LJK Setright and Ferraris
Who?? I doubt if that name rings a bell with many here other than UK readers and possibly Watchman Al and then only if like me they are something of a car nut.
To give the rest of you some idea this is from his obituary today in the on-line Daily Telegraph at:-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.../17/db1702.xml
"LJK Setright
, who died on September 7 aged 74, was Britain's best-known and most eloquent motoring journalist and author, famous in an era before car experts could win easy notoriety on TV; he was "discovered" by a loyal readership within a year or two of taking up writing as a career in the mid-1960s, and maintained his reputation for erudition, mixed with an air of mystery, until he died.
Setright's fame stemmed primarily from his deep love for automobiles and engineering, about which he wrote most consistently and for longest in the monthly magazine Car"
I actually started reading "Car" back in the early 60's when it first appeared as "Small Car" and have even bought a few copies over here (at great expense I might add) in our local Barnes and Noble.
As an engineer I always admired (Leonard) Setright's lucid illustrated explanations of how some car-related mechanical device worked.
Whilst on the subject of cars.
I am sorry to say that one of the remaining problems from my stroke in 2000 is according to expert evaluation some residual weekness in my left eye sight that led to a recommendation that I should not drive again.I therefore have to content myself at the moment with my collection of some 52 1:24 scale die cast models of which no less than 21 are Ferraris;
of which my favo(u)rite has to be the fine 1962 GTO (a name purloined by Pontiac soon thereafter-much to the disgust of car enthousiasts)
Bburago 1:24 (this model is actually 1:18) 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO
great site by Bburago it includes an imaginative "3-d" interactive gallery of 7 cars at:-
http://www.bburago.com/eng/pagina_interna_3dmodel.shtml
including a concept by my favo(u)rite car designer Georgio Giugiaro (the original neat VW Golf for starters) at:-
http://www.bburago.com/3d_models/34013R/scheda.htm
where you can open a door or the engine cover etc
wonderful stuff
Not for much longer though because I am intending to replace my obsolete non -working and criminally badly engineered Sony Vaio notebook with an up to the minute (bluetooth wireless) Acer Ferrari 4005
note the latest widescreen format LCD display
Bluetooth cordless optical mouse woohoo!!
which over here at $2025 (no state tax) from an on-line New York dealer proves an astonishing advance in just 6 years compared to the 1999 issue Vaio which though admittedly bought at the relatively inflated UK price of about $3000 (including Value Addad Tax)
has a lowly 333 MHz Pentium compared to a 2 Gigahertz AMD 64-bit processor
6 gig hard drive compared to 100gig
completely under engineered and inadequate 64MB
memory that I rapidly had to upgrade to 128 in order to play DVDs smoothly
on its DVD player/CD-ROM compared to a dual layer DVD Burner and 1 gig memory
Built in wireless modem compared to a 56K dial-up PC Card modem
PC card slot compared to that plus multiple card readers built in
A floppy drive none on the Ferrari but I have an external USB floppy
Soon!!!!
John Fowles
Yesterday's a
memory today is just a friend
Today is just a
memory the future is tonight
[ September 22, 2005, 07:08: Message edited by: johnfowles ]
