Sniff Petrol

Mr God, yesterday

There was bad news for God this week as the well-known deity was forced to recall thousands of examples of His popular Human Being after reports that the model could be prone to unexpected attacks of unbelievable stupidity.

Initial reports of blithering idiocy emerged from the United States last year but these were thought to be isolated incidents caused by people who are so thick that if a floormat was touching their accelerator pedal would prefer to scream ‘Aaaaaaargh’ until they drove into a river rather than simply moving the mat backwards with their foot. However, it now seems the monumental stupidity is more widespread and may cause some Human Beings to decide that the best course of action in the event of being in a car with a throttle that won’t release is to telephone someone rather than to, for example, put the fucking car into neutral and bring it to a halt using the brakes as normal.

Jesus Christ, a member of the original God family who now runs his Father’s business, is expected to make a full statement shortly. In the meantime, the Archbishop of Canterbury, a senior manager at God’s UK operation, has told reporters that there are almost certainly Human Beings here in Britain that will need to be examined for signs of being so sodding thick that they probably shouldn’t have a driving licence in the first place. “It’s too early to say how this might affect people in the UK,” Mr Canterbury is quoted as saying. “But we have every reason to believe that there are some Human Beings that may being so brain fartingly stupid that if the throttle in their car became stuck, they would never think simply to depress the clutch and coast to a halt”.

However, it is understood that God’s representatives in the UK are keen to manage any recall as quickly and efficiently as possible, thereby minimising the number of mithering suburban twats who ring in to the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 and witter on about how they’re too scared to drive their Yaris to such a blindingly crass degree that listeners eventually start to get a sense of what it would be like if the editor of the Daily Mail did a stool into a syringe and then used it to inject vile reactionary shit into their ears.

As God seeks to clarify the extent of the stupidity problem and establish how many Human Beings will need to be recalled, theologians have been assessing just what has caused the problem of quite extraordinarily thick behaviour in the first place. “I suspect the problem lies in the rather clever engineering God has given the Human Being,” noted Dr Peter Peter Cockandballs of St Gobain College, Oxford. “The modern Human Being is actually remarkably durable and reliable, capable of lasting well over 80 years, but among its clever systems is something called Cognitive Reasoning. Normally this works very well, but over time Human Beings get used to being spoon fed blindingly obvious information such as those signs on motorways that say ‘fog’, and eventually they can just give up trying to have any discernment or ability to think rationally. Basically, the Human Being becomes a stupid moron. Hence the popularly of ITV’s Loose Women”.

The SAAB factory, yesterday

Just days into Spyker’s ownership of SAAB, sources in Sweden say the Dutch company is still getting to grips with its new purchase.

“For sure it has not been easy,” said Spyker spokesman, Mjetro van den Plas. “When we turned up at the SAAB factory to get it started again we were a little puzzled that we could not find the lock. It was only after a while we realised it was not in the normal place on the door but for some reason had been placed on the floor about two metres away”.

There was more confusion when Spyker’s representatives gained entry to the factory, something that immediately caused all the lights to come on, even though it was the middle of the day. “They’re still on now,” Mr van den Plas confirmed. “We thought there must be a switch somewhere but we just can’t find it. We’re starting to think maybe we need to take the factory to a dealer and get the lights re-programmed or something. We’ll have to do something for sure because it is making us look like tossers”.

However, strangely placed locks and annoying lights aren’t the only problems to face the Spyker team now settling in Sweden. “Why is everything in the canteen an airline meal?” asked one member of the Dutch contingent. “And why do I have to ‘check-in’ every morning, then spend two hours loafing around the factory branch of WH Smiths before I can go up to my office? This company has nothing to do with aeroplanes so why do they keep pretending it does?”

Nonetheless, Swedish insiders say the Spyker team are slowly getting used to SAAB’s quirks and that many of them are now happily adopting the company uniform a nice black roll neck, some fashionable black framed spectacles and a pleasant, reasonable personality. Furthermore, sources claim Spyker is delighted to note that the SAAB factory seems to be extremely comfortable and quite well rust proofed. It is also said to feel very well thought out. Unlike their idea that SAAB can keep competing with BMW and Audi.

Hello gang,

So that’s it for Sniff Petrol in 2009, not that there was very much of it anyway. Don’t worry, there is AN PLAN brewing to make sure new issues are published more regularly in 2010. Bet you can’t wait to see the dismal way in which that goes awry. Anyway, a Crazy Dave’s chin-sized thank you to everyone who has followed this website over the past 12 months, and a particularly hearty cheers to those 4500 or so people who are following Sniff Petrol on Twitter. Expect more live F1 race smart-arsery when the new season starts.

Have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Cheers,

Sniff

Listen up car racing fans; Sniff Petrol’s mate Jim has put together another of his superb bring-a-tear-to-your-glass-eye classic motorsport DVDs and it is your job, nay your duty, to go out and buy it. This one is called 1960s British Single Seater Racing and frankly it does what it says on the tin. Or rather the plastic box. Putting DVDs in a tin is prohibitively expensive. This is my mate Jim we’re talking about, not Lionel sodding Richie. Anyway, here’s a proper explanation about the new DVD from the man behind it:

“The 1960s was the decade that Britain ruled the world in single seater motor racing. British cars like Lotus, Cooper and BRM were driven to devastating effect by star drivers such as Stirling Moss, Graham Hill, Jim Clark and John Surtees. These legendary names raced rival, big-name constructors like Honda or Ferrari or ace overseas drivers such as Jack Brabham, Jochen Rindt and Lorenzo Bandini. Talented film-maker David Roscoe captured all the exciting action on film, which has now been remastered for this exclusive DVD colour compilation; covering single seater racing from the Sixties of every description, from Formula Junior to Formula 1.”

Cheers Jim. It’s only £9.99 and you can buy it here. So please do so. Thanks.

A cancelled 911, yesterday

The protracted power struggle between Volkswagen and Porsche is at last over with the former unexpectedly taking control of the latter in a role reversal many industry experts did not expect. Indeed, sources within Volkswagen say the German giant sometimes forgets that it owns the sports car maker and not the other way around, forcing it to write a reminder on a Post-It note bearing a simple German phrase that literally translates as ‘Ha ha!’

This week, however, reports suggest that VW is rapidly warming to its role as Porsche’s new master as insiders revealed that the Wolfsburg-based car giant decided to play a prank on its latest acquisition by telling them the famous 911 sports car was to be cancelled.

‘Oh ja, that was like totally amusing,’ said VW board member Dr Rudi Hackenburg. ‘We like totally told them that the 911 programme was to be cancelled because it would clash with, like, our plans to make some rear engined Polo or some shit like that. Oh man, you should have seen their faces’.

Volkswagen’s executive director of research and development, Dr Wolfgang Schiele, backs up his colleague’s Porsche prank story. ‘Oh man, did Rudi tell you about that? Dude it was awesome. All these Porsche guys are like, Boo hoo, you can’t cancel the 911 and we were like, we so can too cuz we, like, totally own your asses now, and they were all like “But it’s our core model and epitomises all our key values” and then like Tha K-man [VW executive director of engineering Dr Klaus Rieble] pretended to, like, use his phone and said “Wait, I’ll just call someone who gives a shit”. Man, it was so funny I almost puked’.

Dr Schiele later confirmed that the Volkswagen board continued in a similar vein for another ‘like 20 minutes or something’ until executive director of powertrain Dr Jurgen Klausen activated a pre-planned Powerpoint slide which read simply ‘PWNED!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL!!!!!!111111’ after which all 12 members of the Volkswagen board present at the meeting reportedly ‘like totally shit themselves, like we were totally laughing and those Porsche guys, they were like ‘no way’ and they like totally left the room, and then we like totally laughed some more and then, like, went over to Tha K-man’s house cuz his dad always hides his stash of beer under the counter and his mom is like totally hot too’.

The 911 prank incident has caused such ruffled feathers amongst Porsche management that Volkswagen’s PR director Dr Hartmut Welter was forced to make the following statement to the press; ‘The integration of two proud and established companies is never going to be straightforward. However, we believe that the integration process is running smoothly and that we now have a roadmap for future product development and strategy. Also, we have totally thought of some more, like, awesome pranks we’re gonna pull on those Porsche dudes like, you know, telling them that the next Boxster has to be based on the Golf or some shit. Oh man, they’re like totally funny and… shhhhh shhhhhh shhhhhhhh, they’re coming. Everyone act, like totally normal…’

Following the surprise news that General Motors will not sell Vauxhall and Opel to a conglomerate comprising of a Russian bank and a Canadian flow of hot molten rock, details are now emerging about how the American car giant will seek to appease the companies that were in line to take over its European subsidiaries.

Under the terms of a new deal currently being drafted in Detroit, Sberbank and Magma will be allowed access to Vauxhall and Opel on alternate weekends during which they will be permitted to undertake any unsupervised activities they so wish such as taking an early prototype of the next generation Zafira to the zoo or inviting CAD/CAM data for the upcoming Corsa facelift and its friends to have a party at their house.

GM sources say they will be as flexible as possible in allowing their one time Russian-Canadian partner to see the development of Vauxhall and Opel over the next few years and stress that there will be many opportunities for access outside of the formal twice-a-month schedule. ‘Sberbank and Magma will get to see plenty of Vauxhall and Opel,’ said a senior GM source. ‘For example, next spring we were thinking of taking Suzuki to Sea World and Disneyland in California. We’ll be away for a whole week, and that will be a chance for those guys to really spend some quality time with Vauxhall and Opel while we’re not around doing things like finding out if it’s still friends with Fiat and seeing how it’s getting on with its mass redundancy planning homework’.

However, GM’s generous access plan hasn’t been well received in all quarters. In Sweden, another of the car giant’s former offspring SAAB is clearly upset by the careful handling of the Anglo-Germa-Russio-Canadia-laval situation. ‘Oh wow, they’re being nice to Vauxhall and Opel… again’, SAAB spat. ‘Typical. And what did I get from them for my birthday this year? Just a crappy mixtape. Oh yea, and the entire production line for the forthcoming 9-5. Booooring. Pffffft’.

Following the success of the car scrappage scheme in the United States, President Barrack Obama is set to reveal a radical extension of the plan as part of his controversial healthcare reforms. Under the new scheme, unofficially titled ‘Cash For Old Bastards’, Americans will be able to trade in their troublesome elderly relatives and receive a brand new child at a significantly reduced cost.

“This is a great way to get old, inefficient people off the streets,” said White House spokesman Jack Badgerburger. “Elderly people pollute the air with their meandering and pointless stories about the old days whilst also making your couch smell of pee. With this new scheme Americans can finally get rid of that annoying grandfather or great aunt and replace it with a clean new baby”.

However, the new scheme is already provoking controversy across the United States, especially amongst rapist-faced right-wing commentators dressing up flimsy invective as ‘news’. “This is nothing short of gosh darned Nazi Communism,” spluttered Rhett Secretligay of Fox News. “This kind of unconstitutional bullplop might work in backward Socialist places like the United Kingdom of England but here in the US we look after our older citizens by giving them a state-funded Medicare system just like they have in England. Oh… damn”.

Even so, critics of the new proposal aren’t limited to gimlet eyed lunatics on mainstream news channels. Some relatively normal people have been quick to point out the flaws inherent in the new plan too. “It’s all well and good taking these elderly people off the streets but what are we going to do with them then?” demanded Luanne Monkeyburger of the action group Mothers For Firing Off Guns Into The Air For No Readily Apparent Reason. “I worry that many people will be throwing away a perfectly good grandmother or kindly uncle and, as I understand it, once an old person has been taking in against a new child they cannot be sold on, even though many families may be able to make good use of a serviceable grandma with her stories about the 1940s and her ready supply of weird candy you can’t find in stores any more”.

Other groups, however, were more sanguine about ‘Cash For Old Bastards’. “Of course this is an outrage,” said Chut Swanburger of action group Midwesterners For Darn Well Letting Me Kiss My Darn Sister If I Wanna. “But this ain’t half as big a problem as Obama’s other darn healthcare reforms. I jus’ saw on Fox News that he’s gonna start sending Death Squads into the streets to harvest innocent citizens for their organs. Gosh darn Socialist Commie Nazi bastard”.

There was more disappointment for former MG Rover workers this week with news that the long-awaited report into the company’s collapse has been eaten by former chief executive Kevin Howe.

Mr Howe, known affectionately at Longbridge as ‘Oh fucking hell, here comes that fat ballbag’, is said to have consumed the entire 400 page document after insisting that he be allowed to see it prior to publication in case it correctly pointed out that he was a bulbous oaf who made a right old cock of running the entire company.

“This is rather embarrassing for us,” said a spokesman for Longlunch & Receiptplease,  the government appointed company responsible for investigating the British car maker’s collapse. “We seem to have spent four years and £16 million compiling this report and then we only made one copy of it. Our photocopier was playing up again you see. Anyway, I suppose the best we can hope is that the tubby David Brent-alike poos out some of the salient points. We’ve got a man in a chemical warfare suit hiding in the sewer beneath his house as we speak, poised to deploy a big net if he sees a scrap of turdy paper float past detailing, for example, how some idiot tried to spunk a load of cash on a DTM racing project whilst the medium hatchback still wasn’t finished”.

However, Howe’s consumption of a very thick document comes as no surprise to those who worked with him at MG Rover. “Kevin was always scoffing whatever he could lay his hands on,” said former Longbridge manager Pleasedon’t Usemyrealname. “They had to stop putting potted plants in his office after a while. And I’m sure at least one of his PAs complained that he kept spreading mint sauce on her hands”. Meanwhile other ex-MG Rover employees claim that Howe used to sit in meetings slowly peeling off Post-It notes and feeding them into his mouth “like slices of ham”, that he used to fresh his breath by “chewing on an Aerial Liquitab”, and that he once spent an entire afternoon sucking all the foam out of fire extinguishers and then ran into the car park “grunting and swigging from a bottle of windscreen washer fluid”. “You never knew what he was going to force into his gob next,” Mr Madeupname admits. “It was just Kevin being Kevin. The fat tit”.

However, other observers were less charitable about the report fiasco. “This whole situation amuses me,” said a spokesman for Kerching, the new owners of Longbridge. “With the £16m spent on this report the British government could have bought 1000 of our reborn MG TF roadsters, bringing the total sold to 1001”.

Whilst the car industry waits for the government to decide on a German-style ‘scrappage scheme’ for cars there was good news for Britain’s beleaguered sapling planting businesses this week as ministers announced a new Sawage Programme for old trees. Under the new initiative, anyone with a tree over nine years old will be able to claim £2000 towards the cost of a new sapling if they cut down their old tree, chop it into little pieces and then burn it.

‘This will be a great boost to the tree growers of Britain,’ said David Short-Termism, the minister responsible for introducing the new scheme. ‘As the current economic crisis worsened, this vital industry reacted as best it could by continuing to plant acres and acres of saplings. Unfortunately, demand for these trees has slowed dramatically and now is the time for the government to use your taxes to offset their ineptitude.’

Mr Short-Termism also believes that encouraging people to destroy older, more interesting trees will have a valuable environmental effect and denies that old oaks, horse chestnuts, elms and so on can actually be better for the environment; ‘Old trees are often very dirty with moss and have squirrels living in them. By chopping down such trees and replacing them with a clean new sapling there will be a marked reduction in such factors as the amount of leaves dropped in Autumn and some other tissue thin reasons I haven’t thought of yet’.

The new scheme has been greeted with delight by major tree growers and by the bodies that represent them including the Society of Tree Growers & Planters. ‘This is exactly the sort of flimsy quick fix our industry needs,’ said STGP spokesman Mhike Dhesperation. ‘A brief period of slightly increased tree buying activity will certainly see us through the recession. Assuming of course that the recession only lasts a couple of months and then everyone who’s already chopped down an old tree and bought a new one decides they want to buy another new one. And that’s exactly what’s going to happen isn’t it? Erm…’

The trend for micro-blogging came to the car industry this week with news of an exciting website that will allow major manufacturers to provide instant updates on exactly how badly they’re doing. Called Shitter, the new site has already taken off in a big way and, as one company executive revealed, it’s proving a good method for getting one up on the competition: ‘With no money to develop new models, we’ve been left with a shit load of time on our hands, which is where Shitter comes in,’ he admitted. ‘Forget quarterly sales figures, we’re updating our profile on Shitter every five minutes with reams of information that’s easily more pointless than any other manufacturer.’

As a further demonstration of the speed with which the internet can work – as long as you’re not one of those unreasonable people who expects their Virgin Media account to work properly – Shitter has already spawned a sister site solely for the use of F1 team owner turned inexplicably aggressive pundit Eddie Jordan. Dubbed Twatter, the innovative new site will allow Jordan to cover those moments when he’s not on television with a system that lets him carry on telling everyone just how great he is.