Sniff Petrol

There was reassurance this week for people who like to be patronised so horribly that one of their arms falls off following news of an EU proposal to put cigarette packet-style large print warnings on car advertisements.

‘We realised that we hadn’t been wasting nearly enough of everyone’s time with condescending nonsense,’ said EU spokeringman Alain Turdisquirts. ‘That’s why we are making this proposition, in the hope that people will spend more time thinking before they buy a new car. Specifically, that they will think: Gosh, aren’t the EU a bunch of mithering fucking money wasters’.

The exact wording of the new warnings is as yet unclear but, in line with the EU’s stance on not allowing anyone to enjoy themselves, proposals are said to include ‘Danger: This car may allow you to get to places you want to go’, ‘Attention: This vehicle may accidentally cause you to have some fun’ and ‘Warning: This car may prevent you from having to trudge around in the rain trying to find a bus stop that isn’t full of used heroin’.

As an added bonus, Mr Turdisquirts was quick to reassure EU residents that similar warnings will NOT be appearing on power stations, industrial chimneys and domestic boilers. ‘Why would we want to do anything about the real sources of CO2 when we can just pick on cars again,’ he said, like the blinkered, patronising, reactionary cockbag he so clearly is.

Lotus has announced plans to celebrate making 5000 different and slightly pointless special edition versions of the Elise by building a new special edition Elise.

The Elise 5001 will come only in a distinctive shade of green that is exclusive to this model, even though it’s almost identical to another colour that was on some other Elise last year, or maybe the year before. This will be topped off by an orange stripe that is unique to the 5001, although you can order it as an option on other Elises.

Completely the exterior makeover are a set of distinctive alloy wheels with one very special feature – where the regular Elise offers only black painted wheels as an option, the 5001 boasts alloys that are sprayed very very very dark grey.

Inside, Lotus promises a number of changes, although it warns that ‘a number’ is actually quite a vague expression and can of course include ‘a number’ such as one. That’s why the 5001 will come with an exclusive badge badly stuck to the dashboard and some seats and stuff that are just out of the normal car.

If you could spec all these options on a regular Elise, which actually you can, it would cost you £35,990, whereas the 5001 will retail for just £35,985. The bad news is that, with so many special editions to make, Lotus has been forced to limit production to a total of just one 5001. However, Hethel sources say the company is already planning its next exciting new special edition model, tipped to be called the Elise Milking It.

There was joy amongst linguists this week following the discovery of a new benchmark for slipperiness. Language experts say the new reference point will rapidly become a convention for anything that is beyond the slippery qualities expressed via existing references such as ‘a bar of soap’ and will be known simply as ‘a Mosley’.

‘This new idiom will come in very useful,’ said Dr Andthe Medics, Professor of Talking And Stuff at St Scomemarchingin College, Cambridge. ‘Previous conventions were actually quite limited when it came to adequately encapsulating something that could get away, even when it seemed to be quite impossible for it do so. “As slippery as a Mosley” really does solve that problem’.

It emerges that language fans are not the only ones expressing amazement at this new idiomatic standard. ‘Fuck me, I thought I was a devious twat when it came to getting away with stuff,’ said an eel, yesterday. ‘But it turns out that “a Mosley” has taken it to a new and almost completely unbelievable level’.

‘I’m frankly staggered,’ added liquid mercury, speaking from its home, inside a thermometer. ‘I’ve always prided myself on being impossible to nail down but I think even I would struggle to escape from something that really should have had me bang to rights for being a embarrassing old fart, yet “a Mosley” did just that’.

However, not everyone appears to be quite so impressed with “a Mosley”. ‘This is an outrage,’ said a wall yesterday. ‘People are always throwing shit at me to see what sticks and you know what? Some of it does. Frankly, I’m sick of it. At least I’ve now learned from reading about “a Mosley” that in future if I want to find that, against all righteous expectation, somehow no shit has stuck to me whatsoever, I just need to get my leathery old arse spanked by a German speaking hooker’.

Och aye tha noo muthafukas! Crazy Dave comin’ on strong wit’ tha fierce flava o’ Red Bull. Smell like tha reception area at a horse insemination centre. Yea. So we sly on over Monte C side and man, it be wet like da ladeez when Crazy D in da house. Know wha’a mean? Some of dem bloods, they be sayin’ that all Crazy D doin’ in ’08 is gettin’ into a smackdown wit’ some other cats on da track. Yea, well tha D Man he be provin’ them wrong. Cuz this time he don’t get no contact wit’ any other car. No, he hit tha barrier. That show them haters they don’ know shee-it. And if anyone says that I’m clearly going to be sacked by the team at the end of the season I shall kick three colours of shit out of them.

Listen up Sniff Petrol fans (who like reading and pictures of old cars a bit). The bloke behind this website has a brand new book in the shops now. Pay particular attention if you’re my mate Phil and you previously assumed that this was all just another ‘joke story’, you thick twat.

Anyway, the book is called MY DAD WISHED HE HAD ONE OF THOSE and it’s a right old romp through all the fast, expensive, exotic or just simply weird cars that your father might have fantasised about when he was washing his Cortina.

If you would like to buy this book do some clicking upon THESE WORDS now.

A ribbon of road snakes out before me as if some glistening metallic shark has been laid upon the countryside, the early morning light glinting off its crystalline surface like a celestial laser. This is the kind of terrain the really sorts the men from the mice and today it seems to be all mine.

By the end of its five mile length I will know as much about the car as if I had literally eaten its suspension for breakfast. I will also be slightly closer to Corby. My weapon for this full scale assault on the north face of driving nirvana packs so much on paper promise they might as well have printed the press release on a rucksack full of dynamite. Ford Focus TDCi Powershift. Yes, you read that right. That last word really does mean the installation of a double clutch gearbox in the Blue Oval’s C-seg mid ranger. So double the clutches, but is it double the pleasure? Let’s do this thing.

First impressions count, and on this basis the Focus has just met me in the bar of a mid-priced hotel on the outskirts of Kettering and is already squeezing my balls. Chassis tuning feels tight as a countertenor’s undercrackers after a lengthy session in the boil wash, the whole car reacting like an amphetamine crazed leopard to my expert inputs. The ride is nuggety yet tasty like Mr McDonald’s finest. Just go easy on the mustard dip. You can almost telepathically guide it through corners, lifting off to adjust the line, letting the back step out just the breadth of gnat’s vagina. I caught it with a dab of oppo and I was away.

But, like booking tickets for U2 and then finding that The Beatles are the support band, there is another surprising talent in this car and it’s the double-clutch gearbox. Double-bubble, double-mint, double-dip. Changes are quick, they’re smooth, they’re perfect, as each gear goes in, crisp like Quavers.

After my spiriting sprint across the badlands of the East Midlands I know that this car is truly the medium C1 family owner business user chooser hatch of choice for the committed helmsmith. This focussed Focus is a bitch. And I spanked it.

TROY QUEEF IS EXECUTIVE ASSOCIATE EDITOR-AT-LARGE FOR DAB OF OPPO MAGAZINE