BIRD'S-EYE VIEW
Page 48
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
LET nobody say that the practice of "buying market share" is just a myth: major Ford dealer Perrys has just mailed out one thousand £1,000 cheques to potential Cargo buyers.
The cheques can be used to help towards the purchase of a Cargo at any of Perry's six dealerships in the South East. Perrys expects one in 10 of the cheques to be cashed before the end of October. It's certainly a more open form of discounting than is normal.
DISGRUNTLED brewery transport chiefs say they might not be back next year for the BTAC economy trials.
Farcical marshalling which gave the winning 38-tonner this year a fuel consumption of more than 13mpg is the official reason for them being browned off.
But I can now bring you the real reason: when they turned up for this year's event they discovered it was dry.
What? No booze at the brewers' annual bingo? If Whitbread's Andrew Davis wants them back next year, he had better at least lay on some Barbican!
AFIGURE disguised as a beheaded Tudor, complete with head carried under his arm, and a shop owner wearing a hat topped with a stuffed seagull may seem unlikely companions for National Freight Consortium senior executives at a press launch, but a colleague insists this happened last week.
The occasion was the launch of the Co-op Cup, a London Borough of Camden initiative to encourage the development of worker co-operatives, and NFC is the sponsor of the event.
And there in the middle of it all were BRS managing director Geoff Pygall and head of communications Brian Cottee enjoying the informal atmosphere of the foyer of the Shaw Theatre as some of the established cooperative displayed their wares.
Catering was also courtesy of a cooperative, a catering firm which has cornered the market for Caribbean wedding fare. It nearly wasn't for that co-operative's van broke down. Perhaps that is where NFC comes in.
ASNIFFER'S paradise was created at the M1 junction with the A6 at Castle Donington when an artic carrying glue overturned. Drivers who were stuck in the ensuing traffic block were, however, far from hooked on the stuff. IT'S a good thing that lorries are not built down to the standards of the private motor car. The Automobile Association has just succeeded in getting Renault to modify its turbocharged Ii model to stop the unwary from being cut about by its cooling fan.
Apparently, this car's delicate little turbo gets a bit hot, so Renault arranged for the engine's electric cooling fan to switch itself on 90 seconds after the engine has been turned off, and to run for 15 minutes. That would just about give the average motorist time to open the bonnet and start checking the dipstick — which is next to the fan — before the fan turned on . . .
Renault, to give it credit,
SLOW, slow, quick quick, slow — Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley gracefully demonstrates progress over the past (bow many years has it been?) of the construction of the M25.
He was opening the latest section— between the M40 and the M4 west of London — of the world's longest orbital motorway . . . and underlining his remarks at the Freight Transport Association's annual conference last week that the M25 is "a highly imaginative project which calls for celebration".
acknowledged the danger when it was pointed out, and modified the car — 11 Turbo drivers are now protected by a label in four languages telling diem what's about to happen.
Acorrespondent in the Irish Times explained that two policemen stopped him on the road from Waterford to Kilkenny. Two civilians took a thimbleful of fuel while another two logged the details. And, of course, there was inevitably the "man" with the cap who supervised the delicate operation.
How many men, I wonder, would be needed to test a pint of Liffey water for anti-freeze.