the £80,000 cars....so many of them......
Once upon a few years ago I was working in Electrical Integration at Land Rover when the as-yet unreleased Range Rover Sport model was in development. As per any new car they're tested and tortured in all sorts of unimaginable ways, either to make sure they don't break or for legislative reasons like the EU bureacratic tossers like to stick their noses in and fuck things up.

However if the radio goes on the blink or the seat covers stain, it's not going to ruin your day. Safety, though, that's quite important.

So it was with a heavy heart that I had to represent the department during the crash testing phase.

To satisfy NCAP requirements, new cars are crashed to make sure the folks inside are protected enough that they don't end up a pink wobbly pile of organs if the car has a whoopsie.

The 4.2L Supercharged V8 was capable of propelling 2.5 tons to 60 in 7 seconds and if you optioned up with telecoms and top-line stereo you would be looking at £80k's worth of car.

£80 grands worth of perfectly decent car- smashed into a concrete block at 40 mph, full frontal mayhem. Then taken back to base so I could test/repair the internal network communication data bus- the car's own crash sensor data was recorded during the collision - so the car could then be crashed backwards into another block - repaired again- crashed sideways into a pole - repaired again - and the final indignity, launched into the air for a roll-over crash. At which point the poor battered smashed victim was stuffed into a compound alongside its other poor brethren and kept for many years getting rained on and occasionally, nested in.

And to a petrol head, the shame that this wasn't just the one car-

SO MANY CARS...shit, if you don't want them then give them to me, why don't you.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Sun 11 Nov 2012, 17:19, 4 replies)

Did you see that rather wonderful Horizon programme
on the history of crash-testing (for humans). Fantastic programme, and you can consider yourself lucky the wiring bus stayed clean enough for you to repair (although it has to be said the cadavers were well-wrapped).
( Ghoti Fingers, Sun 11 Nov 2012, 18:14, closed)

I think I saw that
Some of the old footage was terrifying - I remember some sort of old American finned Chevy something or other Christine-looking thing being t-boned and all the seats just sliding out of the side of the car, ending up in the middle of the road...
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Tue 13 Nov 2012, 11:34, closed)

Smashing up wanky 4x4s, that'll never see mud, let alone drive through it?
The only way that could be better would be if the dummies were replaced with the idiots who buy such cars. Why are you complaining?
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Mon 12 Nov 2012, 14:18, closed)

doesn't really matter what you think about the people that can afford to buy them
it's a crying shame that perfectly good cars get smashed to shit.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Tue 13 Nov 2012, 23:17, closed)