‘My why does dad bother with those old books’, Mum replies ‘you know he likes to read from paper, he didn’t grow up with iPad’s like you kids did’. I put my book down and my son shows me the new image projection feature on his iPad 12th generation, to me its impressive but nothing will ever beat the purity of a proper paperback.
He questions why and I try and tell him some things were just better back in the day, he asks me what card were like and I scoff - I tell him cars were ‘proper cars’ back then, ‘I had a little BMW sports car, 3.0 litre straight six, run on pure petrol and had a proper fabric soft top! It had traction control but none of the fancy driver aids you have now, none of that accident awareness sensors, auto-pilot and such – you will laugh when I say our cruise control was just a switch that set the speed at a set rate, seems so basic now but was quite cool back then!
It might not have had the toque you kids are used to know but it still went well, and we never had speed limiters back then, well only on German cars and even they were set at 155mph! Ian asks me how much horse power and makes fun of the answer ‘not even 300bhp from 3 whole litres!’ – I try and explain that was considered fine for the time, that the car wasn’t bogged down with so many computers and safety aids, and I say he will never appreciate the true sound of a proper petrol engine on full chat – like my books it’s something that even though its older and has been well superseded it’s still the best to an old man like me.
He questions why and I try and tell him some things were just better back in the day, he asks me what card were like and I scoff - I tell him cars were ‘proper cars’ back then, ‘I had a little BMW sports car, 3.0 litre straight six, run on pure petrol and had a proper fabric soft top! It had traction control but none of the fancy driver aids you have now, none of that accident awareness sensors, auto-pilot and such – you will laugh when I say our cruise control was just a switch that set the speed at a set rate, seems so basic now but was quite cool back then!
It might not have had the toque you kids are used to know but it still went well, and we never had speed limiters back then, well only on German cars and even they were set at 155mph! Ian asks me how much horse power and makes fun of the answer ‘not even 300bhp from 3 whole litres!’ – I try and explain that was considered fine for the time, that the car wasn’t bogged down with so many computers and safety aids, and I say he will never appreciate the true sound of a proper petrol engine on full chat – like my books it’s something that even though its older and has been well superseded it’s still the best to an old man like me.