NEW ANNUAL IDIOT PARKING AWARDS.

[BusybeasDS]

LOL

No apologies, but..... my personal view :

I lump all German 'Premium' Car drivers (BMW, Audi, Mercedes) in the same gene pool ;o)
The only difference between any of them is the badge on the car!

They ALL have Das Attitude ..

Steve

[mickthemaverick]

Just to be clear Steve you are not including Trabant drivers in that group I assume?

[BusybeasDS]

LOL, good point..

For clarification:

I have now added 'Premium' before the German Cars.. so... specifically BMW, Audi and Mercs... (in my50 years+ of driving experience) .
VW, Opel and Smart are usually driven by 'Normal' people , with no more or less attitude than we, French Car drivers ;o)

[Huskyxantia]

Oh you said rant, swore I saw a c and a u but it was an r and the letter a , my eyes are bad .. honest

[CitroJim]

My son-in-law drives an Audi... He's the exception that proves the rule

[BusybeasDS]

My son-in-law drives an Audi... He's the exception that proves the rule

My get out of jail card from my original post
" I rest my case... in my personal experience, most drivers (caveat maybe not all)"

My daughter had a Mercedes A class, though she has now crossed over from the Dark side and has a Peugeot, which she loves ;o
I also admit when I was a passenger when my daughter drove her Merc, it was akin to a white knuckle ride!
She's a much better / calmer driver in the slower Peugeot.. LOL

I have no doubt there are also 'mental' drivers of le frog marques too, ;o)

[Richard_C]

Just to be clear Steve you are not including Trabant drivers in that group I assume?

It was 1989, November, just 2 days after the Berlin wall was opened up. I was on my way up the M6/M74 somewhere around the border twixt England and Scotland. Up ahead, a cloud of smoke and there was a fainf whiff of 2 stroke oil. I soon caught and passed a Trabant, headed north, a couple, back seats piled high with stuff, driver hunched over the wheel. I reckon they drove into West Germany as soon as they could and decided to get as far away as possible in case Honecker made a comeback and closed it all again.

How times change. In the 70's the cars that I and my friends would never let out of a sideroad in a traffic queue was a Volvo Estate, arrogant self-satisfied plutocrats. Then it was BMW - especially black ones - Merc and Audi somehow didn't seem as bad.

In the mid 90s as an HR Director I looked after pay and reward policy and one of the things I did was open up our car policy - strictly Ford/Vauxhall choices - to any mainstream manufacturer. We had about 450 cars, some for people who needed them and some as a senior manaer benefit. A sales manager I knew well was due a new car and said to me "Im thinking about a BMW 320 - will it make ne look like a ****". Yes, I said. But he got one anyway. Not black, a colour he called "Adolescent Red". Midlife crisis?

Then, for me at least, it was huge tonka toys that I wouldn't give way to. But today its different: Teslas. I feel a bit sorry for people who innocently bought them a while back but anyone who paid good money to Tesla/Musk in recent years gets no help at all. They might be decent people but on the balance of probabilities ... hmmm.

But all of this is a digression from idiot parking, dountless though there is a correlation between brand of car and the arrogance of people who belive they can just stop and get out wherever it suits them. "Oh, I won't be long, just popping in the the bank, dry cleaners, etc etc. Including a bus lane in Cambridge: 50 people sit and wait for them to get back in their car. I reckon P&R busses should have roof mounted driver operated laser disintegrators (do they exist?) to clear the way. Grrrrrr.

[Paul-R]

Ah, the Trabby. I remember seeing one when out marshalling on the RAC Rally. I think it might have been when the rally started in Chester so that would be 1979 for the first time. We cheered the little car whenever we saw it putt-putting its way around the stages. Did it finish? I can't remember. Maybe it appeared in more than one RAC?

[Richard_C]

Ah, the Trabby. I remember seeing one when out marshalling on the RAC Rally.

Are you sure it was a Trabby? Maybe a Warburg, equally smelly 2t from East Germany but at least mostly metal. Not sure a cardboard box would have passed scrutineering, but Wartburgs were entered for a few years around then in an attempt to sell cars in the UK. They always got a cheer from spectators, body roll was so bad I always wondered if the works drivers thought that all the UK was always at 45 degrees from horizontal.

We digress…

[mickthemaverick]

Possibly this one in 1992 Paul?

The Trabby at Weston Park (pinched from Flickr)

[Paul-R]

Could be Mick. There's a pic here of it being serviced


Credit: Anton Want, Getty images

The internet thinks that there was another one as well:

A Trabant 601R was entered in the RAC Rally in 1995, driven by Michael Kahlfuss and Ronald Bauer, making it one of the most unusual entries in the event's history.

Yes, we digress even more...

[mickthemaverick]

Yes that's the one, same reg as my pic. Not too digressive as that at least is parked badly

[Huskyxantia]

I dunno I've seen worse lol

[Richard_C]

Could be Mick. There's a pic here of it being serviced


A Trabant 601R was entered in the RAC Rally in 1995, driven by Michael Kahlfuss and Ronald Bauer, making it one of the most unusual entries in the event's history.

Yes, we digress even more...

Ah, 1995: 6 years after the wall came down and 5 years after formal re-unification. Going rallying in one must have required bravery

The Trabant had a steel frame, with the roof, boot lid, bonnet, wings and doors made of duroplast, a hard plastic made from recycled cotton waste from the Soviet Union and phenol resins from the East German dye industry

[Old-Guy]

Thanks for the humour. My pennyworth:-

From the early 80s to the late 00s I used to do well over 20k a year on business, often a 200+ mile round trip in the morning and evening peaks. I formed the same view about the majority of Audi/BMW/Mercedes drivers; what I call AAA (Arrogant Aryan Attitude). Which is cause and which is effect? Does a certain type of person choose German-made, or does driving a premium German brand tend to create an arrogant manner? Is it like global warming: does rising atmospheric CO2 cause global warming, or does a warming world cause this (barely measurable) increase. Though, of course, suggest that the latter is an equally valid conclusion based on th evidence, is a foul heresy!

Living in semi-rural Gloucestershire, I have a new pet hate: drivers of huge EVs with a big MG on the bonnet! Are they so thick that the really believe there is anything remotely British about the brand. Why would anyone with half a brain buy a Chinese car, let alone an EV, last of all a huge soft-roader? Just to go to the shops and do the school run? Cheap to run & environmentally friendly? No, just nothing between the ears! BTW, I have nothing against genuine MGs or even BL-badged ones. I had a D-plate MG-Maestro Efi as a company car for 3 or 4 years. It earned me brownie points with some clients for choosing all-British, out of the ordinary but not outrageous - and first impressions count.

I'm very careful where I park my XM: preferably in the middle of the middle one of (at least) 3 empty adjacent spaces and never at Waitrose!