Rabbers

Best reason I ever heard for avoiding a place.

You’re absolutely right about that. The trouble is that my wife simply cannot face the day without breakfast, so that when we travel together, I inevitably end up with two breakfasts on the hotel bill. When I travel alone (which is rare nowadays) I never take breakfast in the hotel but head for the nearest place where I can get served at a fairer price. Believe it or not, I sometimes used to do this as a matter of principle even when travelling at company expense. The thing about hotel breakfasts is that you can quite easily estimate the difference between the costs and the price of what you eat, and, as far as I’m concerned, gross margins that often look to be around 90% are difficult to accept regardless of the quality, class and location of the hotel.

I’ve never minded paying for hotel parking provided that it is guests-only and secure. I can’t offhand recall ever having been asked to pay for open-access hotel parking in any country, though I know one or two hotels in Germany with reduced-rate reserved spaces for guests in adjoining public car-parks. I don’t like the practice but at least the spaces have mechanical barriers and are CCTV-monitored by the hotel reception.

90000km service carried out this morning, with change of plugs as per schedule. The car ran smoothly before, and now it runs even more smoothly.

Both my 2016 and 2019 RCs have been Sonic Titanium. Had I ordered the 2019 car to my own specifications I would probably have gone for Metallic red or maybe blue, but I preferred ready delivery straight out of the showroom to a long wait. Objectively, I have not regretted what, if only on the grounds of Sonic Titanium’s popularity, I thought might have been a boring choice. But, after more than than six years of the daily sight of fundamentally the same car, I remain impressed by the colour’s intrinsic ability to project a multiplicity of shades and nuances of light and dark grey in accordance with how the folds and bulges of the bodywork take the light - and, of course, in accordance with how the light itself changes during the day and with the seasons.

Complete and utter nonsense.

It struck me on reading the OP that Stephen's same question would have been asked - but the other way around - by the writers of the Disney/Pixar Cars movies as their basis for naming the characters, i.e. if a car were human what human would he or she be? The names reflecting the traits and appearances purportedly depicted by the cars thus include, for example, Lightning McQueen=Ford GT40, Sally Carrera=Porsche 911, Doc Hudson=Hudson Hornet, Lizzie=Model T Ford, Luigi=Fiat 500 etc., etc.

Bernard, if you're interested in that particular subject you might want to consult DavidCM's latest post in the Boomer's Epitaph thread.

It's got to be a Bertone-designed Volvo, maybe the 780?

… and for starting a bonfire on damp days.

If it isn’t a Lexus, who cares?

You could try asking the Palace press office, since King Charles often seems to favour this item of garb when in the country, and I can't imagine the vehicles he drives don't have leather seats.

Comfort, while desirable, was perhaps not necessarily the main consideration for the customers you mention.

No, David, I would figure Vovan is likelier to mean Vo[lkswagen]van, (i.e. the VW Microbus) which was a far more popular place of conception. I have heard it said that it was specifically designed with this purpose in mind.

This thread has taken an interesting turn insofar as I am left wondering if, back in the 1980s when he conceived the Lexus marque, it even remotely crossed Mr Eiji Toyoda’s mind that any customers would one day be debating how best to raise their car off the ground.

As a collector of Lexus-related trivia, I couldn't help noticing, on reading reports of a recent telephone prank played on the Italian PM - the latest in a long series of similar hoaxes involving politicians and celebrities including, among others, Merkel, Erdogan, Sánchez, Elton John - that the two Russian perpetrators call themselves "Vovan & Lexus". I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the name has some sort of comedic significance in Russia, but I can't imagine what it might be.

The cats I know don’t drive. They just leave paw-prints all over my paintwork.

Many years ago in Belgium I refused (or threatened to refuse) a new Opel Commodore as my company car because it showed 160km, which was explained as the distance driven to Liege from a showroom in Antwerp for the sake of prompt delivery. Rather than take the car back the dealer offered an extra 5% off the agreed price, which I accepted to my Account Dept’s delight.

Interesting, and something I’ll keep in mind. I‘ve had the message several times after driving in (literally) filthy weather with the front sensors coated with wet dirt kicked up by preceding vehicles, and a pouring of clean water only occasionally helped by a sponge has always been enough to clear them.

Sounds like overkill. What’s wrong with plain water and a sponge?

I’ve seen similar texts for several inexpensive brands of cordless compressors sold in supermarkets, and they have always prevented me from buying one to keep in the boot “just in case”. But if you think about it, the likelihood that you will ever need to inflate more than one tyre on any given occasion is not high.

Which goes some way to explaining why I get angry about getting angry.

I must admit that I often get angry with myself for more and more often feeling angry.

When changing to winter tyres this morning I took a close look at the treads on my SC7s after 14000km (evenly divided, I would estimate, between motorway, other roads, and town/city). All four were ~6mm, the rears maybe a tad less. So I would say that satisfactory resistance to wear can be added to the tyres’ merits.

Maybe I should rather have said "carriage-trade" then!