Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 08:35:08 -0700
Reply-To: Stuart MacMillan <stuartmacm@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Stuart MacMillan <stuartmacm@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Vanagon "truisms"
In-Reply-To: <516774cf.27c3ec0a.5193.59b7SMTPIN_ADDED_MISSING@mx.google.com>
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Lots of hills around here, and people don't want to be behind a Vanagon on
the next one. Trucks won't even let me pass them, and that's why I'm
replacing the engine. Last summer a couple of kids about 8 came over to our
camp spot with their mom to see what a Westie was, and asked "Is this a
slug? That's what daddy said."
And, no MGB driver worth his salt would ever let a Fiat 128 pass them!
Nothing personal, but back then those spaghetti cans with tiny engines got
no respect! Actually, they still don't, but they all fell apart long ago.
;-)
Stuart
first MGB in 1969 and still have it (and three more)
-----Original Message-----
From: David Beierl [mailto:dbeierl@attglobal.net]
Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2013 7:43 PM
To: Stuart MacMillan
Cc: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Vanagon "truisms"
At 10:05 PM 4/11/2013, Stuart MacMillan wrote:
>. Everyone wants to pass a Vanagon, no matter how fast it is going.
>
>. Corollary to above: No one will let a Vanagon pass them.
These must be West coast things. Nobody on the East coast seems to care one
way or the other. Some people seem to speed up a bit if you overtake
slowly, but that happens in any car I drive -- I think it's a sort of
automatic reaction to having something slowly appear from behind. Doesn't
seem to happen if you overtake briskly.
Around Boston it has seemed to be a fairly common phenomenon that if you
signal that you're going to pull out to pass, the guy next back in the
passing lane will speed up so you don't have room to pull out. But again
it's not Vanagon-specific.
I did once in my life experience someone who really didn't want me to pass,
and could make it stick, Thanksgiving 1971. I was in a Fiat
128 and he was in an MGB, it was the middle of the night and snowing hard.
He finally couldn't go any more (halfway up a long hill on Pennslyvania 81)
because all the cars ahead were stuck, and so perforce neither could we. By
morning the snow was halfway up the doors (all the way up his). I bet he was
colder than we were by the next afternoon. And that's the story of my 18
hours stuck in the snow with the future fantasist Robin McKinley and her
future former husband, and not a pot to pee in. She seemed a mite
preoccupied toward the end, and was glad to stop in at my aunt's in
Washington NJ after we mushed the car down the hill to meet the Payloaders
digging cars out and sending them away one by one.
A lot of the people stuck were locals and not prepared at all. The state
came around in snowmobiles and a big 4x4 around noon, passing out quarts of
milk and medevac-ing a baby. We used their broken trail, plastic chains, a
couple shovels and that lovely light smooth-bottomed car and made it out
three hours later, the only ones who tried. I don't know how long it took
to get everyone out, we didn't follow up. But Robin was grateful and it
gave us something to do other than wait. A Syncro Westy and a time machine
would have been nice. Or a 'Bus with a working heater.
Yrs,
d