Word: motorcars
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...Wind in the Willows, Mr. Toad romances his gypsy cart until he is transformed by the sight of that splendid innovation, the motorcar. The gypsy cart is forgotten--is junk. We are all Toad. We need the sobering voice of Mr. Badger to talk us down from our manias...
Even such proprietary items as engines and overall design may be up for grabs. Volvo and Renault supply each other with engines for some models, and the high-performance British motorcar company Lotus says 10% of new cars made in Europe will carry engines of Lotus design next year. Lotus spokesman Alastair Florance says the company's new modular V-8 motor can be dismantled, reconfigured, expanded or contracted to fit virtually any car. Lotus, which is owned by Malaysian carmaker Proton, earned more money advising other carmakers last year than it did selling its own legendary road burners...
...good deal else, including such totems of futurist affection as a 1911 Bleriot monoplane and a World War I Spad hanging from the cortile roof, and a vintage Bugatti by the canal entrance, to remind one of Marinetti's belligerent and much quoted dictum that "a roaring motorcar that seems to run ( on shrapnel is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace...
...meaner than in Peking, but for a time Koch thought that the vision might translate at least partly to New York. A transit strike there last spring swelled the ranks of the city's commuting bicyclists to nearly Chinese proportions. Like Toad of Toad Hall discovering the motorcar, Koch seemed to conceive a passion for the bike. As an expression of his enthusiasm, he spent $300,000 from the city's depleted treasury to install 6-ft.-wide bike lanes along two avenues in Manhattan...
Lurid or not, the writing is almost always first-rate, an oasis of literacy in the vast wasteland. When Elizabeth wants a motorcar, for example, she tells her husband that it has all of 18 horsepower. "What," he demands, "do you know about horsepower?" "Anyone can understand horsepower," she replies matter-of-factly. "It's a most evocative phrase...