Sniff Petrol

There was bad news for the motor industry this week as a leading car-based maths expert revealed that cars sales will have fallen by a record 107 percent before the end of the year.

The staggering new discovery comes from Professor Ken Freeply of Nigel Havers College, Kettering, who has been based his findings on some hysterical headlines he read in a newspaper. “This fall is terrible news for all car companies,” Prof. Freeply noted. “Especially since my calculations essentially mean not only are no cars being sold but that members of the public are actually making cars themselves and then flogging them to the manufacturers”.

Professor Freeply’s possibly utter cock calculations carry especially dire omens for high end manufacturers such as Aston Martin. “If I was Aston I would be very worried,” the almost certainly mental brainiac observed. “My figures show that their sales have decreased by a whopping 214 percent. Basically this means that if they leave three unsold DB9s outside the factory one evening, they will come back in the morning to find almost six and a half DB9s that no one wants. Furthermore, with Bentley sales down 191 percent this means that for every two Continental GTs struggling to find owners, there is another 1.8 cars that are also struggling to find owners. Or something.”

Prof. Freeply later denied that his maths was “shit”.

In other news, the worsening financial climate is having a terrible effect on estate agents. Good.

There was shock on a strange lump of rock in the Irish Sea this week following news that the Isle of Man is to be closed, except to road testers from car magazines.

“We decided that since every car magazine seems to be here every other week we might as well just hand the island over to them,” said the Isle of Man Minister for Roads, Education, Birching and Witches. “So we’re going to chuck everyone else off. Otherwise, how will there be room for all the road testers? ARE YOU A WITCH?” he added.

However, the radical Manx plan hasn’t gone down well with everyone. “This plan is a disgrace,” said a one eyed man whose Adam’s apple also appeared to be his nose. “As soon as I heard about it I had to tell my mother, my sister and my wife, and she’s disgusted too. WE FEAR WITCHES!” he added.

The news about the becoming-cliched island is a welcome shot in the arm for car magazines following last week’s disastrous announcement that the Nurburgring is to be closed for rebuilding after it was discovered that Nissan had secretly shortened it by 950 yards in order to make the GT-R’s lap time look better.

With thanks to Goto10 for this one.

‘Ello ‘ello ‘ello. Detective Inspector Blundell done be filing a report. On Sunday 28 September I done proceed in an Easterly direction to the Singapore Grand Prix, what done be in Singapore. Here I did done observe what, to be honest, is done becoming an all too common problem. At approximately 20:30 hours I done observe an IC1 male (what done be later identified as one Felipe Massa) in a red motor vehicle stopping for fuel. What done happen next is that, in fairness, the lad then go and done a runner, causing what done be substantial damage to the fuel pump in what done be, to be honest, the process. Sadly, this sort of attempt to leave a premises without done paying for fuel is done be an all too common occurrencing, especially when it done be at night. In fairness, at the end of the day… I sometimes watch a film and then go to bed. Over and out.

A lion spears across the flatland badlands just outside Corby, its skin a glisten with mystery and poise. But there is no need for local residents to shut their windows and lock their doors for this particular beast is no mere skin and sinew but rex made metal by the finest French lion tamers in the land - Peugeot.

Inside the 308 all is calm. I am cool as school and focussed like the lens on one of David Attenborough’s cameras during the making of a programme about ants, the wheel pulled tight to my chest in a way that lets my wrists do the TOCA-ing.  As the road sweeps and swoops like some taut Tarmac eagle I keep the throttle clamped to the carpet. There is no diesel rattle to battle here, just a hum that is smoother than a silk snooker table and a band of torque fatter than a lazy opera singer set up shop in a doughnut factory. Each gearchange is nailed tighter than a clingfilm codpiece as the chassis soaks up all that this electric eel of a road can throw at it, like some crazed steel and rubber sponge. The tail steps out, I catch it with a dab of oppo and I’m away.  

I arrive at my destination relaxed yet excited, as if I have I have been massaged by a raptor. The Peugeot 308 SW 1.6 HDi 110 Sport is a bitch. And I spanked it. 

Troy Queef is Executive Associate Editor-at-large for DAB OF OPPO magazine

If you like Sniff Petrol and Top Gear then there’s quite literally a good chance that you’ll like a new book written by the bloke behind this website. It’s called the Big Book of Top Gear and it’s packed full of nonsense about the TV show, some of it involving lame gags re-hashed from Sniff Petrol itself.

You can buy a copy by making with the click upon these words here. Ithangyoo.

If it sells enough maybe we can get it reprinted so that an increasingly bitter Sniff Petrol actually gets a proper writing credit for all the months of work that went into it instead of a lousy ‘thanks to…’ mention in the back. Yea, cheers.