Conference thebay::joyoflex

    I admit they're not very original, but I'm not sure what you
    find insulting about them.  Insults to the intelligence?  Remember
    that everybody in the world isn't as bright as we are!
    
    --bonnie

    Re the "-a" ending:
    
    General Motors has two cars, the Beretta and the Corsica.
              
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    
    P.S.: One of their ads goes:
    
    "When you hear Beretta and Corsica, what do you think of?"
    
    My automatic answer:
    
    The Mafia.
                                                              

    cars I'd like to see include:
    
    The Ford Thud
    The Mercury Behemoth
    The BMW Braggadoccio
    The Audi Do
    The GM Grunt
    
    I always thought the whomever-makes-it SR4TI was curious, because
    if you look at the way the logo is lettered on the car, it looks
    like "SRATI", which sounded like it should have a "MA" in front
    of it - subliminal sportscar stuff...
    
    -Jody
    

    Way back when I was in college, a friend of mine inherited her
    brother's (Mercury?) Wildcat, black with mag wheels, when he graduated,
    got a real job, and bought a real sports car. 

    She took a screwdriver and some glue and carefully turned all the
    'W's upside down to make it reflect her personality better.
    
    --bonnie
    
    What, you don't get it?
    
    
    To make it a MILDCAT, of course.

    I was once in a car pool scheme with a guy who had a (then new
    model) Austin Allegro. He'd bore the pants off the rest of us,
    going on about how wonderful it was, how fast ...
    
    Eventually we'd ask him:
    
    Are we going in your Adagio tomorrow?
    -- brian

    Certain sportier models of the Volkswagen Rabbit (now known as
    the Golf -- as it was known everywhere else in the world) had
    the word "RABBIT" lettered across the top of the windshield. One
    time while visiting Rockport, I noticed a parked Rabbit that had
    it's legend changed so that across the top of the windshield, it
    said "WABBIT".
    
    --- jerry

    When I was in college, shortly after "Empire Strikes Back" came
    out in the Star Wars Saga, someone with a silver truck silvered-over
    two of the black letters on the back of their truck - leaving
    YOTA
    
    

    
    Several years ago, when those little pickup trucks started
    appearing in this country, I saw a Toyota pickup with:
    
    		T O Y O T A       on the tailgate
    
    	changed to
    
    		T O N K A
    
    -Glinch.

    G'day... since we're mentioning cars..
    
    From frank & Ernest cartoon
    
    I see the President of the Palindromic Society has a new car.
    Really?
    Yes it's ..
    
    ATOYOTA
    
    Dj
    
    

	Someone mentioned the former(?) US name of the VW Golf.
	I heard somewhere about a New Hampshire(?) vanity plate

			 IM LATE

	 ..... on a white Rabbit, of course!

	By the way, it's n-a-u-s-e-a

	Jim

    Re .11 (Jim):
    
    I thought he was talking about a city ... :-D
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    re:.10
    
    And that reminds me of an orange Volkswagen "Bug" I once saw in
    downtown Boston back in my college days. I wondered about these
    curious black spots painted on the fenders until I saw the car's
    license plate: "LADY"
    
    --- jerry

    Then there's the vanity plate on a Renault  Le Car:
    
    
    LE TAG

Seen in upmarket St. John's Wood, London, (England):

	              MOI

    I have also seen in New Hampshire a black VW Rabbit with the plate
    IM ERLY.
    
    I've also seen FENRY on a Honda, and Chysler Horizon with the plate
    BEYOND. 
    
    	Jon

    Not to mention two plates seen in San Francisco a few years back.
    
    A VW Dasher with the plates "EGO BUG"
    
    And a bright red Mercedes convertible driven by a *GORGEOUS* blonde
    with the plates "KEPT".

    Some interesting ones I've seen or heard of:
    
      A Porsche with plate PORTIA.
    
      Saabs with plates SNAAB (a shiny new one) and SLAAB (a ratty old
    one).
    
      A Rabbit with plate FIVER (a reference to Watership Down)
    
      On my own Datsun 240-Z when I first came to DEC: PDP-Z
    
      A Fiat X1/9 with VROOM.
    
    len.
    

    There used to be a pDP 10 Jaguar in Reading. But the funniest one
    I saw was a Landrover in the Maynard carpark (c 1970) - with
    registration BWANA.

    On a parking lot, in Malboro, I saw a few weeks ago a car 
    registered: 
	    		VAX VMS

    roger

   Seen on a Mercedes-Benz locally:
   
   
                  WRTHIT
   
   

    ...just saw one the other day that caught my eye:
    
    
                                 O4ABR

    There use to be a guy in Woburn that had
    a plate:   DEC-TEC

    
    I recently saw a Corvair with a plate:   F NADAR
    

    The number plate
    
    
    
                                G
    
    
    is for sale in Sydney. Price $50,000!
    
    djw
    

    Seen 18 June 1988 in the UK
    
    Ford Sierra XR4 licence plate
    
    SOE 5 Y with the rear plate characters spaced to read

    	SO E5Y
    
    Ugh!!

    A friend of mine in the U.K. has a Sunbeam Alpine with the registration
    plates ALP117E, and strangely, the "17" bit seems to have got rather
    bent and merged.

    Geoff (S) Shingles, our UK MD (and a DEC VP) used to have a Porsche
    (still may have) with plates GSS 9.

    I saw a car at the Colorado Spring support center with the
    plate:
    
    	CMKRNL

On a Rolls Royce driving through Nashua, NH, NH license:  666.

Charlie

    G'day,
    Apparently the plate
             'Yuppie" 
    
    is for sale in Sydney - A$8000 !
    
    
    djw
    

Re .8 (Tonka Toy):

When I got a 4 x 4 truck, I started referring to it as my "Tonka Toy" - it's a
Nissan, but I figured that that name was apposite, since I don't have a really
compelling reason to have such a vehicle, and when I was kid I would have
been rather keen on the toy trucks (after my time, regrettably!). On my way
home from work one day, I was distressed to see a Toyota 4 x 4 with "Tonka Toy"
neatly painted on the side - and I thought I was being original!


On (UK) numberplates: my father used to recount being nearly run over by a white
Rolls Royce, number G 1 - his companion at the time remarked that "it's just got
to be God's". My personal favourite was a Porche (I hate Porches, but the plate
was good) number BOS 5 (space omitted) - I am still waiting to spot THE 805S.

Chris.

There's an MG V8 lives near me, reg. number MGV8.

Bet the owner wished it was BMW7 or something.

    Re UK plates like BOS5
    
    I'm not sure what the offence or penalty is, but for about a year now 
    it has been illegal to have plates made up in which the spacing, if 
    there is any, does not fall solely between the letters and numbers.
    
    So they've either got to be like F748DFK or like F 748 DFK
    
    Nick

    	A friend of mine collects Sunbeam Alpine sports cars, and I cannot
    represent the script here (and it is probably illegal), but one of them
    has a registration of ALP117E. I am sure you can guess what it looks
    like from a distance.

    .33�    I'm not sure what the offence or penalty is, but for about a year now 
    .33�    it has been illegal to have plates made up in which the spacing, if 
    
    I think it has been illegal to mis-space UK number plates for much
    longer than a year.  As you can imagine anything which makes it harder
    to identify a number plate, whether it is spacing, script, lighting
    etc, will be covered by statute.
    
    Ian.

Re: .31

There is a dark blue Toyota 4x4 truck in the southern New Hampshire area
that has TONKA painted in white on the tailgate - it is an exact copy
of the real Tonka logo.  It gets a lot of second looks.

-d

    When the Isuzu ad comes on, does anyone else hear "Styleless Excess"?
    
    Leslie

Yes!  Have you heard the one where they appeal to "Styless" persons?

    That's the one I'm talking about!  (All weekend I became increasingly
    convinced that it was really a Joe-Isuzu-type joke and that I was the
    only person to have taken it seriously...)  Not sure if the Excess (XS)
    is an option-package version of the Styleless or if you get to choose
    between being a styleless person or an excess person.
    
    Leslie

    
    An old, but well kept sports car in the U.K. was seen bearing the
    registration TUR 130
    
    With the first two digits pushed a little closer than is legal, it read
    
    			TURBO
    Dave

    	A friend of mine has a Sunbeam Alpine, with registration
    ALP 117E. With a distorted "7" he achieves a similar effect.

	Re .41
>>    	A friend of mine has a Sunbeam Alpine, with registration
>>    ALP 117E. With a distorted "7" he achieves a similar effect.

		I *thought* I'd heard that one before .....


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Note 506.34                         Nausia...                           34 of 41
PASTIS::MONAHAN "humanity is a trojan horse"          4 lines  26-APR-1991 15:44
                            -< Another U.K. plate. >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    	A friend of mine collects Sunbeam Alpine sports cars, and I cannot
    represent the script here (and it is probably illegal), but one of them
    has a registration of ALP117E. I am sure you can guess what it looks
    like from a distance.

================================================================================
Note 506.26                         Nausia...                           26 of 41
PASTIS::MONAHAN "humanity is a trojan horse"          3 lines  21-JUN-1988 08:01
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A friend of mine in the U.K. has a Sunbeam Alpine with the registration
    plates ALP117E, and strangely, the "17" bit seems to have got rather
    bent and merged.

    ... with the same personal_name?  Anathema, imho, but then again,
    that's why there's "personal" in the string's name...
    
    /s/ Dan_who_rotates_thru_a_small_but_gradually_enlarging_set_of_puns :-)

    	Sorry about the repetition. Over a period of years I had forgotten
    I had entered it. I've had the same node name for about 9 years now,
    and the same personal name since when VAX Notes was in internal field
    test.

    Constant personal names are a megatrend--how else to identify
    people in the world-wide virtual reality of the future???

to continue the digression on tags, 
see scaact::app$disk:[notes$library]carbuffs