User talk:Charles01/Archive 7

Panther De Ville image enquiry
Hi there,

Is there any chance of obtaining a high resolution copy of the Panther de Ville image that you posted on the car's wikipedia entry? I write as Research assistant on a book being written on a London school (St Paul's) amongst whose alumni is Robert Jankel, designer of that car. The book is an in-house project, will have a print run of 5000 and is a non-profit project.

Many thanks for any help,

Yours Sincerely,

Memphis Barker barkerm[at]stpaulsschool.org.uk —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.85.20.99 (talk) 10:03, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm flatterred (of course) by your question, Memphis, but I think the answer is probably that the wiki image is as clear as it's going to get.
 * The picture was taken outside Wells cathedral here in England.  Frankly I cannot remember why I was in Wells in 1983, but the frame of the slide stated 1983.   It would (probably) have been taken with a 35 mm Olympus camera using a fairly cheap zoom lens and my not particularly steady hand, and then processed by the Agfa color-slide lab at Wimbledon.   By modern standards (and indeed by the standards of those monochrome images one occasionally comes across from the third quarter of the nineteenth century) it never had too much 'resolution'.   I scanned it into my computer using a scanner called (I think) OpticFilm 7200.   I think if I try and save it using more pixels or whatever it is people do, they will simply be fuzzy pixels.
 * Pity
 * I do, of course, wish you every success with your project.  That school has a lot of history I suspect.
 * Regards Charles01 (talk) 10:44, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Dropping a line
Hello Charles, you may have noticed that I haven´t contributed anything useful lately; that´s because I´m fed up with arrogant folks like Mr. Proscriptus and your fellow-countryman, Mr. Teutonic Tamer. I´ve drawn the conclusion that fighting against windmills is not desirable. While I admire your constant bee-like Fleiß, it´s all over for me now. Still, I´d like to keep in touch with you, as it´s always interesting and rewarding to communicate with you. --- I now do own an ´86 420 SE (with kaputtened right-hand camshaft), another ´86 260 SE for winter and, as a daily driver, a ´91 300 CE; I must say that I´ve never driven anything remotely as comfortable as a W126, it´s simply incredible. --- Here´s looking at you, kid :-)) - Michael. --328cia (talk) 20:11, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

(Replied offlist. Charles01 (talk) 20:45, 5 July 2008 (UTC)  )

Tatra trucks
Hello, I think you are right, I've spent so much time at Tatra Wiki article that I completely failed to notice that indeed there is a very little information about truck manufacturing @ Tatra. I do have some information in regards to history of truck production at Kopřivnice, however it is in czech so I have to translate which is going to get messy and time consuming, in the meantime thanks for pointing the obvious. CheersStonufka (talk) 13:31, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Journey to Babel
Thanks for the repairs here. That translation was making me cringe. FYI, I suspect "turner" was a spelling error for "tuner". BTW, there's a whole bunch more linked out from Bandini Automobili that could use help...  TREKphiler hit me ♠ 00:39, 12 July 2008 (UTC)


 * It's a nice job to get into.  And whereas with 'real life' one usually has a time dead line for these jobs, with wikipedia you can worry away at it in your own time until it makes sense.   Keep an eye on me, though:  I'm not an expert especially on suspension components and some of the things that go on under the hood / bonnet!   The other thing, with this type of text, is that the Italian one may have been taken from somewhere else and modified (a bit) or not and so on and so on and ... so in the end you may get versions of the same text (or bits of it) turning up on line several times in several different web sites.   Ditto English translations thereof.   Specially where (as here) there is most likely a shortage, even in Italian, of 'original' research / compilation.


 * The way it ends up in wikipedia, the 'turner' word is 'tornitore'.  My Italian isn't that good, but I'm pretty sure that's the noun (ie 'turner') from the verb 'tournare' which (though I may have mis-spelled it here) means 'to turn'.   When you get lost in Italy and ask the way, one of the words you pick out is 'tornare' which in that context tends to mean that you must turn around (and go back the way you came...)    So it is a word I've come across!


 * I do not know if people spoke about 'tuning' (of vehicle engines) in the 1930s, though no doubt that's a part of what our friend would have got up to at his Forli workshop.  But machining engine parts on a lathe would, I imagine, have been the sort of basic job that would get delegated to a competent apprentice mechanic fairly early on in his career.   In Europe and US they don't often let non-employee members of the human race into the car plants these days, apart from a couple of carefully selected assembly points, and presumably machining is all done inside robot controlled black boxes.   But if you've ever visited a place where they assembly / repair cars in one of the other continents where wages are lower - even Turkey which is 'sort of' Europe (though that's a huge political discussion outside of where we need to go here) you get a better idea of 'turning' - ie machining components on a lathe - as pretty fundamental to some of the things folks do when making and fixing vehicles.   Well, that's my understanding, anyway, and I think I felt sort of endorsed by the wiki entry on 'turning' to which I entered a link.   Though the turning entry does need input from an expert which ain't me.   Trouble is, folks who are handy in a workshop aren't generally the same folks as the ones who are happy banging away entering prose to keyboards.


 * I did notice already there are several other Bandini entries needing attention.  It's super there are so many, really, especially for Bandini enthusiasts.   But you (if it was you) did a neat thing by highlighting the matter on the auto project page.   I think there are several of us who started by thinking someone else will do it better and then came back having decided that ... maybe they wouldn't.   And actually, though there are several frequent contributors to wiki entries in English who have mother tongue German, mother tongue Italian is less easy to find among the regular English wiki automobile contributors (The Italian guy who has 'done' in Italian a lot of interesting entries on Italian and German cars from the 1950s, 60s etc has good English but he still has plenty to do on Italian wiki.)


 * Ho hum.  I only meant to do you a one line 'Thanks, amico'.   Well, thanks amico.   Charles01 (talk) 06:00, 12 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Hey, be glad you got a bit out of hand. You might just be right "turner" as a reference to lathe operator or (what's the word?) a guy who does milling on heads & such. Absent seeing the original, I have no clue. I suggested tuner from his work as a mechanic, which suggests "engine" to me; the translation may be using a broader meaning, anybody involved in mechanical work, which would cover lathe or milling machine operators (among others).
 * Yeah, I put it on the Project page. I found one of them on new page patrol & it looked promising til I looked at how badly translated it was.  (I got about a quarter in & just couldn't cope anymore! Bad grammar makes me nuts. ;D) I applaud it being put up, but couldn't somebody have borrowed an Italian-English dictionary? (It works, y'know. I translated a short page from German Wikipedia with one. {No, not into Italian. =]})
 * I guess I did the same thing everybody else did: posted it & hoped somebody else would jump in. Thing was, it gave me a little respite from the worst of it, & some sense it wasn't a hopeless solo project. Between you and Kierant, I've managed to take some encouragement & not just walk away from the Bandini pages entire. If thanks are due, they're to you, too. Is it Molto grazzie? (Sp would be muchas gracias, & no, I don't speak much of that, either. I'm illiterate in about five languages. ;D)   TREKphiler  hit me ♠ 16:52, 12 July 2008 (UTC) (Now that I think of it, my local library might have an It-Eng dictionary I can borrow... Like I don't have enough things to keep me busy here. =])


 * Cycle fenders? I'm not sure where that originated. I first saw it applied by magazine writers, but it was in re the Lotus 7, so I presumed it was a Brit term (I don't recall hearing it before that, but I've seen it used also by Brit writers since then, so...). As for where I learned, it's Canada, but I've had quite a bit of exposure to U.S. & Brit & some Oz English, thru TV programs & books, & I've also taken a particular interest in dialect, so my usage is pretty eclectic (or peculiar); I'm comfortable using some "local" idiom of all 3, & I can understand a lot of it where other people might be a bit at sea. Born & raised in Canada, picking up some French is inevitable (if only off the bilingual labels). I've also spent a lot of years reading military history, so I'm comfortable with quite a bit of German, & some (transliterated) Russian & Japanese. And living north of the U.S., it's hard not to pick up some (small amount of) Spanish. Am I boring you, yet? ;D   TREKphiler   hit me ♠  02:14, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
 * "distribution, and cinematism"? I suspected it was something to do with the distributor, & if you're right about camshaft, it'd be valvetrain. Have a look at the original & fix if needed?
 * Re lubrication v oil pump, it may be more than the pump was changed; could be new lines (a change to braided from rubber) or opening oil galleries, more capacity, better scavenging, switch to dry sump... Absent a good source, it's hard to know, if the original only mentions the pump.
 * "mixed distribution chain and gears"? I have a suspicion this is the drive for the cams, but could also be for the distributor, & it sounds like it was changed (from the previous arrangement) to gear-driven distributor & chain-driven cams. I'm not going to touch it, but if you can confirm, do fix it.
 * Also, can you have a look at "850 Canali Alberto"? I changed some of that, & I think I mangled the meaning.


 * Otherwise, you're looking good on it.  TREKphiler   hit me ♠  03:38, 03:43, 03:57, 04:17, & 04:38, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Just to clear it up, Alberto Canali's name got reversed, & it had me thinking he was from Barsoom (Canali Alberto). =]  TREKphiler   hit me ♠  05:51, 13 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I think there are two things going on here, Trekphiler.  I'm not sure I've sufficiently thought through either of them, but in setting out my thoughts I hope I clarify them for both our benefits.   The two things are (1) improving the correctness / translation of what went on under the hood / bonnet and (2) bike fenders.


 * On what went on under the hood / bonnet, my knee jerk reaction is to defer to you, on the grounds that you appear to know more about these cars than I do.  One of us still needs to go through item by item and test your thoughts against our understanding of available sources, and if you don't get round to it first, I'll probably get round to it before too long.   But if I'm the one to do it, my underlying assumption is likely to be that your guess is better than mine.   That said:


 * We still need a mother tongue speaker - ideally of BOTH languages.  Even if one of us gets hold of a superb technical dictionary, the examples of a car specific meaning of some of these terms that are given in that dictionary cannot be relied upon to be precisely analogous to the applications of Mr Bandini who was clearly an original thinker in any language.   For many cars, service manuals can provide clarification of how the thing actually worked.   Even if they are translated into rather quaint versions of English, there are frequently technical drawings from which one can infer what the writer actually meant.   But with Bandinis, I do not know if service manuals exist, nor how one might begin to get hold of them


 * So I guess my conclusion on Point 1 is the banal one that whatever translations we end up with, further and better information may give access to subsequent improvements and corrections.  Thus the wiki way.


 * The Bike fender thing is an even more familiar issue. You grew up speaking American (Oops, I mean Canadian English).   I grew up speaking English (Ooops, I mean British English).   And of course there are plenty of words the Australians use which have never penetrated to Oxford or Harvard.   But at least we've both lived and worked with different version of English enough to have some sort of a feeling for the nature and extent of the differences.


 * A good starting point here might be the entry for Fender (vehicle).  If ever you get round to doing an entry on bike fenders, look at that entry first.   If ever I get round to doing an entry on motor bike style mudguards, I'll try and do the same.   Either way, such an entry might well need input from both sides of the Big A(tlantic).


 * Wikipediae says that if it's American you should write about it in American (English) and if it's English you should write about it in (British) English.  Fine for the Chevrolet Impala and the Austin Mini.   But if it's German or Japanese or Swedish?   I THINK in practice (that's practise) and maybe by prescription, where the car is European, we in England think that it belongs to our half of the Anglosphere and anglecise.   But for cars that are well known in the US, that approach never really sticks.   Think of the Audi 100 entry.   Or Is that Audi 5000?   I think American speaking contributors have accepted Audi 100 as the car's name (because that's the label they use in Germany) but there's usually a good deal of text there that simply is not in English (as in British English).   I've translated a good many entries on German cars of the 1950s to English, and frankly where only a few people will read or contribute to an entry it's such a small problem that it barely merits a thought.   But anything on a Volvo 144 or Honda Accord will attract copious attention from both sides of this particular anglophone language divide.   I try and get round it by avoiding words which are specific to one or other side of the barrier.   Where I can't do that I use both (as in bonnet / hood).   To me, that's simply a courtesy to the reader.


 * Trekphiler, I still find 'motor-bike style mudguards' any ugly phrase. And if anyone better versed than I can come up with another word that means the same and works in both our languages, I'd go with that.    Meantime, for Bandini, we are dealing with Italy, a country in which English is widely spoken as a second language.   The English taught in Italy is British English.   American English has penetrated Italy less than (for instance) it has penetrated Germany.   Corporate America has problems understanding what's going on in corporate Italy.   Think how long General Motors stayed with Fiat.   And think how much longer they've stayed with Saab or indeed Opel and Vauxhall - yes, I know other issues come into play, but I think it's a simple matter of fact that Italy is not awash with US business execs to the same extent as Germany.   So Italy is Europe and Britain is part of Europe (even if many of the English are in denial about having blown away the British empire which permitted them to pretend not to belong to any continent).   So we use British English?   Yet Sig Bandini seems to be better known in North America than in England.   Chicago and New York and large swathes of small town America and Canada have many districts awash with Italian Americans who've never been to London, even if they may have a vague sense that it's in the general direction of Berlin (or Moscow.   or Singapore.   or maybe even Palermo).   So the language for Bandini is American English?


 * So I'm back with voting for 'both' languages.  Which I think gives us bike fenders / motorbike style mudguards.


 * Any views?  Regards   Charles01 (talk) 08:34, 14 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I default to American, but I'm comfortable to let Britlish (OK?) stand where I find it (unlike some who'll revert not knowing any better). I also incline to using Britlish for European subjects generally. (HMG's sphere of influence & all that.) Something like the Accord or Civic also built here (Canada, too) probably should use Amlish. And yeah, some dual usage (bonnet/hood & such) is probably appropriate in places.
 * On the issue of cycle fenders, I disagree with "mudguard" because, as I understand it, "cycle fender" falls in the category of technical terms. Cf the previously mentioned Lotus 7, or the Cunningham Allards, or the Rotus 7, or some of the early Moggies. (Or maybe not.) "Mudgard" isn't quite the same thing. Or is too broad. Or something. A link to Fender (vehicle), if it's got a pic of one of said cycle-fendered types, isn't out of line; I wish I'd thought to do it. :[
 * As for Sig Bandini's putative fame, I never heard of him before. I do know a bit about racing, & a bit about cars; between them, I can cope with most of what was there. I also think the writer is giving him too much credit, but that could be Italian chauvinism at work in the original source.
 * The technical language issue, I think you may be right, but not because either of us is incompetent. I have a suspicion the original was transcribed by somebody with less than perfect grasp of the technical issues (but that may be because my Italian doesn't go far beyond Greta Scacchi =] and if you've ever seen "The Coca-Cola Kid", you'll realize it doesn't have to. =] ) If we're dealing with induced error, it's no wonder we can't suss it out. For now, have a glance at what I've done & see if it's terribly off the original Italian. My intention was, rely on you to get the translation to English close, then see if your translation gives me enough clarity to figure out what it should mean. If there is introduced error, tho, that may not be possible, which is what has me worried. For instance, as I think I said, the lubrication may've been completely redone by Bandini, but whoever transcribed from the paper source to Italian WP may not have known enough to say so, & absent the paper source, we can't know. I'm going to do a quick Google & see if I can find something on Bandini cars in English in hope of clearing that up, at least.  TREKphiler   hit me ♠  18:14 & 18:20, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * (OT PS) When it comes to why corporations stick, I wouldn't put "language" high on the list of issues. There are cultural factors far more in play, like the amount of information the players demand (Germans insist on knowing everything, down to the size of the fasteners, where Americans are satisfied knowing where the factory is, & Italians maybe with knowing it'll get done this month, sometime, if they feel like it). Not to cast aspersions, it's a matter of the culture you grow up in; mañana is the usual in Mexico for perfectly good local cultural reasons, just the same as obsession with detail is in Germany. (OK, I'll stop now.) 18:14, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Took your hint; have a look at Fender (vehicle), while I go fix the Bandini's cycle fenders.  TREKphiler   hit me ♠  18:31, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

<--Looking at your recent changes, I like "trusted team"; I think that's closer to what was really going on, w "Papa Bandini" & his Merry Men. I think there's still confusion over the bodywork (was it still Motto, or did they drop him, or what?). I might quibble over the engine "adopting" a new head; maybe I was unclear it's the company adopting it, & if so, I'll fix it. There's a bit of "control freak" in Bandini that seems to run in guys who form their own car companies (Ferrari was the same, Colin Chapman certainly had some of it, FWI read); if I can get a handle on the grammar, I'll take out the "wordiness" you were worried about. I took out the xt link to Dell'Orto; apparently, they're frowned on, & also, I want to encourage creation of an EngWP article on them, if I can. And to conclude, we may have to agree to disagree (tho I hope we can come to an agreement!) on mudgards v cycle fenders. I think the pic of the Lotus 7 at Fender (vehicle) pretty clearly shows they're not attached, & the description explains the usage (I know, I wrote it); I just wish I could source the origin of the term. I see from your discussion here the term's not terribly common across the pond, so maybe it's unique to the mag writers here; I'm not a big enough fan of the Seven & its siblings to know. TREKphiler  hit me ♠  16:50, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Re Motto. It occurs to me the original bodywork was designed by Motto, & later the design was done in-house, but the actual construction was still by Motto, in the fashion of Ferrari & Pininfarina; IIRC, the early Ferraris were "farmed out", & later the styling was in-house, but the actual work was still done at the Farina plant. I would still like to see a source on it... I'm waiting on interlibrary loan for something...  TREKphiler   hit me ♠  17:49, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Eminently possible.  I resist the temptation to speculate further, but I'm delighted that you hope to have a better source in due course.


 * I think I may leave this for a few days: let it settle and come back to it next week having better digested some of what I have been learning about Bandini.  Where the Italian writer is vague - as you suggested, possibly because he doesn't always understand what his own sources are telling him - a sense of the Bandini context can help support useful insights, though that's not a route I'd want to go down very far for wiki work.


 * Regards Charles01 (talk) 18:23, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I by no means presume to change it based solely on my (sometimes faulty) memory, just note it may not be as nonsensical as it appears.
 * I also have to revise my opinion of Bandini; one of the xt links was to the Autoweek website, & their writer seemed rather impressed with the company's success.
 * And something I should have thought of long ago. :C Unless you've a strong objection, I'm going to copy this whole discussion to the Bandini & Bandini Auto talk pages. Maybe somebody watching them (if anybody) can (will) fix what we can't alone.  TREKphiler   hit me ♠  19:37, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * 1. & 2. Noted / works for me.
 * 3. I have no strong objection (to continuing this exchange on the Bandini talk page) as long as I can find it.  I think I'd rather you copyandpaste.   (ie Please don't cutandpaste.)   For reasons which I think I sort of understand when I think about it hard enough, wiki doesn't like us to delete stuff from our talk pages.
 * Regards Charles01 (talk) 19:47, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm using "cut & paste" a bit loosely. I wouldn't just chop your talk page, tho I confess I don't understand why WP opposes me doing on it on mine... It'll be up any second now.  TREKphiler   hit me ♠  19:59, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Gonna fly now
Thought of it before, but forgot to ask. Have you seen this?

It can use any help you can offer. You can just cut & paste from WP (just tag it before you paste). TREKphiler  hit me ♠  13:57, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Slow speed chase. Not specially peeved
Re this: did I miss something? 'cause you sound peeved, & I honestly don't know why. TREKphiler  hit me ♠  09:30, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Nope.  I'm not remotely peeved.   Sorry if that's how it looked.
 * At least, I am more or less permanently peeved with my ISP (?service provider) and with the way the telephone oligopoly operates in England.  But I haven't figured out a way to blame you (nor any other member of the human race) for that.
 * It was merely a serious point to be taken (please) or ignored (as you wish) at face value.
 * Your talk page down loads very slowly to my pc, and I assume it's because there's more stuff on it than the telephone wires here in England can handle when the neighbors' kids get home and start going online.
 * Did you miss something?  Not as far as I know.
 * But thanks - I should have mentioned it before - for the plane spotting link.  I think probably I'm more useful concentrating on things I like more.   Includes cars.   But I did, moved by you, spot what might have been a grammatical error on the Boeing 727 page.   (The first time I flew on an aircraft with wings it was as a passenger on a Lufthansa Boeing 727 so that seemed a good place to start looking...)
 * (Another thing that peeves me - how long do you have? - is all the time I have wasted since then because scheduled airlines fail to follow their own (ever less demanding) schedules.)
 * Enjoy breakfast. (I'd assumed you were too far west to be out of bed:  wrong!)
 * Regards.  Charles01 (talk) 09:45, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * No offence taken. I'm well used to my comments being less than perfectly clear, so I suspected I'd goofed somewhere again. =] And I'm evangelizing for PSW anywhere I find somebody remotely interested in cars or planes.
 * Airline flight scheduling is a perpetual mystery. I hear at some (all?) airports, the airlines, knowing passengers like early flights, will schedule takeoffs at (say) 06.00, knowing perfectly well they can't get more than (say) 40 takeoffs/hr, & so the 100 or so scheduled will stack at the gates & taxiways...& passengers will sit on board...& FAA won't do bugger all about it. (Sorry for being rude.)
 * I've been considering archiving my talk, but I've been a bit leery of screwing it up & losing it...
 * And I am mightily far west, but I keep odd hours, so y'never know when I'll turn up here & reply to you. Cheers.  TREKphiler   hit me ♠  16:50, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Gonna land now
Re your comment on Bandini: FYI, races were often run on airports (off-hours) or disused airbases, because they had wide, strong surfaces with lots of runoff area. Silverstone started that way, & NHRA originated with airport events. (No need to reply...)  TREKphiler  <sup style="color:#1034A6;"> hit me ♠  00:32, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

The de-fenders
FYI, I came across a ref to "cycle wings" in researching Nardi, & "cycle fenders" here (evidently also translated, a bit indifferently, from Italian). Not that it gives us world peace (or tougher mandatory minimums), but it is, perhaps, marginally interesting. Cheers. TREKphiler <sup style="color:#1034A6;"> hit me ♠  11:08, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Seems there's more to these fenders than I'd imagined.  Were women in the 1950s really shaped like that?   I do remember working a few weeks in Australia with a couple of colleagues from the Mid West, and because I was 'used to' driving on the 'wrong' side of the road (or possibly because I'm a lousy passenger) I was permitted to do all the driving.   I had them in stitches when I announced happily, after honking at yet another brain-dead bus driver, how I liked to hoot my hooter.   Strange how easy it was to make those guys laugh, when they never seemed to understand my jokes... Thus cultural apartheid?   I think a few days after that I got a speeding ticket for exceeding 20 km/h some place where the local bureaucrats figured 20 km/h was about right.   Is that Aussie for nemesis?   Anyhow, I fear this maybe drifting dangerously off scope.   Regards Charles01 (talk) 09:53, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Was it Wilde who said "separated by a common language"? Try telling one of your Oz friends you root for your team. After he stops rolling around laughing, get him to explain.  TREKphiler  <sup style="color:#1034A6;"> hit me ♠  10:03, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

You can quote me
In an attempt to identify something I think was said by a famous Brit, let me ask you if "Here I stand, here I shall remain" sounds at all familiar. Winston comes to mind. No? A yes here would be appreciated; I will take no answer as a no, or "I've no clue". TREKphiler <sup style="color:#1034A6;"> hit me ♠  13:36, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The only one that I can think of is "Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders." usually attributed to Martin Luther and translated as "Here I stand: I can do no other".  Is that what you're thinking of?   I see the wikipedia article suggests he maybe didn't actually say it at all.   Which would be sad.
 * Winston Churchill certainly had a good ear for a good phrase, and like many of the greatest wordsmiths often - whether knowingly or not - quoted other great wordsmiths.  He may well have said something similar.   The other one who really deserves a dictionary of quotations all to himself is Oliver Cromwell.   If you are monarchist or think yourself Irish (Catholic tribe) you are more or less predestined to hate Oliver Cromwell, but whether you like him or hate him, his use of English was superb, and he is someone else in public life who easily might have come up with the quote you half remember whether or not he actually did....
 * Regards Charles01 (talk) 13:50, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * No, I don't think it was Luther (tho I may have conflated it); I recall it more recent than that. You're dead right on Winston, & I've seen a collection of quotations from him that makes a (small) book. Could be he borrowed or adapted it; "iron curtain" traces to Victoria, IIRC, & Winston (as widely read as he was) may've unconsciously used it for its ring (or consciously, drawing parallels we may not see now; I wouldn't put it past him).
 * Cromwell I'm completely unfamiliar with; not having an Irish nor Catholic bias, he bears examination. My thanks, even tho the question remains open.
 * On another matter of linguistic dispute, how strongly do you feel about "fighting" here? If it's too Boadiceaous (is that a word?) for you, I'll leave it alone, but it's fairly common among race commentators.  TREKphiler  <sup style="color:#1034A6;"> hit me ♠  04:23, 27 July 2008 (UTC) (P.S. "Victoria of the United Kingdom"? Who knew there were so many? 🇨🇦 P.P.S. From Her talk page, my fave is One of the best known Victorias of the United Kingdom who didn’t get to marry David Beckham (but the poshest spice of the lot) by Ian Spackman.  04:47, 27 July 2008 (UTC))
 * I don't feel terribly strongly about 'fighting' here.  I tend to think it's not the best word, but there's plenty of scope for disagreement over this type of thing without either party being objectively 'right' or 'wrong'.   And I never claimed to be well read on the subject of motor racing in the USA in the 1950s.   With wikipedia, articles compiled by a committee of ten or fifty tend to end up a stylistic dogs' dinner because ten different people each will do their own thing their own way.   Queen Victoria may be an instance of this:  the Honda Accord, Mitsubishi Lancer, Ford Falcon certainly are examples.  But for now with the Hilary(!) Bandini entry there are only the three of us working it currently and the joins between our differences to me appear relatively seamless.
 * A more general impression I'm gaining is that the Italian text on which we are basing ourselves is not specially scholarly or encyclopaedic.  Am I permitted to think that?   It certainly makes the case for a bit more digging into the sources in order to improve and tie down the English version.   Purely on the 'style' side, the Italian text, to me, seems very dependent on a relatively small vocabulary and relatively few sentence types - with endless use of gerunds (well, isn't that what they call the   '...ing' words) and a pathological reluctance to enter full stops (periods) in the middle of paras.   Result is breathless teenager quasi-journalistic and maybe fun for two or three paras, but rather repetitive over twenty or fifty.   Or?   For the translation, that means I think there's no harm in employing a slightly wider range of structures, sometimes translating this one with 'fighting' and sometimes using a different word or maybe even turning the sentence structure over completely.  Always provided one does not gratuitously change the meaning unless, of course, one has good source based reasons for so doing...   Regards Charles01 (talk) 08:14, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't have real strong inclination to use "fighting", & I'm a touch concerned it's too "commentatorish" & less encyclopedic, whence the question (which I suppose I should've been clearer about, as usual... ;))
 * I don't think we're bound to keep the grammar or style, so long as changing it isn't changing the content or meaning, & I don't think we've done that, unless your Italian & my grasp of sports car racing is much worse than either of us realizes, ;D in which case the requests I put in to WP Motorsport & Sports Car Racing will find us out soon enough.
 * I wouldn't be surprised if the original was less than scholarly; I think there are a lot of young editors here. I also think the enthusiasm for the subject may have overpowered the writing skill, which wasn't necessarily it-5 to begin with. It's the journalistic & unencyclopedic I'm trying to avoid; a race fan or car guy would have no problem with "fighting with Ferrari", but Joe Average (Brit, U.S., Canada, or Oz) might find it a bit odd.
 * Looking at collaboration, I think I have some idea now how Larry & Jerry do it. (No, I'm not confused. It's an inside joke.) Tweak it carefully, & it doesn't show.
 * As for gerunds, you're asking the wrong guy. We took page after page of notes on grammar, for a week, in Grade 8, & when we were done, I promptly forgot all of it. I've never needed it (except for "Jeopardy!" ;D) or missed it.
 * Well, I'm off to fix the Bandini's disc brakes. Cheers. Grammar Challenged fuggedaboudit 08:53, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

<--Oh, next time you look at the Italian, have a glance at "In 1957, Bandinis dominated the 750 cc 'H Modified' category ('HM')". I changed it to "dominated", but now the results are clearer, I'm less sure 1st, 2d, 6h, 7h, & 10th qualifies. I have the sense there were a lot of Bandinis entered, which was 1 reason I used "dominated", but it could have a secondary meaning of being virtually ubiquitous, which needs clarifying. And can you have a look at "shell cup"? I'm presuming it's Shell, but (beyond a vague recollection) I'm unaware of the company awarding a prize in amateur racing. TREKphiler <sup style="color:#1034A6;"> hit me ♠  09:12 & 09:18, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * If this is the bit I think it is, the Italian uses 'monopolised' and I nearly went back to that (from 'dominated').  But then I figured that who ever translated it as 'dominated' must have had his reasons.   And given my own cautious tendencies, I probably would have been unable to use 'monopolised' without a qualifying adverb such as 'effectively' or 'virtually' since if any race season was fully monopolised by anyone, it could only mean that there was only a single team participating. On Shell Cup, we'd probably get some clues from googling it, tho of course one never entirely knows with googled stuff - anyth9ng on the web or in print for that matter - which bits are reliable.   Charles01 (talk) 09:23, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * My hope was the original would either use the Italian for "shell" or the proper name Shell, which would settle it; my suspicion, my hope, is, machine translation couldn't tell the difference. I'm prepared to leave "dominated" (in preference to "monopolized", which is no clearer) until I can get more information on whether it was comp or simple numbers, or unless the original says something to it in the nuances that's lost by bad translation. Thanks anyhow.  TREKphiler  <sup style="color:#1034A6;"> hit me ♠  15:09, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Welcome back to Bandini & Cie. FYI, I'm still waiting on my local library to track down a copy. :[ (How hard can this be?) Thanks for staying on it meanwhile. BTW, re the "astonishing comeback", some of that may've been my rewrite; 22 places in 6 laps is astonishing, in the wet even moreso. Glad to know it matched the original. ;D  TREKphiler  <sup style="color:#1034A6;"> hit me ♠  04:14 & 04:17, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Peugeot
Honestly, I don't care either way. ;) Just let 'em source it; Paris sounded like a "too simple" change by somebody who didn't know better. And re Bandini: I know you're still watching & I'm still waiting better sources, so no worries. Have a good one.  TREKphiler  <sup style="color:#1034A6;"> hit me ♠  16:55, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

My God
You took priceless pictures of very obscure pieces of metal. This strange Toyota in Tenerife!. Thank you again for your work, Charles01. If you have more pictures, please upload. Enjoy the summer! :-) Randroide (talk) 13:25, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Ford Consul Classic 2 door UK.JPG|250px|right]]Thanks for bothering to share your reaction.  We all like to be appreciated:  well I do.   Back in 1979 my girl friend (who was with me in Tenerife) thought my habit of photographing strange cars very nerdy.   Maybe I thought the same.   But wikipedia has certainly given the nerdy hobby of my youth a level of 'usefulness' to people other than myself way beyond anything I'd have anticipated.   So three (at least) cheers for wikipedia.
 * As for "If you have more pictures, please upload.", I think I've more or less exhausted the possibilities now.  I've uploaded one or two truly awful ones (example attached) where no one else has uploaded anything at all of the car in question:  but in general I try only to upload ones that are half way decent and I've run out of those.   Thanks again for your encouragement.   You enjoy summer too.   (Seems we're in the same hemisphere.)   Regards  Charles01 (talk) 14:09, 13 August 2008 (UTC)