's a shame they couldn't fit a supercharger instead of the turbo. I guess weight, complexity and cost were against it. It would probably have solved the low down torque issue the Twisted version seems to suffer from.

Wow, that's a thing to covet

I looked at that quite closely to make sure it was a cigar

A friend and colleague who has just bought a Taycan (1 year old and around £40k off...top end EVs aren't selling well it seems) and he quoted a story of an American that clipped something in the road and took 3mm off the undertray. Cost him $50K to replace the battery 😞 To make matters worse, the Taycan battery is apparently easy to swap out too, so labour cost wouldn't have been too much -t aking Porsche tax into account of course. .

This is a bit interesting!!